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More "Musty" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... took mightily, and I was told to set about it at once. On turning to the doctor for the requisite materials, he told me he had none; there was not a fly-leaf, even in any of his books. So, after great search, a damp, musty volume, entitled "A History of the most Atrocious and Bloody Piracies," was produced, and its two remaining blank leaves being torn out, were by help of a little pitch lengthened into one sheet. For ink, some of the soot over the lamp was then mixed with water, by a ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... walled in and made part of the hall. Over one of these windows is the inscription, "Post tenebras lux." The part I liked best, however, was the old-fashioned passage, with its lattice windows and musty dungeon savour, leading to the ancient kitchen and to a little oak-panelled sitting-room: but, knocking my head severely against the oak beam in the doorway, I nearly brought the whole ceiling down, a catastrophe which they tell me has ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... is also curious for his baits; that is to say, that they be clean and sweet; that is to say, to have your worms well scoured, and not kept in sour and musty moss, for he is a curious feeder: but at a well-scoured lob-worm he will bite as boldly as at any bait, and specially if, the night or two before you fish for him, you shall bait the places where you intend to fish for him, with big worms cut into pieces. And note, that none did ever ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton
... cherish a dream of long hours to be spent in the British Museum, the Congressional Library in Washington and the Public Library in Boston—and this is the only portion of the dream which has been realized. I planned an elaborate scheme of research work which was to result in a magnificent (if musty) philological treatise. I thought of trying to discover by long and patient researches what species of lullaby were crooned by Egyptian mothers to their babes, and what were the elementary dramatic poems in vogue among Assyrian ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock
... suspicions proved too correct. He took that box to his private room, and with some trouble unlocked it. A damp and musty smell came forth, as when a man delves a potato-bury; and then appeared layers of parchment yellow and brown, in and out with one another, according to the curing of the sheep-skin, perhaps, or the age of the sheep when he began to die; skins much older ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... to-night, I am sure. Didn't I bring home Prescott, thinking that she would be delighted to have me sit the evening with her and read so charming an author? But, at the very proposition, she flared up, and said she didn't want to hear my musty old histories. Humph! A nice way to make a man love his home. Better for her and me, too, I'm thinking, that she had listened to the history, and kept her husband ...
— The Two Wives - or, Lost and Won • T. S. Arthur
... a little grain, a few curds, and possibly a butt or two of sour wine. He is a type of a great many who lived within the limits of the old Papal territory; whether he and they have dropped their musty sheepskins and shaken off their unthrift under the new government, I ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... He used to come frequent-like before—before—" with a sharp glance over at her daughter, "a few months back. He's a good lad, and I thought as he'd make quite a companion for Hervey. An' it 'ud do 'em a deal of good to air them spare rooms. I'm sure they're smelling quite musty. What say?" ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... mouldy moods Caged in musty solitudes; Men beneath the breezy sky March to conquer ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... Prout another. Let not the solemn pretender to decorum, who, in proportion to his demureness, is apt to be worse than others, with owlish visage quote, "frailty, thy name is woman," or, "e'er those shoes were old," or whatever musty apothegms besides, as stale and senseless. The name of Frailty is no more woman than man, and old shoes have no business at weddings. Stand aside O censorious reader, (I desire not thy acquaintance,) while I whisper to both maid and widow, what, ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... a memory stays upon old ships, A weightless cargo in the musty hold, — Of bright lagoons and prow-caressing lips, Of stormy midnights, — and a tale untold. They have remembered islands in the dawn, And windy capes that tried their slender spars, And tortuous channels where their ...
— The Second Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... goods had been dusty and fly-specked, and the interior of the store dark and musty. Now the shelves and showcases were neatly arranged, everything was scrupulously clean, and it was plain that the reign of woman had succeeded ...
— How Janice Day Won • Helen Beecher Long
... simple folk, (it's queer) Used to patronise the seer And pay cash down for magic spell Perchance a Horoscope as well. Or open wide at special rate That musty tome the Book of Fate; Or seek the Philtre's subtle aid To win the hand of some fair maid. We mus'nt miss the Troubadours Who went forth on their singing tours, Twanging harps and trilling lays To maids of ...
— A Humorous History of England • C. Harrison
... Why can we not go and come without this musty steamer, these odious smells, this food for dogs, and this surge—ah, how remorseless!—of the ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale
... flirt with her? I suppose she got hold of some old rusty, musty don. But then I do not suppose you'd find that sort of ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... of us, when our day's work is done, must seek our ideal, whether it be love or pinochle or lobster a la Newburg, or the sweet silence of the musty bookshelves. ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... musty old lubbers, Who tell us to fast and to think, And patient fall in with life's rubbers, With ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... rhetorical phrases and catchwords: they will have to depend on the support of public opinion. The peace settlement will have to be made by the nations themselves, and not by a few diplomats. It will have to be made in the full light of day and not in the secret and murky and musty atmosphere ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... no one was visible; there were rows of tuns, certainly, and a musty odor in the place, but no sign of any trade or business being carried on. Suddenly out of the darkness appeared a figure—so suddenly indeed as to startle her. Had this man been seen in ordinary daylight, he would no doubt have looked nothing worse than a familiar type of the fat black-a-vised ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... escape. The two windows were deeply curtained, giving a narrow glimpse of blank wall. She sprang softly to her feet and looked out. There was a stone pavement far below. She turned silently and tried a door. It opened into a closet overflowing with musty hymn-books. She closed it quickly and slipped back to her couch just in time as the door opened and the doctor came back. She could catch a glimpse of the others through the half open door, anxiously peering in. She gathered all her self-control ...
— Exit Betty • Grace Livingston Hill
... self-respect which Tom had gained that he walked past this place several times before he could muster the courage to enter. When he did enter, the old familiar, musty smell and the sordid litter of the shelves renewed his ...
— Tom Slade with the Colors • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... covers, the chandeliers were veiled with cheese-cloth, the house and glass of the mirrors were dull and lifeless under the coating of dust. Marie opened the door for him and led the way through the dark, musty rooms, the windows closed, and the curtains down, without any light except what came ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... new shops and the side-street theaters and the thought of really nice girls going to a prize-fight in Madison Square Garden, and the eternal and never-ending talk about drinks, about where and how to get them, and how to mix them, and how much Angostura to put into 'em, and the musty ale that used to be had at Losekam's in Washington, and the Beaux Arts cocktails that used to come with a dash of absinthe, and the shipment of pinch-neck Scotch which somebody smuggled in on his cruiser-yacht from the east end of Cuba, and so-forth and so-forth until I began ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... ripeness of what seemed so crude. The glow of toil wakes you to the consciousness of your real capacities: you feel sure that they have taken a new step toward final development. In such mood it is that one feels grateful to the musty tomes, which at other hours stand like wonder-making mummies with no warmth and no vitality. Now they grow into the affections like new-found friends, and gain a hold upon the heart, and light a fire in the brain, that the years and the mould ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... one, Squire Jonas, telling the inquiring stranger the tale, had the rights of it. There were town characters aplenty he might have described. A long-settled community with traditions behind it and a reasonable antiquity seems to breed curious types of men and women as a musty closet breeds mice and moths. This town of ours had its town mysteries and its town eccentrics—its freaks, if one wished to put the matter bluntly; and it had its champion story-teller and its champion liar and its ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... cheap. We meet at very short intervals, not having had time to acquire any new value for each other. We meet at meals three times a day, and give each other a new taste of that old musty cheese that we are. We have had to agree on a certain set of rules, called etiquette and politeness, to make this frequent meeting tolerable and that we need not come to open war. We meet at the post-office, and at the sociable, and about the ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... old-fashioned garments were musty and faded. A frock of blue merino braided in an elaborate pattern in black lay on top. There was a cape to match, and a little cloth cap. Beside these lay a funny pair of leather boots with red tops—almost like a man's—only, ...
— Chicken Little Jane on the Big John • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... instead turned her practical mind to consideration of the immediate moment. The so-called parlor was hopeless she knew, and she dismissed it from the list of possibilities at once. It was a sparsely furnished, gloomy room, damp and musty from being tightly closed all summer, and the unpainted, rough boards ...
— Betty Gordon in Washington • Alice B. Emerson
... look quite so musty," said Dicky, reflectively. "Did it ever seem strange to you, Mr. French, that a pretty girl like Deena ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... ever since I had strength enough to gnaw a bone I have longed for the power of speech, that I might utter a multitude of things I had laid up in my memory, and which lay there so long that they were growing musty or almost forgotten. Now, however, that I see myself so unexpectedly enriched with this divine gift of speech, I intend to enjoy it and avail myself of it as much as I can, taking pains to say everything I can ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... disconcerting a situation, at which one more than usually daring spirit had actually ventured to suggest the election of one of themselves to fill the vacated throne. But this suggestion had been promptly vetoed by Lyga, the "Keeper of Statutes," who, referring to the musty tome in which were the laws relating to the government of Ulua, reminded the council that the law of succession explicitly provides that, upon the death of the sovereign, his next immediate successor becomes monarch. Or, failing an immediate successor, through ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood
... carefully noted, for any suggestion of fermentation sufficient to affect the odor renders the flour unsuited for making the best bread. Any abnormal odor in flour is objectionable, as it is due to contamination of some sort, and most frequently to fermentation changes. A musty odor is always an indication of unsoundness. Some flours which have but a slight suggestion of mustiness will, when baked into bread, have it more pronounced; on the other hand, some odors are removed during bread making. Flours may absorb odors because of being stored in contaminated places ...
