"Leaden" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of no use. His heart would not echo the words, but in its very depths a voice clear and distinct seemed to say, "I want to be with her—to be near her. With her, the hours are winged; away, they are leaden-footed. She awakens hope, she makes it appear possible to be ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... us who live in the East are so accustomed to the adjective "blue" in connection with the jay that we are surprised to find that P. c. capitalis wears no blue whatever, but dons a sombre suit of leaden gray, somewhat relieved by the blackish shade of the wings and tail, with their silvery or frosted lustre. He is certainly not an attractive bird, either in dress or in form, for he appears very "thick-headed" and lumpish, as if he scarcely knew enough to seek shelter ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... rejoined the others, and I was left with a leaden foreboding of grewsome things in store. I knew what manner of man Ukridge was when he relaxed and became chummy. Friendships of years' standing had failed to survive ...
— Love Among the Chickens - A Story of the Haps and Mishaps on an English Chicken Farm • P. G. Wodehouse
... pleasantly placed, and commands fine views from its windows. Even in winter it must be, if not a cheerful, an interesting abode to dwell in. In duller days, when skies are leaden, and the more you see around you the less you like it, its dreamy look of age and strangeness within and without may have a somewhat depressing influence. The aches and agonies of so many generations may gain an ascendancy over the exuberant joys that made their life worth living. It would ...
— Old New England Traits • Anonymous
... my first alarm, I craned my neck behind the window in order to see him again—and well was I rewarded! By means of a hollow cane he blew me in through the window a letter, cunningly rolled round a leaden pellet. ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... unhappy and exciting year or two, finally investing much of their money in bonds, and a handsome residue in that favorite dream of such young wasters: the breeding of horses for the polo market. "What if we lose it all—which we won't—we've still got the bonds!" Joe Pickering, leaden pockets under his eyes, his weak lips hanging loose, had said with his unsteady laugh. What inevitably followed, and what he had not foreseen, was that he should lose more than half the bonds, too. They were seriously crippled now, and began to quarrel, ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... fanciful, and amiable persons than my old friend, the New Road and the daily desk do verily exercise a degrading and much to be regretted influence. But Mr. Harrison brought the freshness of pastoral simplicity into the most faded corners of the Green, lightened with his cheerful heart the most leaden hours of the office, and gathered during his three weeks' holiday in the neighborhood, suppose, of Guildford, Gravesend, Broadstairs, or Rustington, more vital recreation and speculative philosophy than another man would have got on ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... largest of these, about twenty feet in diameter, is boiling like a cauldron, throwing water and fearful volumes of sulphurous vapor higher than our heads. Its color is a disagreeable greenish yellow. The central spring of the group, of dark leaden hue, is in the most violent agitation, its convulsive spasms frequently projecting large masses of water to the height of seven or eight feet. The spring lying to the east of this, more diabolical in appearance, filled with a hot brownish substance of the consistency ...
— The Discovery of Yellowstone Park • Nathaniel Pitt Langford
... some he pushes back far apart on the strand. Moved with marvel at the confused throng: 'Say, O maiden,' cries Aeneas, 'what means this flocking to the river? of what are the souls so fain? or what difference makes these retire from the banks, those go with sweeping oars over the leaden waterways?' ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... Ross-Ellison, by the kind influence of Mrs. Dearman, joined as a Second Lieutenant and speedily rose to the rank of Captain and the command of a Company. A year's indefatigable work convinced him that he might as well endeavour to fashion sword-blades from leaden pipes as to make a fighting unit of his gang of essentially cowardly, peaceful, unreliable, feeble nondescripts. That their bodies were contemptible he would have regarded as merely deplorable, but ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren
... lips an' cheaks so soft as wool. There han' in han', wi' bosoms warm, Wi' love that burned but thought noo harm, Below the wide-boughed tree we passed The happy hours that went too vast; An' though she'll never be my wife, She's still my leaden star o' life. She's gone: an' she've a-left to me Her mem'ry in the girt woak tree; Zoo I do love noo tree so well 'S the girt woak tree that's in ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... Though some of the leaden missiles flew uncomfortably near his head, Jack was unharmed, and as he was borne on by the iron horse around the next curve in the track, leaving his enemies out of sight, he offered a prayer of thankfulness for ...
