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adjective
Driest  adj. superl.  Superl. of Dry, a.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Driest" Quotes from Famous Books



... highest on the west coast of Jutland; while the small island of Anholt in the Cattegat has an annual rainfall of only 15.78 in. More than half the rainfall occurs from July to November, the wettest month being September, with an average of 2.95 in.; the driest month is April, with an average of 1.14 in. Thunderstorms are frequent in the summer. South-westerly winds prevail from January to March, and from September to the end of the year. In April the east wind, which is particularly searching, is predominant, while ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various

... ships. We travelled in a W.1/2S. direction, in order to keep on a ridge along the coast, which afforded the only tolerable walking, the snow being very deep on the lower parts of the land. We halted at half past seven A.M., on a fine sandy ground, which gave us the softest, as well as the driest bed which we had yet experienced on our journey, and which was situated close to a little hillock of earth and moss, so full of the burrows of hares as to resemble a warren. We tried to smoke them out by burning port-fire, ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry

... of the girls seated on the wall, as being the driest spot available, and already attacking their packets of sandwiches. Some had even reached ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil

... myself down to rest on the coast of Zealand, near Borreby, where there stood the forest and the charming meadows. The young men from the neighbourhood assembled there, and collected brushwood and branches of trees, the largest and driest they could find. They carried them to the village, laid them in a heap, and set fire to it; then they and the village girls ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen

... morning at breakfast; with what a ludicrous sense of relief, at the close of this purgatorial period, would not the unhappy novelists have fled from these deserted heroes and heroines, and the precious proprieties of their romance, to the very driest and mustiest of human bores,—gratefully rejoicing that the world was not filled with such creatures as they themselves had set ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various

... in an enterprise of irrigation, it would be best to make sure that the source can be depended upon for a sufficient supply of water in the driest seasons; for it is precisely at such times that the most water is needed. Ordinary springs and wells, therefore, are entirely inadequate to furnish water for anything more than a small patch or garden. The only sources to be depended upon for large areas are ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe

... trout from the brook, and cooking them. Besides, we were far enough away from the river highway and from all habitations now to render the thing practically safe. Accordingly I lighted a small fire of the driest wood to be found, while the trapper stole up and down the brook, moving with infinite stealth and dexterity, tracking down fish and catching them with his hands ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic

... metallic sheathing below the waterline the ship was liable to be sunk by the terrible worm which, in Hakluyt's phrase, "many times pearceth and eateth through the strongest oake." For want of vegetable food in the larder, or anything save the driest of bread and beef stiffened with brine, the sailors were sure to be attacked by scurvy, and in a very long voyage the crew was deemed fortunate that did not lose half its number from that foul disease. Often in ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske

... plan of the farm; the spaces covered with little dots are the marshes: the one on the west extends for miles, and has a creek or dyke dug out by Government to carry off the water. From the drawing it looks as if there was much marsh around us; but this bit of ground was the driest that could be found not already taken up. As it was, A—— purchased it of a man who has some more land nearer Winnipeg, giving him five dollars per acre. The Nos. 30 and 31 mean the ...
— A Lady's Life on a Farm in Manitoba • Mrs. Cecil Hall

... in the natural aspect of the mining belt to distinguish it from the rest of the Transvaal plateau. It is a high, dry, bare, scorched, and windy country, and Johannesburg, its centre, stands in one of the highest, driest, and windiest spots, on the south slope of the Witwatersrand ridge, whose top rises some 150 feet above the business quarters. Founded in 1886, the town has now a population exceeding 100,000, more than half of them whites. ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce

... it proved to be the driest known in years. Days, weeks, and even months passed without a drop of rain falling from the brassy sky, and the fine powdery dust permeated everywhere. The weather prophet lost caste, but he persisted in announcing rain, knowing that he had only to stick to it ...
— Through Forest and Fire - Wild-Woods Series No. 1 • Edward Ellis

... commonly called Horned Toads, because of their resemblance in the shape of their bodies to that of a toad and of their spiny scales which have the appearance of small horns. Their habitat is in the hottest and driest parts of the country. They are fond of the hottest sunlight and bury themselves in sand ...
— Pathfinder - or, The Missing Tenderfoot • Alan Douglas

... him there would be nothing wanting in my life," she thought regretfully. "I should have felt much a pride in a husband's fame, I should have worked so gladly to assist him in his career. The driest blue-books would not have been too weary for me—the dullest drudgery of parliamentary detail would have been pleasant work, if it could have helped him in his progress to ...
— Vixen, Volume III. • M. E. Braddon

... to the grave have gone, And the waiting-women are here and are there, With birds at the windows and gleams of the sun Making the chamber of death to be fair. And under and over the mist unlaps, And ruby and amethyst burn through the gray, And driest bushes grow green with spray, And the dimpled ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various