— Human Foods and Their Nutritive Value • Harry Snyder
... the second floor, the ordinary bedroom of cheap furnished lodgings, with scant space between the foot of the bed and the fireplace, with a dirty wall-paper and a strong musty odour. The window ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... altitudes were gradually diminishing; and hence they knew that they were mounting the plateau. At last, four hours after leaving Diamond Creek, wearied to the marrow with incessant toil, they halted by a little spring, stretched themselves on a scrap of starveling grass, and chewed their meagre, musty supper. ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... is a large amount of this used, but the quantity purchased at a time depends upon the kind of meal selected. The common kind, which is made by grinding between two mill-stones, retains a great deal of moisture, and, in hot weather, will soon grow musty; but the granulated meal will keep for any length of time. The corn for this meal is first dried; and it takes about two years for this. Then the outer husks are removed, and the corn is ground by a process that ...
— Miss Parloa's New Cook Book • Maria Parloa
... whether it is the Parthenon or a farm-house. Without it, places lack their intimate personality, as photographs lack the personality of men and women. My memory of the Athenaeum Library is of the familiar, slightly musty smell of books, of the faint creaking of the librarian's boots, and the hum of bees and the whirr of a mowing machine, of the smell of an early summer afternoon, the white glare of the North Walk stretching beside the river, ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... Plutonean treasures, and who had swallowed it in a single gulp. It was in very bad case. The furrows of its red-tiled roof looked as if they were the results of age and decrepitude. Its best room had a musty smell; there was the dampness of deliquescence in its slow decay, but the Spanish Californians were sensible architects, and its massive walls and partitions defied the earthquake thrill, and all the year round ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte
... have seen many of these bits of paper if you had stopped in your hole in the Rue de Cluny, prowling about among the musty old books in the Bibliotheque de Sainte-Genevieve?" asked Coralie, for she knew the whole story of Lucien's life by this time. "Those little friends of yours in the Rue des Quatre-Vents are great ninnies, ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... "With me, as with the caterpillars, it is mostly bluff. I can swing back my head, and flatten the nape of my neck, as well as any deadly adder. I can also strike, but there is no poison behind the blow. My only weapon of offence is smell, a sickening musty smell, that makes the enemy loose his hold. Once I am halfway down a hole, I'm safe. I set my ratchet scales against the sides, and nothing can dislodge me. Only a jerk is dangerous, and that must be accomplished before I am ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English
... again disappeared the heir bent over the curiously shaped bottle in delight, for when the cork was drawn a fragrance filled the musty ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... out of the town, in a churchyard overgrown with grass, which the wind blew like a field of corn. Many of the stones were out of sight in it. The church, a relic of old catholic days, rose out of it like one that had taken to growing and so got the better of his ills. They walked into the musty, dingy, brown-atmosphered house. The cobbler led the way to a humble place behind a pillar; there Doory was seated waiting them. The service was not so dreary to Donal as usual; the sermon had some thought in it; and ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... rattled as though with the heavy slapping of hands, the pines creaked and the sudden dusk outside made the cabin, when he pushed the door open, as dark as night. Kindling a fire, he lit his pipe and waited. The room was damp and musty, but the presence of June almost smothered him. Once he turned his face. June's door was ajar and the key was in the lock. He rose to go to it and look within and then dropped heavily back into his chair. He was anxious to get away now—to get to work. Several times he rose restlessly ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.
... had been a dream. He was still at Brockett's, still silent, shy, awkward, still poring over pages of "Reuben Hallard" and wondering whether any one would ever publish it—still spending so many hours in the old musty bookshop with Herr Gottfried's wild mop of hair coming so madly above ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... hall was filled with sombre shadows; the motionless air was heavy with a musty, choking odor. In the dimness a few tattered hangings were visible on the walls; a rope, with bits of crumbling evergreen clinging to it, trailed from above one of the low windows. The panelled double door of the ballroom was shut; no sound ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... Sir Walter Scott, "that I am one of the Black Hussars of Literature who neither give nor take criticism." Tennyson resented any interference with his muse by writing the now nearly forgotten line about "Musty, crusty Christopher." Byron flew into a rhapsodical passion and wrote English ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith
... more or less exact; to their desire to elucidate some point which had hitherto been considered obscure, and which their explanations do not always clear up; to the temptation to display their proficiency in the ingenious art of manipulating facts and figures culled from a dozen musty ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... part, if it had been the will of the Lord. This had occasioned her to make some reflections, and then to reason upon those reflections; as for instance, that since her husband chose rather to devote himself to his studies, than to the duties of matrimony, to turn over musty old books, rather than attend to the attractions of beauty, and to gratify his own pleasures, rather than those of his wife, it might be permitted her to relieve some necessitous lover, in neighbourly charity, provided she could do it conscientiously, ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... late Earl and himself. Nothing had changed, except that now there were wires which gave out hissing sparks, electrical instruments invented since the earlier day; except that this man, gently dropping acids into the round white bottle upon a crystal which gave off musty fumes, was bolder, stronger, had more ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... a stylish card That bids you come and dine, And bring along your freshest wit (To pay for musty wine), You're looking very dismal, when My lady bounces in, And wonders what you're thinking of And why ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... packed in moth preventives ever since and out only four times a year to air, as you told me. It must smell musty and be yellow. I want it fresh ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter
... find it interesting, Nance, rummaging among these musty old religions of a dead past—though I admit that this one is less pleasant to study than most of the others. This god seems to lack the majesty and beauty of the Greek and the integrity of the Norse gods. In fact, he was too crude to be funny—by the way, what is it I seem to recall, ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... he must be my Husband. And when I told her I cou'd'nt love him, she call'd me Fool, saying, I shou'd Marry him first, and love him afterwards: And when I farther objected our Disparity in Age she answer'd with another Musty Proverb, That 'twas good taking Shelter under an old Hedge; and that it was far better being an Old Mans Darling, then a Young Mans Worldling: And tho' this didn't Satisfie me, yet I soon found I must have him or ...
— The London-Bawd: With Her Character and Life - Discovering the Various and Subtle Intrigues of Lewd Women • Anonymous
... fastened. As a matter of fact, during his search of the pantry, he discovered the key on top of the ice box. A layer of dust indicated that the key had not been touched for a long time. His thorough investigation of the pantry revealed no evidence of recent use. The ice box was dry as a bone, with the musty smell of long disuse. A touch of the finger on various dishes and pieces of glassware showed that these also were covered with ...
— The Sheridan Road Mystery • Paul Thorne
... Helen; a "musty library, who loved Greek and Latin;" but cousin Helen loved the bookworm, and taught him how to love far better than Ovid could with his Art of Love. Having so good a teacher, Modus became an apt scholar, and eloped with Cousin Helen.—S. Knowles, ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... since lost heart and passed away. A dwindling remnant of their children, from old association, just kept its doors from actually closing, and made a mournful interruption in its musty silence on Sundays. Life was too low to support a Wednesday prayer-meeting, and Sunday by Sunday that life ebbed lower. New life from the outside must come, and speedily, ...
— The Romance of Zion Chapel [3d ed.] • Richard Le Gallienne
... they entered; the usual mildewed walls, with the colour wash flowing away in streaks from the unsympathetic beam above; the same device, "Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite!" scribbled in charcoal above the black iron stove; the usual musty, close atmosphere, the usual smell of onion and stale cheese, the usual hard straight benches and central table with its ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... grewsome old shell any way, full of unaccountable noises after dark—rustlings of garments along unfrequented passages, and stealthy footfalls in unoccupied chambers overhead. I never knew of an old house without these mysterious noises. Next to my bedroom was a musty, dismantled apartment, in one corner of which, leaning against the wainscot, was a crippled mangle, with its iron crank tilted in the air like the elbow of the late Mr. ...
— Miss Mehetabel's Son • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... took her seriously, and ransacked all his store of second-hand philosophy for a worthy answer,—a musty store, dead and pedantic, after the thrilling spirit of her words. "Why, I think—it is—is it not all now the sense-manifest substance of our duty? Pardon. I am obscure. 'Das ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... these musty claims of Portugal there stood the offers of "The International Association of the Congo" to bring the blessings of free trade and civilisation to downtrodden millions of negroes, if only access ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... sight, and not to know where he was. He set it open again, and having checked it so, proceeded to replace the papers. But the strangeness of the presence there of such a light took so great a hold on his imagination, and it was such a rare thing to see what the musty dingy little closet, which to Cosmo had always been the treasure—chamber of the house, was like, that he stood for a moment with his hand on the cover of the bureau, gazing into the light-invaded corners as if he had suddenly found himself in a department of Aladdin's cave. ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... taste and smell, I have only to bite one of the biscuits they make nowadays of Lord knows what, reeking the moment you taste them, of fish glue and plaster that has been rained upon, I have only to eat that cold, insipid paste and sniff at a musty closet, and at once the lugubrious picture rises before me of some Godforsaken place!—Your Chartres will no ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... derived his words as often as he used them,—transplanted them to his page with earth adhering to their roots; whose words were so true and fresh and natural that they would appear to expand like the buds at the approach of spring, though they lay half-smothered between two musty leaves in a library,—ay, to bloom and bear fruit there, after their kind, annually, for the faithful reader, ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... maintainance was on an equal scale. Today bacon and peas—peas and bacon tomorrow. Once in a while this menu was broken by porridge or peeled barley, and as an occasional great feast by pudding. This pudding was made of musty flour, half salt and half sweet water and of very ancient mutton suet. The bacon could have been from four to five years old, was black at both outer edges, became yellow a little farther on and was white only in the very centre. ...
— The Voyage of The First Hessian Army from Portsmouth to New York, 1776 • Albert Pfister
... must say," she remarked, half petulantly. "You might at least have dropped me a note to ask how I am getting along, and whether I am industrious, and all that rot! But did you? No! You took me to the horse show, and back to the hotel, and then vanished as if you had withdrawn yourself into your musty ...