— Jack North's Treasure Hunt - Daring Adventures in South America • Roy Rockwood
... mile away, but that honest "Long Tom" sent its leaden missiles whistling about their ears, and kicking up the dust around their ponies' heels, until, after a few defiant shouts and such insulting and contemptuous gestures as they could think of, the two had ducked suddenly out ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... that it contained some explosive, or what would be more probable, some mephitic substance that gave off a deadly vapor. So, fully resolved to throw the bottle into the river and being very heedful of Achmed's injunction not to let the leaden plug bearing Solomon's seal be removed from the mouth, he placed the gift in his pocket and having thanked the emir for his entertainment and instruction and the gift, ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis
... under me, then was still. His scream choked into silence. His suit deflated within my encircling grip. He was dead; my leaden, steel-tipped pellet had punctured the double surface of his Erentz-fabric, penetrated ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... veered and side-slipped, he kicked hard on the left rudder and brought the nose around. Furiously he sprayed the air with a leaden hail from his quick-firer. He heard a rush of wind go past him, and realized that his unseen antagonist had all ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various
... indeed, and the crack of the rifle from the wood, which the pursuer and pursued had just left, was not a breath of time too soon. Aimed by one who knew the vulnerable points of such a creature, and by someone whose skill was unsurpassed, the leaden messenger crashed its way through bone and muscle to the seat of life. The brute, which was ready to fall upon and devour the young fugitive, pitched heavily forward and rolled upon the ground in the throes ...
— The Cave in the Mountain • Lieut. R. H. Jayne
... boots on the porch told of men hurrying from the house. Several horses dashed past her, not ten feet distant. One rider saw her, for he turned to shout back. This drove Madeline into a panic. Hardly knowing what she did, she began to run away from the house. Her feet seemed leaden. She felt the same horrible powerlessness that sometimes came over her when she dreamed of being pursued. Horses with shouting riders streaked past her in the shrubbery. There was a thunder of hoofs behind her. She turned aside, but ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... the doorway of the outer room, his arms outstretched, barring the entrance. His face had gone the grey leaden hue of the frightened Oriental and his eyes held a curious look of pity. His attitude put the crowning touch to Craven's anxiety. He went ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... blocks; later on, some portions were printed with movable types of wood; and at last the letter-press was entirely of movable metal types. Junius says that Koster by degrees exchanged his wooden types for leaden ones, and these for pewter; and I will add that it is not unlikely they may have been cast in lead or pewter plates from the wooden blocks, as metal-casting was well ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... would have sate down and hammered it into a paderero, to have prevented a single wish in his master. The corporal had already,—what with cutting off the ends of my uncle Toby's spouts—hacking and chiseling up the sides of his leaden gutters,—melting down his pewter shaving-bason,—and going at last, like Lewis the Fourteenth, on to the top of the church, for spare ends, &c.—he had that very campaign brought no less than eight new battering cannons, besides three demi-culverins, into the field; my uncle Toby's demand for ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... this simple inquiry upon the proprietor was phenomenal. His fat yellow face assumed a sort of leaden hue, and his already prominent eyes protruded ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... about my going from that moment; to allay which, I called out something about my costume to Sophie as I went up to my room. The day was growing duller, and stiller, and grayer. I sat by the window and watched the leaden river. It was like an afternoon in September, before the chill of the autumn has come. Not a leaf moved upon the trees, not a cloud crept over the sky. It was all one dim, gray, gloomy stillness overhead. I wondered if they would have rain. They, not I, for I was going to stay at home, and before ...
— Richard Vandermarck • Miriam Coles Harris
... can be more complete than these wastes, except when a leaden sky replaces the warm sunshine of to-day, and a deep, impenetrable mantle of snow covers the plateau from end to end. Then the little life that animates it is hushed, and none from the outer world penetrates the ...
— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... Army and Recruits for the Connaught Rangers. The first is in the Academy Notes, which I send you. The second is at least as fine. [Sketch.] The landscape effect is the opal-like sky and bright light full of moisture after rain—heavy clouds hang above—the mountains are a leaden blue—and the sky of all exquisite pale shades of bright colour. Down the wet moor road comes the group. Two very tall, dark-eyed Connaught "boys"—one with a set face and his hands in his pockets looking straight out of ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden
... draught upon draught until she had found that for which she thirsted—sleep. For what she craved was not the fevered brain, the happy confusion, the living folly, the delirious, waking dream of drunkenness; what she needed, what she sought was the negative joy of sleep, Lethean, dreamless sleep, a leaden sleep falling upon her like the blow of the sledge upon the ox's head: and she found it in those compounds which struck her down and stretched her out face downward on the waxed cover of ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... is pronounced in the Academy by the successor to a vacant chair than was pronounced that hot day in Valence upon Emile Augier by the Director of the Comedie Francaise. When it was ended, there was added to the contents of the leaden casket a final paper bearing the autographs of the notables of our company; and then the cap-stone, swinging from tackles, ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier
... Sforza, according to Rotti. The elder woman's profile is exactly that of Dante,—so much so that Maes speaks of her as the "Dantessa di S. Pietro." Her younger companion is, or rather was, of marvellous beauty, before Bernini draped her form with a leaden tunic. During my lifetime, this has been removed once, for the benefit of a Frenchman who was collecting materials for the life of della Porta; but I have not been able to obtain a copy of the photograph taken at the time. Formerly the statue was miscalled Truth, which ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani
... such as manuscripts, newspapers, medals and coins, which were to be placed in the corner stone had been enclosed in a little glass box, and hermetically sealed in a leaden cylinder. ...
— Friars and Filipinos - An Abridged Translation of Dr. Jose Rizal's Tagalog Novel, - 'Noli Me Tangere.' • Jose Rizal
... bird common to both Continents, and that it is often seen upon the shores of the Mediterranean, pursuing the finny tribes there, just as it does in America. In some parts of Italy it is called the "leaden eagle," because its sudden heavy plunge upon the water is fancied to resemble the falling ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... window with the book which she had been reading open upon her lap. She gazed pensively into the oval sheet of leaden water slumbering at her feet, at the passing clouds, casting their ever-changing shadows on the little villa, on the deserted garden, the trees of the opposite bank, the distant fields, on the bridge to the left, and on the quiet roads, which lost themselves behind the Beguinage, and on the slanting ...
— The Saint • Antonio Fogazzaro
... fugitive; but he was driven down with such violence, that he lay stunned on the sward, while Smith sprang like a goat up the steep face of the adjacent precipice. A dozen rifles instantly poured forth their contents, and the rocks rang with the leaden hail; but the aim had been hurried, and the light shed by the fire at ...
— The Golden Dream - Adventures in the Far West • R.M. Ballantyne
... cry, our efforts were of no avail. Hour after hour slipped away, still no cheetar; and about three o'clock in the morning, wearied with our fruitless vigil, we all began to drop asleep. I believe I was wrapped in a most leaden slumber, and dreaming of anything but watching for, and hunting tigers, when I was aroused by the most unnatural, unearthly, and infernal roaring ever heard. This was our friend, and for his reception, starting upon our feet, we were all immediately ready; ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 20, No. 562, Saturday, August 18, 1832. • Various
... beneath in the lower town, not dead, but sorely broken, and no longer a wild youth, but God's servant from that day forward. I have forgotten the famous bears, and all else.—I remember the Percy lion on the bridge over the little river at Alnwick,—the leaden lion with his tail stretched out straight like a pump-handle,—and why? Because of the story of the village boy who must fain bestride the leaden tail, standing out over the water,—which breaking, he dropped into the stream far below, and was taken out an ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... on his guard; he was motionless, and under the influence of a leaden sleep. Dick Sand, bringing his lips to the door-sill, thought he might risk murmuring Hercules's name. A moan, like a low and plaintive ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne
... stopped, on the crest of the ridge, and stood, bare-headed, contemplating the sunset. For a few seconds the fiery light stained his hands, his throat, his hair, his handsome bearded face; then swiftly faded, leaving him like a giant leaden image set up against a vast pallor of ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... two-metal accumulator, of which the Edison battery is a representative, made up of alternate plates of iron and nickel. In the lead accumulator, the "positive" plate may be recognized by its brown color when charging, while the "negative" plate is usually light gray, or leaden in color. The action of the charging current is to form oxides of lead in the plates; the action of the discharging current is to reduce the oxides to metallic lead again. This process can be repeated over and over again during the ...
— Electricity for the farm - Light, heat and power by inexpensive methods from the water - wheel or farm engine • Frederick Irving Anderson
... was all over, when the crowds had gone, the top lowered and the stakes pulled, he was hitched to the leaden-wheeled band-wagon to strain and tug at the traces all through the last weary half of the night. But when fame has started your way, be you horse or man, you cannot escape. Just before the season closed Calico was put on the sawdust. This ...