... they continue about 80 per cent the year round. In the Atlantic coast districts, and generally east from the Mississippi River, the variation from month to month is not great. April is probably the driest month of ...
— Dry-Farming • John A. Widtsoe

... tiest, To the curtain string, Though the things thou driest Gird me while I sing, Hankies and inventions Of the lacy tribe— Things I may not ...
— Tobogganing On Parnassus • Franklin P. Adams

... experience will always command among his fellows, in emergencies like this, the men went to work in earnest. In a short time the snow was cleared away or beat down compactly over a space some yards in extent along the side of the rock, while the others soon returned with a supply of the driest wood to be found, together with an armfull of hemlock boughs, to strew over the beaten snow. The next thing requiring their attention was the all-important object of starting a fire. But in this they were doomed to sad disappointment. Their punk-wood tinder had been so dampened by the snow sifting ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson

... more violently than it had been the day before. He did not waste much time in consideration, having made up his mind on the previous visit as to which part of the rock he would drive the hole through. Sticking his last candle, therefore, against the driest part of the wall that could be found, he seized his ...
— Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines • R.M. Ballantyne

... study in England—although no genius could galvanise the corpse of legal studies at the Cambridge of those days into activity. Maine, as Fitzjames says, 'made in the most beautiful manner applications of history and philosophy to Roman law, and transfigured one of the driest of subjects into all sorts of beautiful things without knowing or caring much about details.' He was also able to 'sniff at Bentham' for his ignorance in this direction. 'I rebelled against Maine for many years,' says Fitzjames, 'till at last I came to recognise, not ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen

... made such an impression upon him that for a time he found it hard to believe that stones and rocks had not this strange and secret life lurking in their recesses; and indeed it has since stood to me as a symbol of life, haunting and penetrating all the very hardest and driest things. It seems to me that just as there are almost certainly more colours than our eyes can perceive, and sounds either too acute or too deliberate for our ears to hear, so the domain of life may be much further extended in the earth, ...
— Joyous Gard • Arthur Christopher Benson

... 1. In the driest days, my fountain became disabled; the pipe was stopped up. 2. A couple of plumbers, with the implements of their craft, came out to view the situation. 3. There was a good deal of difference of opinion about where the stoppage was. 4. I found the plumbers ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg

... to take up the most abstract of these questions of belief first, the metaphysical questions. It may be that to many readers the opening sections may seem the driest and least attractive. But I would ask them to begin at the beginning and read straight on, because much that follows this metaphysical book cannot be appreciated at its proper value without ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells

... said Mrs. Randolph, lifting her hand with her driest deprecation and her most desiccating smile, "I'm not passing judgment or criticism. I am of a foreign race, and consequently do not understand the freedom of American young ladies, and their familiarity with the opposite sex. I make no charges, I only ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte

... Ontario in a bark canoe, even when there has been a good deal of sea on. Well managed, they are the driest boats of which ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper

... under-clothes of women at work, even their stays, quickly become wet with perspiration, while the lower parts cannot escape getting equally wet in nearly every kind of work in which they are employed, except in the driest weather. It not unfrequently happens that a woman, on returning from work, is obliged to go to bed for an hour or two to allow her clothes to be dried. It is also by no means uncommon for her, if she does not do this, to put them on again the next morning nearly ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey

... his having friends make to her? Oh, yes, they wanted more wood. How gladly she would get it for him; search all day for the driest pieces if ...
— Rose O'Paradise • Grace Miller White

... moss upon a flat stone, and then, as before, moss and oil, and oil and moss, were added, each time in larger and larger quantities,—no longer gently, gently, but with a careless hand, and in less, perhaps, than half an hour we had a great, smoking, fluttering blaze; and then we threw on some of the driest leaves and twigs of the Andromeda, and some dead willow-stems and dry grass, and then we had ...
— Cast Away in the Cold - An Old Man's Story of a Young Man's Adventures, as Related by Captain John Hardy, Mariner • Isaac I. Hayes

... Corneille de Bruyn in his Travels,(297) help observing the admirable providence of God towards this country, who sends at a fixed season such great quantities of rain in Ethiopia, in order to water Egypt, where a shower of rain scarce ever falls; and who, by that means, causes the driest and most sandy soil to become the richest and most fruitful country ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin

... find those who understand how to read and to read with ease, but to whom books—at any rate certain classes of books—are not interesting. Now interest in a subject may be so great that one will wade through the driest literature about it, but such interest belongs to the few—not to the many. I have come to the conclusion that more readers have had their interest killed or lessened by books than have had it aroused or stimulated. This is a proportion that it is our business as librarians ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick

... saw in my newspaper an announcement that enraged me. It was made in the driest, most casual way, as though nobody would care a rap; and this did but whet the wrath I had in knowing that Adam Street, Adelphi, was to be undone. The Tivoli Music Hall, about to be demolished and built anew, was to have a frontage of thirty feet, if you please, in Adam Street. Why? Because the ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm

... letters in the archives of Modena, which, according to Tiraboschi, are of no great importance. It is difficult to suppose, however, that they would not be worth looking at. The author of the Orlando Innamorato could hardly write, even upon the driest matters of government, with the aridity of a common clerk. Some little lurking well-head of character or circumstance, interesting to readers of a later age, would probably break through the barren ground. Perhaps the letters went counter to some ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt

... "Burns, by the way, came to Ecclefechan, where we're arriving now. He had an uproarious time, and wrote verses to the Lass of Ecclefechan, which shows the place must have been a good deal livelier then than now. Or else, which is as likely, he had a faculty of squeezing the juice out of the driest, most unpromising fruit—the same ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... mountainous country, too dry for pasture, though sufficiently undulating for vineyards; bad for grain-crops, though well suited for olives. The shade has to be all provided by the industry of man, who has planted there the tree of Pallas [the olive], which prospers in even the driest soil, because it sends its roots down into the very depths of ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)

... in all essentials are true gill-breathing fish. It is, therefore, obvious that they cannot lay their eggs on dry land, where the tadpoles would be unable to find anything to breathe; so that even the driest and most tree-haunting toads must needs repair to the water once a year to deposit their spawn in its native surroundings. Once more, crabs pass their earlier larval stages as free-swimming crustaceans, somewhat shrimp-like in appearance, and as agile as fleas: ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen

... the sky; while those of the Courbaril and the Erythrina form, as they extend themselves, a thick vault of verdure. Plants of the family of Pothos with succulent stems, Oxalises, and Orchideae of a singular construction, rise in the driest clefts of the rocks; while creeping plants waving in the winds are interwoven in festoons before the opening of the cavern. We distinguished in these festoons a Bignonia of a violet blue, the purple Dolichos, and, for the first time, that magnificent Solandra, ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley

... was again mild except for a short cold spell at the end of January, with plentiful precipitation up to the first week of June, and then a long drought with the driest July since 1944. However, the heavy rainfall of August, 8.69 inches,[19] made amends for this, and with the normal rainfall of 3.48 inches of September, prepared the trees to endure the long drought of October and ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 43rd Annual Meeting - Rockport, Indiana, August 25, 26 and 27, 1952 • Various

... mutual relations, are always attended by a slight impulse on the part of the will, are almost a physical necessity. Sometimes, however, the lower animals entertain me much more than the average man. For, in the first place, what can such a man say? It is only conceptions, that is, the driest of ideas, that can be communicated by means of words; and what sort of conceptions has the average man to communicate, if he does not merely tell a story or give a report, neither of which makes conversation? The greatest charm of conversation is the mimetic part of it,—the character ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; The Art of Controversy • Arthur Schopenhauer

... himself in the ring, to use the old slang, like a thorough "glutton," and honestly enjoys a telling facer from his adversary. Cockshot is bottled effervescency, the sworn foe of sleep. Three- in-the-morning Cockshot, says a victim. His talk is like the driest of all imaginable dry champagnes. Sleight of hand and inimitable quickness are the qualities by which he lives. Athelred, on the other hand, presents you with the spectacle of a sincere and somewhat slow nature thinking aloud. He is the most unready man I ever knew to shine ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson

... his legal surname, Labrunie. It certainly would be difficult, from the same point of view of strict legality, to call anything of his exactly a novel. He was a poet, a dramatist, a voyage-and-travel writer, a bibliographer (strange trade, which associates the driest with the most "nectaweous" of men!) even sometimes a tale-teller by name, but even then hardly a novelist. Yet he managed to throw over the most unlikely material a novelish or at least a romantic character, which is sometimes—nay, very often—utterly wanting in professed and admitted ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury

... capital, is now Kazvin's sole importance. The road to Teheran was made some years ago at enormous expense by the Shah; but it has now, in true Persian style, been left to fall into decay. It is only in the finest and driest weather that the journey can be made on wheels, and this was naturally out of the question for us. A railway was mooted some time since along this, the only respectable carriage-road in Persia—but the project ...
— A Ride to India across Persia and Baluchistan • Harry De Windt

... by healthy, dark green foliage, is more important than vigor as indicated by the length of current season's growth. In Morgantown this has been one of the driest seasons on record. Cuttings from trees with pale or brown foliage, or with foliage tending to be brittle from lack of water soon lost their leaves. Whether this was caused by the condition of the parent tree or of the individual ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 44th Annual Meeting • Various

... highest, and driest continent; during summer, more solar radiation reaches the surface at the South Pole than is received at the Equator in an equivalent period; ...
— The 1998 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... her in his arms and seated her on the highest and driest of the tombs, then sat beside her. He kept his arm about her, but he did not kiss her. "Come now," he said, "let us have it out. We must not quarrel. I humble myself to the dust. I vow to be a saint. I will not exchange two consecutive ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