— Mixed Faces • Roy Norton
... and sonorous is an English oath. Bright is the steel, arming each clattering hoof! Leather strap and shining buckle, replace musty rope and ponderous knot! The carriage is easier than a Landgravine's,—the horses more sleek,—the driver as civil,—the road is like a bowling green,—the axletree and under-spring, of Collinge's latest patent. But the heart! the heart! ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... not a dream; it shall be a reality. How glorious it will be! I can see our little house now nestling among the hills, shaded by great spreading trees with flowers and vines and golden fruit all about it, rich plumaged birds and gorgeous butterflies. Oh! I can hardly wait. Who would live in a musty palace when one has within reach such a home, and ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... have wandered, Harry, into the narrowest underground, musty ways, and have forgotten all ...
— The Seaboard Parish Vol. 3 • George MacDonald
... disappointment myself, but I secretly felt sorry for Picton, who went rummaging about the barrels in search of something to eat or to drink. "No white sugar?" said the traveller. "We don't have white sugar in this town," was the answer. "Nor coffee?" "No, Sir." And the tea had the same flavor of musty hay, with which we were so well acquainted. At last Picton stumbled over a prize—a bushel-basket half-filled with potatoes, whereat he raised a bugle-note ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... and who had rather chase a ball or a butterfly, feel the open air in his face, look at the fields or the sky, follow a winding path, or enter with eagerness into all the little conflicts and interests of his acquaintances and friends, than doze over a musty spelling-book, repeat barbarous distichs after his master, sit so many hours pinioned to a writing-desk, and receive his reward for the loss of time and pleasure in paltry prize-medals at Christmas and Midsummer. There is indeed a degree of stupidity which prevents ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... apartment was sufficient. If he should ever really live here the parlor could be made habitable, but for the present its demands were too many. He closed the windows again and abandoned the room to its musty solitude. From the spare room upstairs he brought bed and bedding and placed it in the sitting room. It required some ingenuity to convert the latter apartment into a bedroom, but the difficulty was at last solved by relegating the sewing machine to the parlor and moving the couch. When the ...
— The Lilac Girl • Ralph Henry Barbour
... you know that picture well, A monk, all else unheeding, Within a bare and gloomy cell A musty volume reading; While through the window you can see In sunny glade entrancing, With cap and bells beneath a tree ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service
... There were many in London, moldy and musty, in obscure corners, some of them in cellars and in narrow passageways, just off ...
— True to His Home - A Tale of the Boyhood of Franklin • Hezekiah Butterworth
... acridity &c 401.1. V. have a bad smell &c n.; smell; stink, stink in the nostrils, stink like a polecat; smell strong &c adj., smell offensively. Adj. fetid; strong-smelling; high, bad, strong, fulsome, offensive, noisome, rank, rancid, reasty^, tainted, musty, fusty, frouzy^; olid^, olidous^; nidorous^; smelling, stinking; putrid &c 653; suffocating, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... her cargo! How momentous the announcement; suggesting ideas, too, of musty bales, and cases of silks and satins, and filling me with contempt for the vile deck-loads of hay and lumber, with which my river experience ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... about Professor Sillcocks? It's a shame if I haven't, because every one is the better and nobler for hearing about him. He was about a nickel's worth of near-man with Persian-lamb whiskers and the disposition of a pint of modified milk. Crickets were bold and quarrelsome beside him. He knew more musty history than any one in the state and he could without flinching tell how Alexander waded over his knees in blood; but rather than take off his coat where the world would have seen him he would have died. He was just that modest and conventional. ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch
... could hear the water hammering into something that rang like a gong; and each time I rolled over in the musty trough of my feather-bed I fractiously asked myself why the mischief they had left the tap running all night. Next morning the matter was explained when, on demanding a bath, I was told that "there wasn't but one in ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... there as he did above, and announced that he should leave it open for half an hour. The two men moved a little way along the oak stick to be out of the cool draught which blew from the cellar-like place, empty save for the storage of some old fragments of vessels or warehouse gear. There was a musty odor of the innumerable drops of molasses which must have leaked into the hard earth there for half a century; there was still a fragrance of damp Liverpool salt, a reminder of even the dyestuffs and pepper and rich spices that had been stowed away. The two elderly men were carried back ...
— The Life of Nancy • Sarah Orne Jewett
... banks, dominated by two declivities, lined with brambles and long rows of trees, hidden, drowned in that milky vapor, clad in that musty robe which sometimes floats over valleys, at break of day. And at the extreme end of that thick and transparent fog, you see coming or, rather already come, a human couple, a stripling and a maiden, embraced, inter-laced, ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... remember that book too. It was among your old child's books, mother. A queer little musty brown volume, and I remember ...
— Grandmother Dear - A Book for Boys and Girls • Mrs. Molesworth
... to Spain to collect materials for the "Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus." This was a much more serious work than anything he had before undertaken. It was, unlike the history of New York, a genuine investigation of facts derived from the musty old volumes of the libraries of Spanish monasteries and other ancient collections. It was a record of the life of the discoverer of America that was destined to remain the highest authority on that subject. Murray, the London publisher, ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody
... begged her, if she were not tired, to do; but this would have been flight, and she was not a coward. So they sauntered down the Rue Fabrique, and turned into Palace Street. As they went by the door of Hotel Musty, her pleasant friends came again into her mind, and she said, "This is where we stayed last week, ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells
... of cedar buds was in the air about them; and wafted out on this, as though it might have been just now brought up from the musty depths of some old cedar chest, they heard the thin voice of Miss Liz scolding one of the servants. Otherwise, the morning seemed to have no life except the lazy ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... received his message and gone for a walk, leaving word he would return at ten o'clock, Mary went into the hotel parlor to wait for him. The room was seldom used, patrons, local and otherwise, preferring the Bar of happy memories, and it smelled musty. She opened the windows and glanced about distastefully. The walls were covered with a faded yellow paper, torn in places, and the ceiling was smoked and fly-specked. The worn thin carpet seemed to have been chosen for its resemblance to turtle soup squirming with ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... pylorus.... Here, indeed, the thread of his meditations is a thread of nutriment. However diverted by the fragrance of the Dutch woods, the church bells of Belgium, the music of Stuttgart, the bad pictures of Dublin, the plays of Paris, the musty romance of old Wien, he always comes back anon to such ease as a man may find in his inn. "The stomach of Vienna," he says, "first interested me, not its soul." And so, after a dutiful genuflexion to St. Stephen's ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... sharp crackle of the musketry-firing was a strong contrast to the scream of the bombs. I think all the dogs and cats must be killed or starved, we don't see any more pitiful animals prowling around.... The cellar is so damp and musty the bedding has to be carried out and laid in the sun every day, with the forecast that it may be demolished at any moment. The confinement is dreadful. To sit and listen as if waiting for death in a horrible manner would drive me insane. ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... placed, in 1901, the incongruity of the adult painting and the purposes of the room caused unfavorable comment. But the room has been recently readjusted. It is now lined with high oak shelves, almost to the cornice, filled with musty old books of a beautiful brown—perhaps the most effective decoration in the world—and the ceiling tells ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... It was musty and damp this day as the day when Richard had come back from England and found it vacant and his grandfather dead. But there, at the parting of the stairs, was the triple-arched window which he had described. Through ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... the place knew that when the store was under police observation and Mother Toulouche feared a raid she took care to hang out any kind of old clothes; but if the way was clear, if no lurking police were on the lookout, then the rallying flag would be hoisted, the flag being the old, patched, rusty, musty Academician's robe. ...
— Messengers of Evil - Being a Further Account of the Lures and Devices of Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... Weymouth I saw that the interior was in keeping with the exterior, for the hall was constructed from the model of some apartment in an Assyrian temple, and the squat columns, the low seats, the hangings, all were eloquent of neglect, being thickly dust-coated. The musty smell, too, was almost as pronounced here as outside, beneath ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... bibliophile who was furnishing Mr. Rushbrook's library from spoils of foreign collections, and had suffered unheard-of agonies from the millionaire's insisting upon a handsome uniform binding that should deprive certain precious but musty tomes of their crumbling, worm-eaten coverings; how the very gentle, clerical-looking stranger, mildest of a noisy, disputing crowd at the other table, was a notorious duelist and dead shot; how the only gentleman at the table who retained a flannel shirt and high boots was not a late-coming ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... in the rear. A man seated at one of the little tables looked up and nodded. Grand took the chair opposite to this person and, after an exchange of greetings for the benefit of the waiter, ordered oysters and a pint of musty ale. The Colonel had his principal ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... balls on the iron fence shone brighter than ever because he had come. There were steps in the garden that went down and then up again, and the porch, even, was overgrown with green stuff as if it were part of the garden. The walls of the hall were hung with musty leather, printed with gold flowers, and there were chairs with high backs that creaked as if they had ...
— Tell Me Another Story - The Book of Story Programs • Carolyn Sherwin Bailey
... sun was sifting through windows of cheap stained glass, and fell in mellow quiet upon the faded cushions and musty ingrain carpet. The place had that deserted look of having been abandoned, yet Courtland, as he stood in the shadow under the old balcony, seemed to see the Presence of the eternal God standing up there behind the pulpit, seemed ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... passed into the high, chill rooms of his father's apartment. After feeling a moist atmosphere and breathing the heavy air and the musty odor which is given forth by old tapestries and furniture covered with dust, he found himself in the antique room of the old man, in front of a sick bed and near a dying fire. A lamp standing on a table of Gothic shape shed its streams of uneven light sometimes more, ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... and the entire house, so far as I saw it, are whitewashed and exceedingly clean; nor is there the aged, musty smell with which old Chester first made me acquainted, and which goes far to cure an American of his excessive predilection for antique residences. An old lady, who took charge of me up-stairs, had the manners and aspect of a gentlewoman, and talked ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... misgivings did the three lads plunge forward in the darkness, feeling their way with outstretched hands as they entered the tunnel. A close, musty smell, as of things long mildewed and moulded, filled the air, and an oppressive silence lay on everything. Unconsciously, since entering this place, their conversation ...