— Horses Nine - Stories of Harness and Saddle • Sewell Ford
... quantity of downpour away to the west up amongst the hills; the skies are leaden with rain clouds even now; the air is saturated with moisture. Up beyond the picturesque little island at the junction of the two rivers the water thunders over the rocky ledge which forms the dub at the bottom ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... said that Louis was a firm believer in astrology, that he wore a cap set round with leaden images of the saints to which he prayed, but told them falsehoods even in his prayers. His choice of a confidential adviser was perhaps his greatest offence in the eyes of the nobility, for he selected his barber, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... well knit; of a pleasing countenance inclining to brown, and very adroit in all noble exercises. I have yet in the house to be seen canes poured full of lead, with which they say he exercised his arms for throwing the bar or the stone, or in fencing; and shoes with leaden soles to make him lighter for running or leaping. Of his vaulting he has left little miracles behind him: I have seen him when past three score laugh at our exercises, and throw himself in his furred gown into the saddle, make ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... nearly naked: a short, sad, consumptive wind is soughing through them. The grass—what remains of it—is brown, of an unpleasant hue. No flowers smile up at them as they pass quietly along. The sky is leaden. There is a general air of despondency over everything. It is a day laid aside for dismal reflection; a day on which hateful "might have beens" crop up, for "melancholy has marked it ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... little raft, and which is so weighted that the sham birds squat naturally on the water. This is quite sufficient to attract the notice of a passing flock, who descend to cultivate the acquaintance of the isolated few when the concealed hunter, with his fowling-piece, scatters a deadly leaden shower amongst them. In the winter, when the water is covered with rubble ice, the fowler of the Delaware paints his canoe entirely white, lies flat in the bottom of it, and floats with the broken ice; from which the aquatic ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... after breakfast, and it was admitted all round, that it was well suited to produce a sensation, in a thunder-storm, of a dark night, and that it was no wonder Jetty's bed-fellow had been frightened. But now everything was calm and peaceful. The glass hung in fragments about the leaden sashes; the chair and priere-dieu of the lady abbess had altogether an innocent and comfortable air, and the images, of which there were several, as horrible as a bungling workman and a bloody imagination could ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... was really quite remarkable; but I was more interested in observing my fellow visitors. The dwarf looked up with her bright little eyes, and the giant looked down with his great leaden ones, while the bear jumped over the man's head, and pretended to fight him and hug him, and finally, walking on his hind-feet, stooped down, and took his head into the horrid cavern of those great jaws. Out of breath, and red in the face, the enthusiastic operator ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... pretty, so romantic, never did I so thoroughly realize that I was in Central Africa. I felt momentarily proud that I owned such a vast domain, inhabited with such noble beasts. Here I possessed, within reach of a leaden ball, any one I chose of the beautiful animals, the pride of the African forests! It was at my option to shoot any of them! Mine they were without money or without price; yet, knowing this, twice I dropped my rifle, loth to wound the royal beasts, but—crack! and a royal one was on his back ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... afternoon, before the final rehearsal, it began to snow persistently in small flakes which dropped evenly from a leaden sky. Standing by the window, twisting the curtain-string unconsciously, with her soul out in the storm, she became conscious of excited cries of "Extra!" in the street below, and as though in accompaniment ...
— Katrine • Elinor Macartney Lane
... our immense relief, the sun went down. How often during our long struggle for independence had not the setting of the sun seemed to lift a leaden weight from my shoulders! If, on a few occasions, the approach of night has been to our disadvantage, yet over and over again it has been ...
— Three Years' War • Christiaan Rudolf de Wet
... and so penetrating that it percolates through everything except water-proof. It was a question which was the more wetting species of rain—the thorough down-pour or the heavy mist. But whether it poured or permeated, there was never any change in the leaden sky during these six weeks, and the mountains were never clearly seen except during the four accidental days already ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne
... walk, through the snowy roads and under the leaden-coloured sky. She had to pass through a part of the town which lay close to the river, where the principal shops and warehouses stood. Passing one of the shops, or as they were generally called, "stores," she remembered some purchases she wanted to make, and went in. While ...
— A Canadian Heroine, Volume 2 - A Novel • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... red-skin, creeping cautiously along, made his appearance on the edge of the ravine; but there was too much light for him to expose himself to the deadly rifle of the trapper, who took a kind of savage pleasure in sending his leaden ...