— The Border Boys Across the Frontier • Fremont B. Deering
... Fields, There is a grain which, tho' 'tis common, Its Worth till now was known to no Man. Not Ceres Sickle e're did crop A Grain with Ears of greater hope: And yet this Grain (as all must own) To Grooms and Hostlers well is known, And often has without disdain In musty Barn and Manger lain, As if it had been only good To be for Birds and Beasts the Food. But now by new-inspired Force, It keeps alive both Man and Horse. Then speak, my Muse, for now I guess E'en what it is thou wouldst express: It is not ...
— Quaint Gleanings from Ancient Poetry • Edmund Goldsmid
... his lips. The liquid was musty, having been in the skin nearly two days. Otherwise it seemed to be all right. With a sigh of profound relief he gave Iris the cup, and smiled at the most unladylike haste with ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... and thrust with it at the press. The battle melted away like wax under a hot sun at the touch of those musty bones. Terror and affright seized upon the mob, and everywhere they ...
— Robin Hood • Paul Creswick
... damp, and smelled like moldy leaves. Meyerhoff followed the huge, bear-like Altairian guard down the slippery flagstones of the corridor, sniffing the dead, musty air with distaste. He drew his carefully tailored Terran-styled jacket closer about his shoulders, shivering as his eyes avoided the black, yawning cell-holes they were passing. His foot slipped on the slimy flags from time to time, and ...
— Letter of the Law • Alan Edward Nourse
... the vivacity of a harlequin—he is fuddled with animal spirits, giddy with constitutional joy; in such a state, he must write or burst: a discharge of ink is an evacuation absolutely necessary to avoid fatal and plethoric congestion. A musty and limited pedant yellows himself a little among rolls and records, plunders a few libraries, and, lo! we have an entire new work by the learned Mr Dunce, and that after an incubation of only one month. He is, perhaps, a braggadocio ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 461 - Volume 18, New Series, October 30, 1852 • Various
... "A musty, miserable pun! It was he, and I'm delighted it so happened, that the first time he ever spoke to me he had to ask ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... with a board; the windows are never opened; probably the shutters are kept always shut; perhaps some kind of stores are kept in the room; no breath of fresh air can by possibility enter into that room, nor any ray of sun. The air is as stagnant, musty, and corrupt as it can by possibility be made. It is quite ripe to breed small-pox, scarlet fever, diphtheria, or anything else ...
— Notes on Nursing - What It Is, and What It Is Not • Florence Nightingale
... in that," said the parson, with a laugh. "Peter was getting old and a bit rusty in the hinges, you know, and we were likely to turn out a pair of old crows fit for nothing but to scare good Christians from the district. But Greta came to the musty old house, with its dust and its cobwebs, and its two old human spiders, like a slant of sunlight on a muggy day. Here's supper—draw up your chair, Mr. Bonnithorne, and welcome. It's my favorite dish—she knows it—barley broth and a sheep's head, with boiled potatoes and mashed turnips. Draw ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... drugs. There were comfortable chairs, flowers in a window-box, a table with a book or two and some magazines. Through a half-open door, an inner office showed—all very different from the picture her memory showed her of the musty, cumbered room in which her father had received his dwindling patients. As a child she had hated that room, hated the hideous charts of "people with their skins off," the ponderous books with their horrific and highly ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... butterflies, the misty blue hills, the sunshine, who read no lesson in beauty, who recognize no message in the moon and the stars, in cheerfulness and good humor. On the contrary, they seem to abhor the sunshine; they keep their parlors for ever in musty darkness, a kind of tomb where they place funeral wreaths under glass globes and enter but half a dozen times a year. Well, even these had finally dragged themselves away from the grave, and left Warrington standing alone beside the brown roll of damp fresh earth. No carriage awaited ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... than his willingness to undergo severe mental drudgery in pursuit of knowledge concerning the old storied days which had enthralled his imagination. It was no moonshine sentimentality which kept him hour after hour and day after day in the Advocate's Library, poring over musty manuscripts, deciphering heraldic devices, tracing genealogies, and unraveling obscure points of Scottish history. By the time he was twenty-one he had made himself, almost unconsciously, an expert paleographer and antiquarian, whose assistance ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... of other stuff writes the stupid peer; scribbling in several places half a dozen lines, apparently for no other reason but to bring in as many musty words in ...
— Clarissa, Volume 5 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... listlessly here and there as the tasteless fancy took him, while Herbert sat writing with serene face and lifted eyebrows at his open window. But the unfamiliar long S's, the close type, and the spelling of the musty old books wearied eye and mind. What he read, too, however far-fetched, or lively, or sententious, or gross, seemed either to be of the same texture as what had become his everyday experience, and so baffled him with its nearness, ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... Webster in quality rather than in essence. They were both content with America and New England. Hawthorne, with his shrug at old buildings and his wish that all over two hundred years of age should be burnt down, was repeating Webster's contempt of the musty halls of collegiate Cambridge; and Hawthorne, Yankeeizing the Greek myths, and finding all Rome but the background for his Puritan maiden, was asserting that new discovery of Europe by America which has ever since been going on, and was illustrated ...
— Noah Webster - American Men of Letters • Horace E. Scudder
... some castle of their own, secure from all interruption, and rejoicing in the buzzy silence, the murky glimmer, and subterranean secrecy, which imparted a touch of melodrama to their experiences. All sorts of smells were wafted through the hoarding from the neighbouring cellars; the musty smell of vegetables, the pungency of fish, the overpowering stench of cheese, and the ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... the bringer of the best news we've ever had," she said, and her voice was like a flood of some warm sweet liquor in that musty, hate-charged room. "Oh, Hank, forget your silly, wrong jealousy and listen to me. Patrick here has something wonderful ...
— The Moon is Green • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... Musty hay or straw should not be given to horses. Furze is said to be a heating food; but it is very nutritious, and when young, may be given as part of the food ...
— The Stock-Feeder's Manual - the chemistry of food in relation to the breeding and - feeding of live stock • Charles Alexander Cameron
... conducted in private by the Keeper of the Seals—a lean, wizened individual, with an air as musty and dry as that of the parchments among which he had spent his days. He was supported by six judges, and on his right sat the King's Commissioner, Monsieur de Chatellerault—the bruised condition of whose countenance still advertised the fact that ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... roar of a conch-shell with a bad case of grip. "I may say to you that, aside from a certain uncanny satisfaction which I feel at being permitted for the first time in my life to gaze upon the linaments of a real live misty musty spook, I regard your coming here as an invasion of the sacred rights of privacy which is, ...
— The Water Ghost and Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... hard-backed chair, generally minus a portion of a leg; never any chest of drawers or anywhere to put your things, as if there by any chance was such a thing in the room, it was sure to be full of the inhabitants' rusty old black clothes and dirty blue flannel shirts, and petticoats, thick and musty, by the ton,—I never saw so many ...
— The Doings of the Fifteenth Infantry Brigade - August 1914 to March 1915 • Edward Lord Gleichen
... Then when my solicitor comes, he and your man can have an evening over a lot of musty papers and the thing will be done. Again, my boy [taking HORACE'S hand], I welcome you to our ...
— The Man from Home • Booth Tarkington and Harry Leon Wilson
... historical works discovered in an old cupboard in his father's study. To this chamber, which had also served as the bedroom in which the child slept with his grandmother, the young man's thoughts returned with wistful bitterness, and at the image of the innocent little figure poring over the musty volumes by the flickering firelight in the silence of the night, the mass of rags heaved yet more convulsively. How he had enjoyed putting on fresh wood after his grandmother had gone to bed, and grappling with the astronomical treatise, ignoring the grumblings of the poor old lady who ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... there is nothing in them which we who are poor and plain need at all envy, and that instead of the perennial smell of the grass and woods and shores, their typical redolence is of soaps and essences, very rare may be, but suggesting the barber shop—something that turns stale and musty in a ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... still remain in the stained whitewash, the seams of battered bricks of the solid old escutcheoned palaces; see them sometimes displayed like the worm-eaten squares of discoloured embroidery which the curiosity dealers take out of their musty oak presses; and sometimes dragging about mere useless and befouled odds and ends, like the torn shreds which lie among the decaying kitchen refuse, the broken tiles and plaster, the nameless filth and ooze which attracts the flies under every black archway, in every steep bricked lane descending ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... very bulwark of Society. It is the foundation on which the Trust Companies, the Courts, and the Prisons are reared. Your codes are blind without the miraculous torches which this Office can light. Your judges can not propound the 'laur'—I beg your pardon, the law—without the aid of these musty, smelling, dilapidated tomes. Ay, these are the very constables of the realm, and without them there can be no realm, no legislators, and no judges. Strong, club-bearing constables, these Liebers, standing on the boundary lines, keeping peace ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... Ogilvy," he said. "Father," he added, wringing my hand. I called him son; but it was only an exchange of musty words that we had found too late. A father is a poor estate to come ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... croquet-balls. The dried leaves are used in Switzerland to fill beds with, and very nice such beds must be! Long ago they were used for this purpose in England. Evelyn says that they remain sweet and elastic for seven or eight years, by which time a straw mattress would have become hard and musty. They have a pleasant restorative scent, something like that of green tea. When we think how many poor people lie on musty mattresses, or have none at all, whilst the beech-leaves lie in the woods and go very slowly to decay, we see one more of the ...