— The Huge Hunter - Or, the Steam Man of the Prairies • Edward S. Ellis
... of Instinct.—The last thing here meant by the transmutation of instinct is that by any political alchemy it is possible—to quote Herbert Spencer's celebrated aphorism—to get golden conduct out of leaden instincts. But it is the mark of man, the intelligent being, that in him the instincts are plastic, and even capable of amazing transmutations. In the lower animals there is instinct, but that instinct ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby
... pass with leaden wings. It were as though all the world were standing still. The figures of the others stood out dimly, Margaret's white dress alone showing clearly in the gloom. The thick respirators which we all wore added to the strange appearance. The thin ...
— The Jewel of Seven Stars • Bram Stoker
... main reliance. Its shot was so deadly that the Lateran Council, in 1139, strictly forbade its employment among Christian enemies. It combined with its stock, or bed, wheel, and trigger, almost all the force of the modern musket, and discharged square pieces of iron, leaden balls, or, in scarcity of ammunition, flint stones. The common cross-bow would kill, point blank, at forty or fifty yards distance, and the best improved at fully one hundred yards. The manufacture of these weapons must have been profitable, since their cost was equal, in the ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... streaming across the city. The luminary, dipping in the west, rent the clouds asunder, and the various districts spread out, motly with ever-changing lights and shadows. For a time the whole of the left bank was of a leaden hue, while the right was speckled with spots of light which made the verge of the river resemble the skin of some huge beast of prey. Then these resemblances varied and vanished at the mercy of the wind, which drove the clouds before it. Above the burnished gold of the housetops dark ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... savage emphasis: "Ah! Canaille! Canaille! Canaille!. . ." He left me there trembling with weakness and mute with awe. Unable to make a sound, I gazed after the strangely desolate figure of that seaman carrying an oar on his shoulder up a barren, rock-strewn ravine under the dreary leaden sky of Tremolino's last day. Thus, walking deliberately, with his back to the sea, Dominic vanished from ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... dread catastrophe the hopes of the friends of freedom throughout the world would be destroyed, and a long night of leaden despotism would enshroud the nations. Our example for more than eighty years would not only be lost, but it would be quoted as a conclusive proof that man is unfit ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 4 (of 4) of Volume 5: James Buchanan • James D. Richardson
... gamut of emotions, or they could be impervious as a stone wall. Now they were deep and innocent as a girl's, now they rollicked with the buoyant youth in them. Comrades might see them bubbling with fun, and the next moment enemies find them opague as a leaden sky. Not the least wonder of them was that they looked out from under long lashes, soft enough for any maiden, at a world they appraised with the shrewdness of ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine
... banishment, my Cid returned to Castille, and the King received him well, and gave him the Castle of Dueas, and of Orcejon, and Ybia, and Campo, and Gaa, and Berviesca, and Berlanga, with all their districts. And he gave him privileges with leaden seals appendant, and confirmed with his own hand, that whatever castles, towns, and places, he might win from the Moors, or from any one else, should be his own, quit and free for ever, both for him and for his descendants. Thus was my Cid received into the King's favour, and he abode with ...
— Chronicle Of The Cid • Various
... combustion is performed in a leaden chamber, with water at the bottom, to receive the vapour and assist its condensation. The combustion is, however, never so perfect but that a quantity of sulphureous acid is formed at the same time; for you recollect that the sulphureous acid, according to the chemical nomenclature, ...
— Conversations on Chemistry, V. 1-2 • Jane Marcet
... priesthoods! Why not? Well, I will provide you with the estates, and such as you will never come out of! You shall be married to gibbets that are perfectly new! Your pay? it shall be melted in your mouths in leaden ingots! and I will put you into good and very exalted positions among the clouds, so as to bring you close to ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... us that the musketeers of Pizarro used a kind of chain shot on this occasion; their leaden bullets being cast in two hemispheres connected together by several links of ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr
... said Paul Bevan, with a short laugh, as he and the rest lay quickly down to let the leaden shower ...
— Twice Bought • R.M. Ballantyne
... young lady resolutely engaged in making up by extravagance of gesture for the deficiencies of an exhausted voice. "There," said one of my companions, "that is the notorious Mrs. Ebbsmith." Upon which a person near us, whom I judged from his air of leaden laziness to be a British working man, blurted out, "Notorious Mrs. Ebbsmith! Mad Agnes! That's the name her sanguinary friends give her—Mad Agnes!" At that moment the eye of the panting oratress caught mine for an instant, and ...