— Miscellanea • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... feet in height, and the heavy, whitewashed beams made it look still lower. In the narrow space between the ceiling and wainscot, the wall was covered with an old-fashioned paper, florid of design, and musty of odor. On the mantel-shelf stood two brass candle-sticks with snuffer and extinguisher. As Flint stared idly at them, wondering what varied scenes their candles had shone upon, his eyes were drawn above them to a picture which, once having ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... Arno flowing under the iron-barred windows, and the Ponte Vecchio, covered with its jewellers' shops, close at hand; the dark, lofty chambers with faded frescos on the ceilings, black pictures hanging on the walls, old books on the shelves, and hundreds of musty antiquities, emitting an odor of past centuries; the shrivelled, white-bearded old man, thinking all the time of ghosts, and looking into the child's eyes to seek them; and the child herself, springing so freshly out of the soil, so ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the same series of pictures in the Swedish inns. In the morning I was aroused by Braisted exclaiming, "There she blows!" and the whale came up to the surface with a huge pot of coffee, some sugar candy, excellent cream, and musty biscuit. ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... was the letter held tight in his grasp that was sending electric thrills through him. "A fine old fellow is Dr. Pencoyd—known him for years," he continued; "I attended his lectures before I went abroad. Lives in a musty old house on Chestnut Street, stuffed full of family portraits and old mahogany furniture, and not a comfortable chair or sofa in the place; wears yellow Nankeen waist-coats, takes snuff, and carries a fob. Oh, yes, ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith
... dances, playing the measures on an old violin the while. The school desks served for dummy dancers, and were arranged to give her a notion of the ordering of the figures. The aged recluse, in his musty coat, seemed transformed into a very courtly gentleman, but Wilhelmine always fancied that his eyes were more melancholy than usual after these mimic courts. One day she asked him if it saddened him to revoke the past. 'Ah! mon enfant!' he replied, 'que voulez-vous? un coeur profondement blesse ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... to wait in a square, cheerless, dimly-lighted room pervaded by a musty smell, that had for only furniture a couple of chairs and a praying-stool, and for only ornament a great, gaunt crucifix hanging upon one ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini
... it, do you?" sneered the bully. "You'll like it still less when you get below. It's beautifully damp and musty." ...
— The Rover Boys on the Plains - The Mystery of Red Rock Ranch • Arthur Winfield
... next day as I sat in my ambulance, waiting orders, he trudged by in his blue, "the color of heaven" once, but musty now from nights under the rain. His head of hair, which the glossy black wig had covered, was gray-white. The sparkling, pantomimic face had dropped into wrinkles. He was patient and old and tired. Perhaps he, too, would have been glad of some one to cheer him up. He was just one more ...
— Golden Lads • Arthur Gleason and Helen Hayes Gleason
... Grace, 1915, we are still too close to the eighteen nineties, still too liable to be influenced by their ways, to be able to speak for posterity and to pronounce the final judgment upon those evil years. It is possible that the critics of the twenty-first century, as they turn over the musty pages of the Yellow Book, will ejaculate with feeling: "Good God, what a dull time these people must have had!" On the whole it is probable that this will be their verdict. They will detect the dullness ...
— G. K. Chesterton, A Critical Study • Julius West
... the world is the note of spring freshness. The dewy sweetness of the morning air is in it, and the fragrance of spring flowers. The brown sheets on which the notes are printed have lain amongst the dust for a couple of centuries; they are musty and mildewed. Set the sheets on a piano and play: the music starts to life in full youthful vigour, as music from the soul of a young god should. It cannot and never will grow old; the everlasting ...
— Purcell • John F. Runciman
... shows with godlike showing To-day for each that sees May's magic overthrowing All musty memories In him whom May decrees To be love's own. He saith, I wear love's liveries Until ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... It was a musty old place, without even as much tidiness as is usually found in barns, and there was a dank smell about it, as though generations of haymows had decayed there. There were holes in the floor, and in the dusk of early evening it was necessary for us to pick our way with the greatest care. ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... of eccentric character, ever poring over musty records and hunting up decayed titles. He was fond of attaching to his signature the names of all the innumerable offices he held over the conglomerated States of his realm. He was Rhodolph, Margrave of Baden, ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... with the heavy eyebrows had ushered Ben into a parlor furnished with what had once been great splendor; but now the hangings were faded, the furniture warped and aged and over all hung a musty aroma as if the place had ...
— The Boy Aviators' Treasure Quest • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... you are right," exclaimed the lieutenant, sniffing in turn. "And I remember that last time I visited this place the old woman certainly seemed to carry with her an uncanny, musty, animal odour. Therefore it is probably ...
— Under the Chilian Flag - A Tale of War between Chili and Peru • Harry Collingwood
... teach Latin, Greek, Spanish, Fardown Irish, and perhaps Choctaw, to such youths as desired to become thorough linguists. He was not very successful in this line, and concluded to enter the office of a prominent law firm on Superior Street as a student. He dove among the musty and ponderous volumes with all the enthusiasm of a wild young Irishman, and commenced cramming his head with law at a startling rate. He lodged in the back-room of the office, and previous to retiring he used to sing the favorite ballads of his own Emerald Isle. The boy who was employed ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 3 • Charles Farrar Browne
... made up beds for himself and his charges in the deck-house; he had cleared the stuff off the table, broken open the windows to get the musty smell away, and placed the mattresses from the captain and mate's ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... Father Danny in the master's private car to the great metropolitan hospital; that sent to the startled Hitt the canceled mortgage papers on the Express; and that inaugurated that great work of restitution which held the dwellers in the Ames mansion toiling over musty books and forgotten records for ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... misty figure in a lap-robe. The rain streaked the mica lights in the side-curtains. A distant train whistled desolately across the sodden fields. The inside of the car smelled musty. The quiet was like a blanket over the ears. Claire was in a hazy drowse. She felt that she could ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... possess. Narrow, slit-like windows in perfect keeping with the architecture and the needs of the period in which it was built—if not with modern ideas of hygiene and health—kept the rooms dark and musty. When Nigel first entered the place through the great front door thrown open by the solemn-faced butler, who he learned had been kept on from his uncle's time, he felt as though he were entering his own tomb. When the door shut he shuddered ...
— The Riddle of the Frozen Flame • Mary E. Hanshew
... from old conservative England, and I had been among its most conservative people. I had caught something of its old musty-parchment ideas, and the cricket-like manners of Harriet Hosmer rather troubled me. It took some weeks for me to get over the impression of her madcap ways; ...
— Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals • Maria Mitchell
... Education must be direct and scientific. Train men for efficiency and prepare them for defense. Otherwise they will have no chance of making a living or of keeping what they make. Your classics are musty and rusty ...
— The Valley of Vision • Henry Van Dyke
... silver, plate, furniture, goods and ornaments, as [6423]Weever calculates, and esteems them at the dissolution of abbeys, worth a million of gold. How many towns in every kingdom hath superstition enriched? What a deal of money by musty relics, images, idolatry, have their mass-priests engrossed, and what sums have they scraped by their other tricks! Loretto in Italy, Walsingham in England, in those days. Ubi omnia auro nitent, "where everything shines with gold," saith Erasmus, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... other door. A cool draft told him this was the cellar, and he listened intently, then flashing his light, went down the steps. A few moments' investigation showed him that there was no living person down there. The air was musty, and the cellar ...
— The Ranger Boys and the Border Smugglers • Claude A. Labelle
... decency's sake had become superfluous. He felt that "to be naked is to be so much nearer the being man than to go in livery." He wore no hat, no boots. Pyjama trousers of cotton composed his entire workaday costume; dungaree trousers and a musty coat his Court dress. Yet he was clean and glowing with health and cheerfulness; self-reliant, splendidly independent. Had he allowed his mind to dwell on clothing his independence would have been less. He might ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... expose human imperfections in order to rectify them, their methods have differed. Those moralists who have inveighed magisterially against man's vices generally have been "abandon'd to the ill-bred Teachers of Musty Morals in Schools, or to the sowr Pulpit-Orators." Those who, by "nipping Strokes of a Side-wind Satyr, have endeavour'd to tickle Men out of their Follies," have been welcomed and caressed by the very people who were most abused. Since self-love waves the application, satire, ...
— The Present State of Wit (1711) - In A Letter To A Friend In The Country • John Gay
... vermilion and blue. In the middle of the triangle formed by the streets and the garden was a round pool of jade water. Martin leaned back in his chair looking dreamily out through half-closed eyes, breathing deep now and then of the musty scent of Paris, that mingled with the melting freshness of the wild strawberries on ...
— One Man's Initiation—1917 • John Dos Passos
... been sea-cuny and bravo, scholar and recluse. I have pored over hand-written pages of huge and musty tomes in the scholastic quietude and twilight of cliff-perched monasteries, while beneath on the lesser slopes, peasants still toiled beyond the end of day among the vines and olives and drove in from pastures the blatting goats and lowing kine; yes, and I have led shouting rabbles ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... cripple, sitting crouching in a corner of the room. It was all miserably desolate. The paper shields kept out the light of the sunbeams; and though the place was tolerably clean, it had a close, musty, disagreeable, shut-up smell. But all Daisy thought of at first was the cripple. She went ...
— Melbourne House, Volume 2 • Susan Warner
... "isn't it nice to find everything in such good condition? I remember after our last long trip it was really dreadful for a week or two—everything yellow and musty; mice and cockroaches camping in the library and bedrooms, and spiders everywhere. By the way, Sara, have you had ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry
... I'll look a little further. Mass, he is a little slave, if a be here; why here's nobody. All this goes well yet; but if the old trot should come for her pot?—ay, marry, there's the matter. But I care not; I'll face her out, and call her old rusty, dusty, musty, fusty, crusty firebrand, and worse than all that, and so face her out of her pot. But ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various
... insult our masters?" she screamed out in her lisping voice. "What is it to you that they took me in, brought me up, and gave me meat and drink? Can't you bear to see another's good fortune, eh? Who asked you to come here? You fusty, musty, black-faced villain with a moustache like a beetle's!" Here Pufka indicated with her thick short fingers what his moustache was like; while Nurse Vassilievna's toothless mouth was convulsed with laughter, ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... good size, and smelled shut up and musty, as spare rooms in the country usually do. It was furnished with a bureau, washstand, and two chairs, each painted in a robin's egg blue with sprays of yellow roses. There were several pictures on the walls, their subjects religious ...
— Mary-'Gusta • Joseph C. Lincoln
... I forsake My native wood for gloomy walls? The silver stream, the limpid lake, For musty ...
— Travels in the United States of America • William Priest
... renewed, with hot sal soda water followed by a cold bath and a thorough drying. The drain pipe must not be overlooked, but given the same sal soda treatment, otherwise it becomes coated and a fruitful source of germs. If, after this has been done, a musty odor still clings about the refrigerator, remove the shelves and boil in the clothes boiler for twenty minutes. Pieces of charcoal placed in the corners of the refrigerator and frequently renewed will absorb much of the ...
— The Complete Home • Various
... happened to bring his young friend Boccaccio, the story teller, with him, so much the better. They were both men of their time, full of curiosity, willing to read everything once, digging in forgotten and musty libraries that they might find still another manuscript of Virgil or Ovid or Lucrece or any of the other old Latin poets. They were good Christians. Of course they were! Everyone was. But no need of going around with a long face and wearing ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... they be idle tales," said he; "though I doubt not, in former days, the place was infested by some unquiet spirit. But this good house of ours hath modern stuff too strong upon it. The smell of antiquity alone hath a savour delicate enough for your musty ghost." ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... in the back rooms, and shafts of dusky light, preceded by hammerings and thumpings, began presently to band the inside of the house. Felicia stepped upon the painted floor of the bare hall, glanced up the narrow stairs, and then stood in the musty, half-lit emptiness of what she guessed to be the living-room, waiting for Ken. Kirk did not explore. He stood quite still beside his sister, sorting out sounds, analyzing smells. Ken came in, very dusty, rubbing ...
— The Happy Venture • Edith Ballinger Price
... Congressional Library now became my grandiose work-shop. All through the winter from nine till twelve in the morning and from two till six in the afternoon, I sat at a big table in a special room, turning the pages of musty books and yellowed newspapers, or dictating to a stenographer the story of the Reconstruction Period as it unfolded under my eyes. I was for the time entirely the historian, with little time to dream of the fictive material with ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... (it's queer) Used to patronise the seer And pay cash down for magic spell Perchance a Horoscope as well. Or open wide at special rate That musty tome the Book of Fate; Or seek the Philtre's subtle aid To win the hand of some fair maid. We mus'nt miss the Troubadours Who went forth on their singing tours, Twanging harps and trilling lays To maids of medieval days. And Oh! the right good merry ...
— A Humorous History of England • C. Harrison
... and Agnes should have got married and let Garvington get out of his troubles as best he could. That's what I should have done, as I'm not an aristocrat, and can't see the use of becoming the sacrifice for a musty, fusty old family. However, Agnes made her bargain and kept to it. She's all right, although other people may be not of ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume
... out through the musty curtains before I went to bed. But the whole world was dark, packed down in the thick mist. Once, in the direction of the open sea, I thought I saw the flicker ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post
... a desecration! They are going to sell one of the foundation stones of the Byrd family pride for this vulgar money they need for the doctor from Cincinnati. I can't bear to think about it, though I have never seen the ancestral stone, and it is only a few musty papers, kept in the vault at the Byrdsville County Bank. They are letters from George Washington and other generals to one of the Byrd ancestors, written during the Revolution about some of the great stratagems they wanted him to execute for them with his regiment, which was ...
— Phyllis • Maria Thompson Daviess
... till, at last, it is wholly silenced, and the man lives in this world, a stranger to its real life, deluded like the maniac who fancies he has attained his throne, while in reality he is on a bed of musty straw. Yet, if the voice finds a listener and servant the first time of speaking, it is encouraged to more and more clearness. Thus it was with me,—from no merit of mine, but because I had the good fortune to be free enough ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... be welcome to him in his present situation. He walked out upon the deck, intending to open it and test its contents. So he sat down, and, taking his knife, he pushed the cork in. Then he smelled the supposed liquor to see what it might be. There was only a musty odor. He looked in. The bottle appeared to be filled with paper. Then the whole truth flashed upon his mind. He struck the bottle upon the deck. It broke to atoms, and there lay a scroll of ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... corpse lay, was scarcely used once in a year, and many of the neighbors had never before had occasion to enter it. The shabby, antiquated furniture looked cold and dreary from disuse, and the smell of camphor in the air hardly kept down the musty, mouldy odors which exhaled from the walls. The head and foot of the coffin rested on two chairs placed in the centre of the room; and several women, one of whom was Miss Betsy Lavender, conducted the visitors back and forth, as they ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... little old-fashioned garments were musty and faded. A frock of blue merino braided in an elaborate pattern in black lay on top. There was a cape to match, and a little cloth cap. Beside these lay a funny pair of leather boots with red tops—almost like a ...
— Chicken Little Jane on the Big John • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... comfortable chairs, flowers in a window-box, a table with a book or two and some magazines. Through a half-open door, an inner office showed—all very different from the picture her memory showed her of the musty, cumbered room in which her father had received his dwindling patients. As a child she had hated that room, hated the hideous charts of "people with their skins off," the ponderous books with their horrific and highly colored plates, the "patients' chair" with its clinging odor of plush and ether, ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... other comes, hungry for the bread which he takes and eats. I do not believe that he ever before had tasted such hard and bitter bread. The measure of barley kneaded with the straw, of which the bread, sourer than yeast, was made, had not cost more than five sous; and the bread was musty and as dry as bark. But hunger torments and whets his appetite, so that the bread tasted to him like sauce. For hunger is itself a well mixed and concocted sauce for any food. My lord Yvain soon ate the hermit's bread, ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... a beggarly old huckster and kidnapper! Why, you penurious slicer of musty bacon—you iniquitous dealer in light weights—what respect are you entitled to from me? You know who I am—and you must bail me. Otherwise never expect, when the time comes, that I shall recognize you as a base relative, or ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... enjoyed playing cicerone in Winchester, knowing and loving the place as I do, if it hadn't been for Dick Burden's air of thinking such knowledge as mine quite the musty-fusty luggage of the old fogy. There's no use pretending it didn't rub ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... awaiting us in a private sitting-room, long, oak-beamed, spotlessly clean, and a trifle musty, with that faint but unmistakable mustiness which hangs about old rooms and old furniture. Tea was set out on one half of the oak dining-table. The china was of the old-fashioned white and gold order, ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... and looked around. The house was old, and comfortably sturdy. It gave him a sense of refuge, of having reached a safe haven at last. The house was over-warm, and there was a musty smell of over-aged furniture, old leather, and the pungence of mothballs. It seemed to generate a feeling of firm stability. Even the slightly stale air—there probably hadn't been a wide open window since the storm sashes were installed last autumn—provided a locked-in ...
— The Fourth R • George Oliver Smith
... necessary requisites on her part, if it had been the will of the Lord. This had occasioned her to make some reflections, and then to reason upon those reflections; as for instance, that since her husband chose rather to devote himself to his studies, than to the duties of matrimony, to turn over musty old books, rather than attend to the attractions of beauty, and to gratify his own pleasures, rather than those of his wife, it might be permitted her to relieve some necessitous lover, in neighbourly charity, provided she ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... same grey sky that hung low outside his cell; the same snowfall that he could catch a glimpse of through the tiny space above his door was seen by her that moment in Doom; she must be taking the flavour of the sea as he could sometimes do in blessed moments even in this musty oubliette. ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... hiding the end. In these passages hung the smoky perfume of incense; and from over tile-topped walls came the fragrance of roses and lemon blossoms, half choked with the melancholy scent of things old, musty and decayed. Beautiful pillars, brought perhaps from ruined Carthage, were set deeply in the whitewashed walls, looking sad and lumpy now that centuries of chalk-coats had thickened their graceful contours. But to compensate for loss of shape, they ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... sighed when his carriage stopped opposite to the old hackney-coach, which Archibald had kept in attendance at the place where they had left it. While the coachman again bridled his lean cattle, which had been indulged with a bite of musty hay, the Duke cautioned Jeanie not to be too communicative to her landlady concerning what had passed. "There is," he said, "no use of speaking of matters till they are actually settled; and you may refer ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... care they are perfectly fresh-gathered when the weather is tolerably dry; for, if they are picked during very heavy rain, the ketchup from which they are made is liable to get musty, and will not keep long. Put a layer of them in a deep pan, sprinkle salt over them, and then another layer of mushrooms, and so on alternately. Let them remain for a few hours, when break them up with the hand; put them in a nice cool place for 3 days, ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... of snuff: you are near Spain here, and were always a famous smoker. Give me a cigar,—it will take away the musty odor of these ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... and raised the lid. It contained a very great variety of articles, including a tolerably good suit of clothes, which I had never seen upon the person of the old man. I took these out, and discovered a little dress, musty and mildewed. It was made of fine material, and was elaborately ornamented. There was a complete suit, and ...
— Field and Forest - The Fortunes of a Farmer • Oliver Optic
... as he shut the door behind them: "certainly, Sir." And then, having placed the musty documents upon the shelf, whence they could be fetched down without difficulty on the slightest sign of a client, that ingenious youth, with singular confidence that nobody would be inconvenienced thereby, put a notice on the door to the effect that he would be back immediately, and adjourned to ...