— The Notorious Mrs. Ebbsmith • Arthur Wing Pinero
... them. They can make it in half an hour if they try. But they'll find it pretty dark to-night, I'm thinking," added the cadet, with a glance out of the boathouse window at the leaden sky. ...
— The Mystery at Putnam Hall - The School Chums' Strange Discovery • Arthur M. Winfield
... water-worn branches, ending in round orifices through which the water once flowed. The only inhabitants it seems ever to have had were baboons. I left at the end of the upper branch one of Father Mathew's leaden teetotal tickets. ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... horizon whose sharp jags Cut brutally into a sky Of leaden heaviness, and crags Of houses lift their masonry Ugly and foul, and chimneys lie And snort, outlined against the gray Of lowhung cloud. I hear the sigh The goaded city gives, not day Nor night can ease her ...
— A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass • Amy Lowell
... ballad says, light-hearted as the young lover who is going to plant a maypole before the window of his betrothed. She painted the sky blue, the trees green, and all things in bright colors. She aroused the torpid sun, who was sleeping in his bed of mists, his head resting on the snow leaden clouds that served him as a pillow, and cried to him, "Hi! Hi! My friend, time is up, and I am here; quick to work. Put on your fine dress of fresh rays without further delay, and show yourself at once on your balcony to ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... few hours before would have lynched him with equal sincerity, with cold bewilderment. As the door closed on the last of the party he turned to McKinstry. The wounded man had sunk down again, but was regarding with drowsy satisfaction a leaden bullet he was holding ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... sky the sun descends With many a spot, that o'er his glaring orb Uncertain wanders, stained; red fiery streaks Begin to flush around. The reeling clouds Stagger with dizzy poise, as doubting yet Which master to obey; while rising slow, Blank in the leaden-coloured east, the moon Wears a wan circle round her blunted horns. Seen through the turbid fluctuating air, The stars obtuse emit a shivering ray; Or frequent seem to shoot, athwart the gloom, And long behind them trail the whitening blaze. Snatched in short eddies plays the withered leaf, ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... for teen, He ran, he stayed, he fled, he turned again, Until at last unmarked, unviewed, unseen, When Dudon had Almansor newly slain, Within his side he sheathed his weapon keen, Down fell the worthy on the dusty plain, And lifted up his feeble eyes uneath, Opprest with leaden ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... 'But time escapes: Live now or never!' He said, 'What's time? Leave Now for dog and apes! Man has Forever.' Back to his book then; deeper drooped his head: Calculus racked him: Leaden before, his eyes grew dross of lead: Tussis attacked him.... So, with the throttling hands of death at strife, Ground he at grammar; Still, thro' the rattle, parts of speech were rife: While he could stammer He settled Hoti's business—let it be!— ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... the last day of the session, a committee consisting of one member for each colony was appointed to serve in the recess of Congress, for the very practical and urgent purpose of inquiring "in all the colonies after virgin lead and leaden ore, and the best methods of collecting, smelting, and refining it;" also, after "the cheapest and easiest methods of making salt in these colonies." This was not a committee on which any man could be useful who had only "declamation" to contribute to its work; and the several ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler
... Raoul and I accompanied Turenne in the centre. Foot by foot, almost inch by inch, we advanced beneath a hail of bullets. Men fell fast, but the survivors struggled on undauntedly. From every window sped the leaden messengers into our midst; from behind each barricade flashed a flame ...
— My Sword's My Fortune - A Story of Old France • Herbert Hayens
... met again in this world. Bartholde died fighting on his own threshold; his wife, the beautiful Mathilde, perished, perhaps, in the flames. At all events, a wild figure was seen at an upper window just before the great leaden roof of the chateau curled and fell. Fire and sword spread in a widening circle round that district; the house of Anton Dormeur was sacked. Achille Dufarge and his wife, the lovely Sara, were in ...
— Miss Grantley's Girls - And the Stories She Told Them • Thomas Archer
... camp Dissected the slain deer, weighed the trout's brain, Captured the lizard, salamander, shrew, Crab, mice, snail, dragon-fly, minnow and moth; Insatiate skill in water or in air Waved the scoop-net, and nothing came amiss; The while, one leaden got of alcohol Gave an impartial tomb to all the kinds. Not less the ambitious botanist sought plants, Orchis and gentian, fern and long whip-scirpus, Rosy polygonum, lake-margin's pride, Hypnum and hydnum, mushroom, sponge ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... of the wonders of strange lands, and did not give an accurate account of anything. The man who bought cinnamon at Stourbridge Fair in 1380 would have felt poorer if any one had told him that it was not shot from the phoenix' nest with leaden arrows, while the merchant of 1580 wished to know where it was grown, and how much he would pay a pound for it if he bought it at first hand. Any attempt to reconcile these frames of mind was foredoomed ...
— Mediaeval Lore from Bartholomew Anglicus • Robert Steele
... upon the floor in a state of half-consciousness. He could hear the mosquitos buzzing about his face, he could hear, too, the sounds of life rise up from the street below; but he was able to move neither arm nor leg, and his head seemed fastened to the floor by immovable leaden weights. That his son was lost was ...
— Stories by English Authors: Africa • Various
... altogether. And the breeze held and the spray flew, and I walked the deck impatiently, while Thormod from the helm smiled at me. Bright were the skies over me, and bright the blue water that flashed below the ship's keel, but my thoughts would even have brightened such leaden skies as those that last saw me cross along this ocean path. And I thought that I could deal ...
— Wulfric the Weapon Thane • Charles W. Whistler
... which any more modern touch, modern door or window, seems a thing out of place through negligence, the diluted sunlight itself seems driven along with a sparing trace of gilded vane or red tile in it, under the wholesome active wind from the East coast. The long, finely weathered, leaden roof, and the great square tower, gravely magnificent, emphatic from the first view of it over the grey down above the hop-gardens, the gently-watered meadows, dwarf now everything beside; have the bigness of nature's work, seated up there ...
— Miscellaneous Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... formally registering this veritable revolution in the secret stronghold of Chinese political thought, a Bastille has been overthrown and the ground left clear for the development of individualism and personal responsibility in a way which was impossible under the leaden formulae of the greatest of the Chinese sages. In defining the relationship which must exist between the Central Government and the provinces even more formidable difficulties have been encountered, the apostles of decentralization and ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale
... had referred the smoothing of all my difficulties, the clearing up of all my doubts, the sweeping of all clouds from my sky; and now he is back! and, oh, how far, far gloomier than ever is my weather! What a sullen leaden sky overhangs me! ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... address. Just that. You can't find it out, for Robin is going away too; he is to do some work of mine while I am gone; and you can't come here and inquire for "August First," can you, now? So this is all—the end. Suddenly I feel inadequate and leaden. It is all over—the one chance for real happiness which I have had in my butterfly days—over. But you have changed earth and heaven—I want you to know it. I can't even now say that if Uncle Ted shouldn't ...
— August First • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews and Roy Irving Murray
... the object. Had a roar of laughter burst from the multitude—each man, each woman, each little shrill-voiced child, contributing their individual parts—Hester Prynne might have repaid them all with a bitter and disdainful smile. But, under the leaden infliction which it was her doom to endure, she felt, at moments, as if she must needs shriek out with the full power of her lungs, and cast herself from the scaffold down upon the ground, or else go mad ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... and meadow sere, The dull and leaden skies, Join with the mournful wind and drear In dirges for the passing year, ...
— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King
... the cloud. He tried to think how he came to be in this place, up on the hill in the wood, in the middle of the night, like this. He could not quite make it out. More than all there weighed on him a leaden feeling of weariness. He would have liked to throw himself down on ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... beaten into copper, we glided along the edge of the lake, past picturesque villages and campanili, and cypress trees. At the Italian frontier there were the usual tedious formalities of payment and sealing the car with a leaden seal; but when all this was done by sleepy officials, surly at our early passage, though little recking of our crimes, we sailed on again, Molly driving now, through a landscape magically clear in ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... sprang to land, while from the decks of the vessels a storm of missiles flew towards the walls. Vast numbers of catapults, which they had manufactured since their last attack, hurled masses of stone, heavy javelins, and leaden bullets, while thousands of ...