— Mr. Meeson's Will • H. Rider Haggard
... good many more; they had, at all events, introduced a wholesome and thorough system of cleansing and cleaning throughout the house, that had been very welcome to the soul of Mrs. Eccles; but into the library they had not penetrated. The old bookshelves remained untouched; the old books, in their musty brown calf bindings, were undesecrated by profaning hands. All sorts of quaint chairs and bureaus, gathered together out of every other room in the house, had congregated here. The space over the mantelpiece was adorned by a splendid portrait by Vandyke, ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... here and there absorbingly, convinced him that there were at least five thousand volumes in the cases, a magnificent private collection, considering that the owner was not a lawyer, and that these books were not dry and musty precedents from the courts of appeals and supreme. He was glad to see that some of his old friends were here, too, and that the shelves were not wholly given over to piracy. What a hobby to follow! What adventures all within thirty square feet! And a shiver passed over his spine as he saw ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
... rarely disturbed them. "If Helen finds any pleasure in that musty old room," she said, one cold January morning, "I'm sure I'm glad. But she would be a great deal more sensible and cheerful if she'd sit up in the parlor with me, if she didn't do anything more than play patience. But then, Helen never was like ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... of the new philosophies which Rousseau had lately given to the world, and which was contributing so vastly to the mighty change that was impending. But within his soul there dwelt in that hour no such musty subject as the metaphysical dreams of old Rousseau. His mood inclined little to the "Discourses upon the Origin of Inequality" which his elbow hugged to his side. Rather was it a mood of song and joy and things of light, ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... With such materials, let them, if they will, To prove at once their pleasantry and skill, 140 Build up a bard to war 'gainst Common Sense, By way of compliment to Providence; Let them, with Armstrong[336], taking leave of Sense, Read musty lectures on Benevolence, Or con the pages of his gaping Day, Where all his former fame was thrown away, Where all, but barren labour, was forgot, And the vain stiffness of a letter'd Scot; Let them, with ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... visible. The sharp crackle of the musketry-firing was a strong contrast to the scream of the bombs. I think all the dogs and cats must be killed or starved, we don't see any more pitiful animals prowling around.... The cellar is so damp and musty the bedding has to be carried out and laid in the sun every day, with the forecast that it may be demolished at any moment. The confinement is dreadful. To sit and listen as if waiting for death in a horrible manner would drive me insane. I don't know what others do, but we read ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... classical themes, there is a sort of pervading ennui, or the forced appreciativeness of a gouty, disappointed man. The daughter of Jove to whom he dedicates his hymns too often is 'Adversity'. And classical reminiscences have, even with him, a dull musty tinge which recalls the antiquarian in his Cambridge college-rooms rather than the visitor to Florence and Rome. For one thing, his allusions are too many, and too transitory, to appear anything but artistic ...
— Proserpine and Midas • Mary Shelley
... neuroptera. He seeks for a true neuropter in the white ant before him, but its very form and habits summon up a swarm of true ants; and then the little wingless book louse (Atropos, Fig. 141) scampering irreverently over the musty pages of his Systema Naturae, reminds him of that closest friend of man—Pediculus vestimenti. Again, his studies lead him to that gorgeous inhabitant of the South, the butterfly-like Ascalaphus, with its resplendent wings, and slender, knobbed antennae so much like those of butterflies, ...
— Our Common Insects - A Popular Account of the Insects of Our Fields, Forests, - Gardens and Houses • Alpheus Spring Packard
... people, entertained them, sent presents to their wives and children—we've done everything! And what have we had for it? Only a very moderate living, all the grapes we could eat, and a few bottles of musty old wine. ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... in the darkness with an extraordinary effect of personal sorrow. This was not where happy people came to offer thanks; it was a refuge for the afflicted, a temporary harbour for the weary. They did not seem to pray; they sat relaxed, wrapped in the antique peace, the warm, musty smell of the building, sitting with the stillness of their desire to preserve this safety which was theirs only for a little while. Their dull clothes mixed with the shadows, the old oak, the worn stone, and the voice of the organ was like the voice of multitudes of sad souls. ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... for his first taste of the musty and ancient savor of the law. He had hoped that morning to walk away free at evening, or at least to have met the worst that was to come, chancing it that Morgan failed to appear and give him a hand. But he saw the hours waste ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... said Mrs. Starling, "for you seem to me a goose. Cultivated! Who is cultivated, if you are not? Weren't you a whole year at school in Boston? I guess my gentleman hasn't been to a better place. And warn't you for ever reading those musty old books, that make you out of kilter for all my world. If you don't fit his neither, I'm sorry. Society indeed! There's no better society than the folks of Pleasant Valley. Don't you go and set yourself up; ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... him more than the manifestations of life itself. Whether it was that that afternoon in the study had awakened with sharper poignancy than ever before the remembrance of his youth, that some aspect of the room, with its musty books, its fire and the driving rain without, had awakened in him a forgotten memory of a day that had once held actual place in his life but had long since been lost, awakened it through the mere material agencies of the sense of smell and sight: or whether ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... urged, hope in his voice as he observed my face; "let me show you the interior. I brought the keys along. Of course, the rooms may seem a bit musty. No one has lived in it for—some time. It's the old Michell property; been in the family for a couple of hundred years. Last Michell is dead, now, and it's being sold for the benefit of some religious institute the old gentleman left it to. Trifle wet to walk over the land today! But I've a ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram
... and thence a dirty little court, where a low arched door admitted them into a heterogeneous assemblage of everything musty, and dusty, and old, that could well be imagined. His verdict on the armour was satisfactory, and his companion at once concluded the purchase. As they were leaving the place, Cosmo's eye was attracted ...
— Phantastes - A Faerie Romance for Men and Women • George MacDonald
... estimation of the world which his father now rightly fills. Some time toward the end of June, they made a land-fall on the north-eastern coast of North America. The actual site of the land-fall will always be a matter of controversy unless some document is found among musty archives of Europe to solve the question to the satisfaction of the disputants, who wax hot over the claims of a point near Cape Chidley on the coast of Labrador, of Bonavista, on the east shore of Newfoundland, of Cape North, ...
— Canada under British Rule 1760-1900 • John G. Bourinot
... there were any suspicions of unfair play buzzed about amongst the by-standers, you would not in the main be a gainer; for my dear, without character, what is even wealth, or all that wealth can bestow? I do not mean to trouble you with stale wise sayings, which young people hate; nor musty morality, which is seldom fit for use in the world, or which smells too much of books to be brought into good company. This is not my way of giving advice; but I only beg you to observe what actually passes before your eyes in the circle in which we live. Ladies of ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... three weeks 60,000 or 70,000 gulden—and without much trouble, in complete security. The first week the ration-bread would be rather sweeter than usual, the second week rather bitterer, and the third week rather musty. But soldiers do not look narrowly at such things; ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... for there were a ponderous Latin Dictionary in Landor's handwriting, a curious old Italian and French Dictionary of 1692,—published at Paris, "per uso del Serenissimo Delfino,"—a Greek Grammar, and a delightfully rare and musty old Latin Grammar by Emmanuel Alvarus, the Jesuit, carefully annotated by Landor. Then, too, there was a valuable edition, in two volumes, of Annibal Caro's Italian translation of the AEneid, published at Paris in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... I was told to set about it at once. On turning to the doctor for the requisite materials, he told me he had none; there was not a fly-leaf, even in any of his books. So, after great search, a damp, musty volume, entitled "A History of the most Atrocious and Bloody Piracies," was produced, and its two remaining blank leaves being torn out, were by help of a little pitch lengthened into one sheet. For ink, some of the soot over the lamp was then mixed with water, by a fellow ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... dark, musty place, with a row of old, tumble-down tenements each side, where poor wretches live all huddled up together, fifty in a house, eh? I was told I couldn't drive up it in a carriage, so I had to walk. Do ...
— Hidden Hand • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... are rooted up, all the sweet and tender old flowers ruthlessly eradicated, to make way for a blazing parterre after the manner of the suburban villa—gay in the summer, in the spring a wilderness of clay, in the autumn a howling desert of musty evergreens.. ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... is tabooed in the front room of the house. The "damp dignity" of the best-room has been well described: "Musty smells, stiffness, angles, absence of sunlight. What is there to talk about in a room dark as the Domdaniel, except where one crack in a reluctant shutter reveals a stand of wax flowers under glass, and a dimly descried hostess who evidently waits only your ...
— Adopting An Abandoned Farm • Kate Sanborn
... with godlike showing To-day for each that sees May's magic overthrowing All musty memories In him whom May decrees To be love's own. He saith, 'I wear love's liveries ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... leaves the fireplace, which would have been behind it if it had been longer, accessible, Mr Wegg sits down on a box in front of the fire, and inhales a warm and comfortable smell which is not the smell of the shop. 'For that,' Mr Wegg inwardly decides, as he takes a corrective sniff or two, 'is musty, leathery, feathery, cellary, gluey, gummy, and,' with another sniff, 'as it might be, strong of ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... most common sufferer from excessive secretion of urine. The most common causes are musty feeds, such as hay, grain and shipped feeds. New oats, succulent feeds and acrid plants may sometimes cause it. In the fall of the year, when the season is changing from warm to cool weather and the horse eliminates less water from ...
— Common Diseases of Farm Animals • R. A. Craig, D. V. M.
... that set the brain of France in a whirl. Hence the decrees of 16th November-15th December, which tear to pieces the old diplomacy, and apply to astonished Europe the gospel of Rousseau. In place of musty treaties there will be Social Contracts; instead of States there will be nations that will speak straight to one another's heart. They do speak: English Radical Clubs speak to the heart of France, the Convention; and Gregoire, President of that body, makes answer ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... is presented here is an old musty show, that hath lain this twelvemonth in the bottom of a coal-house amongst brooms and old shoes; an invention that we are ashamed of, and therefore we have promised the copies to the chandler to wrap ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... reality. How glorious it will be! I can see our little house now nestling among the hills, shaded by great spreading trees with flowers and vines and golden fruit all about it, rich plumaged birds and gorgeous butterflies. Oh! I can hardly wait. Who would live in a musty palace when one has within reach such a home, and that, too, ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... she was fathoms deep in thought. The musty-smelling lift shot them up to the top floor; Beverley, stepping out ahead of Clo, had the air of having forgotten her existence. The girl's anxiety deepened. The best she could do was to guide her ...
— The Lion's Mouse • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... it all, anyhow?" demanded Dunk. "I'll spend four mortal years here, and come out with a noddle full of musty old Latin and Greek, go to work in dad's New York office and forget it all in six months. I might as well start forgetting ...
— Andy at Yale - The Great Quadrangle Mystery • Roy Eliot Stokes
... to confess, commanding the keeper, to whose care he was committed, that he should permit no person whatever to have access to, or commune with him; that his sustenance should not exceed three ounces of musty bread, and a pint of water every second day; that he shall be allowed neither bed, pillow, nor coverlid. "Close up (said he) this window in his room with lime and stone, stop up the holes of the door with double mats: let him have ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... sex by insisting on its superior moral, not to say intellectual, capacity, and on the self-sufficient imbecility of man unless he has a woman always at his elbow to keep him tolerably straight and in his proper place—this, and not the musty fusty old bust we see in libraries, is the kind of person who I believe wrote the Odyssey. Of course in reality the work must be written by a man, because they say so at Oxford and Cambridge, and they know everything down in Oxford and Cambridge; but I venture to say that if the Odyssey were ...
— The Humour of Homer and Other Essays • Samuel Butler
... kept preparing, according to what suited. If the raisins of wine were ready, that kind might be made; if gooseberries be cheap and plentiful, then gooseberry vinegar may be preferred; or if neither, then the sugar vinegar; so that the cask need not be left empty, or be liable to grow musty. ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... little grimace. "One may as well describe things correctly, and that is chickory," he said. "Still, you may warm it if it pleases you, but I might point out that, indifferent as it is, preserved milk which has gone musty does not improve ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss
... the extension and perfection of institutions similar to our own throughout the world." A passage which Hamilton's editor selects as the keynote of his system expresses well enough the spirit of the Revolution: "The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty records. They are written, as with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of the Divinity itself, and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power. I consider civil liberty, in a genuine, unadulterated sense, as the greatest of terrestrial ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... To things ye knew not of—were closely wed To musty laws lined out with wretched rule And compass vile; so that ye taught a school[7] Of dolts to smooth, inlay, and chip, and fit, Till, like the certain wands of Jacob's wit, Their verses tallied. Easy was the ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... everything and penetrated every nook and cranny. The floors groaned dismally, and the scurrying feet of mice echoed through the walls. Cobwebs draped the windows, where the secret spinners had held high carnival, undisturbed. An indescribable musty odour almost stifled them and the chill dampness carried with it a sense of gloom ...
— Old Rose and Silver • Myrtle Reed
... the front seat of the open wagon. Behind him, his mother and Jim sat stiffly, hand in hand. They gazed dully at the black thing ahead, and sobbed softly, now singly, now together. Both—himself as well—were dressed in complete black; old musty black, gotten out of the dark, hurriedly, and with the close smell of the closet still upon it. Even the horses conformed to the sober shade. They had been supplied by a neighbor on account of their ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... the same subject was discoursed on, I defended music, and maintained that poetry was no upstart intruder, but that it was time out of mind admitted into the sacred games, and crowns were given to the best performer. Some straight imagined that I intended to produce some old musty stories, like the funeral solemnities of Oeolycus the Thessalian or of Amphidamas the Chalcidean, in which they say Homer and Hesiod contended for the prize. But passing by these instances as the common theme of every grammarian, as likewise their criticisms who, in the description of Patroclus's ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... and at once,' quoth he. 'Have your largest double-couched chamber ready with your softest lavender-scented sheets, for we have had a weary ride and must rest. And hark ye, landlord, no palming off your stale, musty goods as fresh, or of your washy French wines for the true Hainault vintage. I would have you to understand that my friend here and I are men who meet with some consideration in the world, though we care not to speak our names to every underling. ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... "Nay, my host; this is almost my first day of perfect freedom, and I only left London, and my uncle the king, a few days back. Dunstan has gone down to Glastonbury, for which the Saints be thanked, and I am released for a few days from poring over the musty old manuscripts to which ...
— Edwy the Fair or the First Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... scenes and customs, the united wailing and lamentations of a houseful of women, awakening the echoes of the silent night, savor too much of things supernatural and unearthly not to jar unpleasantly on the senses; the custom is, however, on the eve of being relegated to the musty past ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... certainty had been sound. As for the book, it was clearly from the library of the old man's youth, kept and hidden away for some reason, when nearly everything else had been destroyed. Between the musty pages the accusing letter had lain forgotten for thirty years, ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... better see all you can before it gets any darker. Take down as many books as you want. I don't care much for those fusty-musty old histories. I must ...
— Ahead of the Army • W. O. Stoddard
... value to posterity. Who could appear to have lived more entirely in vain than some of the early heretics? They were burned or massacred, their writings extirpated, their memory anathematized, and their very names and existence left for seven or eight centuries in the obscurity of musty manuscripts—their history to be gathered, perhaps, only from the sentences by which they were condemned. Yet the memory of these men—men who resisted certain pretensions or certain dogmas of the Church in the very age in which the unanimous assent of Christendom was afterward claimed as having ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... the drawing-room, three sofas, three tables, two looking-glasses, and a wheezy clock of tarnished enamel with engraved bronze hands; in the study, a table piled up with papers, and a bluish-coloured screen covered with pictures cut out of various works of last century; a bookcase full of musty books, spiders, and black dust; a puffy armchair; an Italian window; a sealed-up door into the garden.... Everything, in short, just as it always is. Mardary Apollonitch has a multitude of servants, all dressed ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Works of Ivan Turgenev, Vol. I • Ivan Turgenev
... taboos—which possibly had their place and use in the past—can be tolerated no longer. We are bound to turn the searchlight of reason and science on a number of superstitions which still linger in the dark and musty places of the Churches and the Law courts. Modern inquiry has shown conclusively not only the foundational importance of sex in the evolution of each human being, but also the very great VARIETY of spontaneous manifestations in different individuals and the vital necessity that these should be ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... Platoon wearily thrown their rifles and equipment into the musty barn that was allotted to them, than the Colonel told him that he would have to sleep with his men, the reason being that the owner of the farm, on the approach of the Germans, had hidden a large stock of brandy beneath the ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... ye might call thick, but musty, these last few days. We were lookin' to pick up the Farallones." ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone
... mountain. To him who loved the fresh, wind-swept world, the open sea with its smell of clean salt air, the wide deserts where the sunshine lay everywhere, this pleasure grove of a long dead royalty was become musty, foul, permeated with an aura of a great gilded tomb. His sensation was almost that of a drowning person or of one awaking from a trance to find himself shut in the narrow confines of a buried coffin. The air seemed heavy and impure; he fancied it still fetid with all the blood of sacrificial ...
— Daughter of the Sun - A Tale of Adventure • Jackson Gregory
... scene between the late Earl and himself. Nothing had changed, except that now there were wires which gave out hissing sparks, electrical instruments invented since the earlier day; except that this man, gently dropping acids into the round white bottle upon a crystal which gave off musty fumes, was bolder, stronger, had more at ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... and musty here, with all this old tapestry and stuff about; I'll open the other window," she thought; and, noiselessly slipping from Amy's side, she threw on wrapper and slippers, lighted her candle and tried to unbolt the tall, diamond-paned lattice. It was rusty and would not yield, ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott
... could see the stars through the roof. The old sheet-iron stove was badly rusted and broken. Most of the night I spent chopping wood, and I did not sleep at all. But I had a good rest by the stove, where I read a little from a musty pamphlet on palmistry that I found between the logs of the cabin. I always carry candles with me. When the wind is blowing, the wood damp, and the fingers numb, they are of inestimable value in kindling a fire. I do ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills
... the eighteen nineties, still too liable to be influenced by their ways, to be able to speak for posterity and to pronounce the final judgment upon those evil years. It is possible that the critics of the twenty-first century, as they turn over the musty pages of the Yellow Book, will ejaculate with feeling: "Good God, what a dull time these people must have had!" On the whole it is probable that this will be their verdict. They will detect the dullness ...
— G. K. Chesterton, A Critical Study • Julius West
... knowing no other city, no other bourne north of Tenth Street or west of Chelsea—silent, serene, drab-toned people, whose drawing-rooms were musty with what had been fragrance once, whose science, religion, interests, desires were the beliefs, interests and emotions of a century ago, their colourless existence and passive snobbishness affronted nobody who did not ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... conducted me was on the first floor, and was darkness itself when we entered. It was musty, too, and chill, as with the memory of a past funeral and the ...
— The Mill Mystery • Anna Katharine Green
... where, if anywhere, unhealthy conditions exist, justifies this prolonged discussion, and before leaving the subject, ventilation in the cellar should receive a word of encouragement. Too many cellars are damper than need be, are musty and close, full of odors of decaying vegetables and rotting wood, entirely from lack of ventilation. The cellar windows are small and always, closed. The cellar door is seldom opened, and never with the idea of admitting ...
— Rural Hygiene • Henry N. Ogden
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