— The Dragon and the Raven - or, The Days of King Alfred • G. A. Henty
... has a stout handle from one and a half to two feet long, and a cord which measures not less than from eighteen to twenty-four feet in length. The cord is attached to a short iron chain, fixed to the top of the handle by an iron ring. A large leaden button is fastened to the end of the cord, and similar smaller buttons are distributed along it at distances, according to certain rules derived from experience, of which we are ignorant. Armed with this weapon, which the Csikos carries in his belt, together with a short grappling-iron ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 9. - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 26, 1850 • Various
... beautiful shrine was erected to his memory in the cathedral. But this costly structure did not escape being destroyed in the year 1738 with other Plantagenet memorials. A hundred years afterwards the mutilated effigy of Richard was discovered under the cathedral pavement, and near it the leaden casket that had inclosed his heart, which was replaced. Before long it was taken up again, and removed to the Museum of Antiquities, where it remained until the year 1869, when it found a more fitting resting-place in the ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer
... Ruddlestone passed into the Withdrawing-room, and seeing me on a footstool, playing it is true at the Battle of Hochstedt with some leaden soldiers, and two wooden puppets for the Duke and Prince Eugene, but still all agape at the strange words that had hit my sense, he catches me a buffet on the ear, bidding me mind my play, and not listen, else I should hear no good of myself, or of what an osier wand might haply do to me. And that ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... the cost of living and wages adjusted themselves to each other. But in actual experience the workers found that when prices fall, wages are quick to follow, whereas when prices soar high, wages are slow to follow. Wages climb with leaden feet when prices soar with eagle wings. Because the workers are consumers, almost to the last penny of their incomes, having to spend practically every penny earned, that form of exploitation becomes ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo
... however, a strong wind blew wild-looking leaden clouds over the forest, and Autumn, taking fright, threw aside her gorgeous rustling mantle and fled away; while the loons on the ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... said that he used to tend these curls with very particular care, attaching small leaden weights to them at night to keep them in place,—a custom which, I am informed, has in these days been revived by some dandies of the ...
— Claverhouse • Mowbray Morris
... of silver, and one of lead. Upon the golden one is written the words, "Who chooseth me, shall gain what many men desire"; upon the silver casket are the words, "Who chooseth me, shall get as much as he deserves"; and upon the leaden one, "Who chooseth me, must give and hazard all he hath." And only whoso chooseth aright, each suitor is told, can ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... devastations, had its birth in the brain of old Sauviat, the peddler, whom all Limoges afterward saw and knew for twenty-seven years in the rickety old shop among his cracked bells and rusty bars, chains and scales, his twisted leaden gutters, and metal rubbish of all kinds. We must do him the justice to say that he knew nothing of the celebrity or the extent of the association he originated; he profited by his own idea only in proportion to the capital he entrusted to the since ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac
... money bags stamped with armorial designs. Thieves, to remind them of their sneaking trade, are repeatedly transformed from men into snakes, hissing and creeping. Hypocrites march in slow procession with faces painted and with leaden cloaks all glittering with gold on the outside. With such realism does Dante declare the nature of sin and ...
— Dante: "The Central Man of All the World" • John T. Slattery
... down along the street; not far away the awning of a cafe showed red and white above the sidewalk, sheltering its row of little tables, and she walked slowly towards it. How often in the last six weeks, footsore and leaden-hearted, had she passed such places, feeling the invitation of their ease and refreshment in every jarred and crying nerve of her body, yet resisting it for the sake of the ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... last three weeks had been unusually fine, but towards the evening of this memorable 30th of May, large masses of clouds began to rise in the north-west, and the sea changed its azure hue to a dull leaden grey. Old Kitson ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... onslaught, and sweeping the coffin of Lotys almost over the edge of the vessel. He threw himself beside that dreary casket, fastening his own body with strong rope knotted many times, to its heavy leaden mass, resolved to sink with it painlessly, and without a struggle. So,—in perfect passiveness,—he awaited his end. Suddenly,—as if a bell had chimed in the distance, or a voice had sung some old familiar song in his ears,—he ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... the active governor of Canada dispatched M. de Celeron de Bienville, with 300 men, to traverse the vast wilderness lying from Detroit southeast to the Apalachian Mountains. Assuming this range as the limit of the British colonies, he directed that leaden plates, engraved with the arms of France, should be buried at particular places in the western country, to mark the territories of France, and that the chief of the expedition should endeavor to secure a promise from the Indians to exclude for the future ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... in swift retribution, and flying low turned their machine-guns upon the unprotected Normans. An aeroplane travels at anything from eighty to one hundred miles an hour, and this very speed restricted a lengthy concentration on any one spot, but many a Norman fell forward on his face, a dozen leaden bullets in ...
— Norman Ten Hundred - A Record of the 1st (Service) Bn. Royal Guernsey Light Infantry • A. Stanley Blicq |