... he picked up some of the driest of the grass and palm leaves and applied a match to the stuff. It blazed up readily, and he threw the mass in with the other stuff about ...
— The Campaign of the Jungle - or, Under Lawton through Luzon • Edward Stratemeyer

... the Englishmen came to take the first, the rest set up a lamentable cry, clasped their arms around her neck, and hanging about her, took their last farewell, as they thought, in such trembling agonies, and affectionate embraces, as would have softened the hardest heart in the world, and made the driest eyes melt into tears; nor could they be persuaded but that they were going to die, till such time as Friday's father made them sensible that the Englishmen had chosen them for their wives, which ended all their terror and ...
— The Life and Most Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of - York, Mariner (1801) • Daniel Defoe

... tree in time may grow again; Most naked plants renew both fruit and flower; The sorest wight may find release of pain, The driest soil suck in some moist'ning shower; Times go by turns and chances change by course, From foul to fair, from better hap to worse. The sea of Fortune doth not ever flow, She draws her favors to the lowest ebb; Her time ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various

... always makes this sort of a thick, choking smoke. There's a lot of damp stuff that burns with the dry wood. Leaves that lie on the ground and rot make a good deal of the smoke, and then there's a lot of moisture in the trees even in the driest weather." ...
— The Boy Scout Fire Fighters - or Jack Danby's Bravest Deed • Robert Maitland

... not waste all the summer months in visiting. She was more in her element at the Court. The model children in the new Arden poor-schools had rather a hard time of it during Mr. Granger's honeymoon, and were driven through Kings and Chronicles at a more severe pace than usual. The hardest and driest facts in geography and grammar were pelted like summer hail upon their weak young brains, and a sterner demand was made every day upon their juvenile powers of calculation. This Miss Granger called giving them a solid foundation; but as the edifice destined ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon

... of a day" Old England is to have on a day to come. My lord connected our day of trial with India. Mrs. Pagnell assumed an air of studious interest; she struck in to give her niece a lead, that Lord Ormont might know his countess capable of joining the driest of subjects occupying exalted minds. Aminta did not follow her; and she was extricated gallantly by ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... territory beyond the Alleghanies,—an enormous folkland in which all the thirteen old states had a common interest, and upon which new and derivative communities were already beginning to organize themselves. Questions about public lands are often regarded as the driest of historical deadwood. Discussions about them in newspapers and magazines belong to the class of articles which the general reader usually skips. Yet there is a great deal of the philosophy of history wrapped up in this subject, and it now comes to confront us at a most interesting moment; for without ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske

... the Bible was the driest and darkest book in the universe to me. The next day it became entirely different. I thought I had the key to it. I had been born of the Spirit. But before I knew anything of the mind of God I had to give up my sin. I believe God meets every soul on the spot of self-surrender; and when they ...
— The Way to God and How to Find It • Dwight Moody

... emotions. The first was ancient Greece and Rome—and he incarnated this passion in the picturesque figure of Julian Casti (in The Unclassed), toiling hard to purchase a Gibbon, savouring its grand epic roll, converting its driest detail into poetry by means of his enthusiasm, and selecting Stilicho as a hero of drama or romance (a premonition here of Veranilda). The second or heart's idol was Charles Dickens—Dickens as writer, Dickens as ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing

... very quickly," she said, in her driest and most practical tone, "towards one ideal of Socialism. Look at the way in which municipalities are beginning to undertake, and sometimes monopolise, work which used to be left to private enterprize. Before long we shall have local authorities engaged in banking, ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing

... than was altogether agreeable to men who had not been dry for above thirty hours, or warm for a still longer period. Our eleven dogs were large, fine-looking animals, and an old one of peculiar sagacity was placed at their head by having a longer trace, so as to lead them over the safest and driest places, for these animals have a great dread of water. The leader was instant in obeying the voice of the driver, who did not beat, but repeatedly talked and called it by name. It was beautiful to observe the sledges racing to the same object, the dogs ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry

... is well supplied with clean, soft running water, even in the driest of the season. There are no marshes, swamps, or bogs, no still water—not even a "puddle" for long—for the soil is of such a character, that surface water quickly filters away into the sands and mingles with the streams in the gulfs. Springs ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 433, April 19, 1884 • Various

... Sunday morning, a brilliant day, except one "conscientious objector," who, as I heard later, spent most of the day at the public-house. We got up two ricks from about ten acres, which eventually proved to be some of the driest wheat we had that year, and which I was able to sell for seed at a good price, to go into districts where no dry seed ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory

... quoth I, 'Refrain thee nor flyte and scold! An to-day thou consent such affair were light; They like is the loved, mine the lover-wight!' When she knew my mind she but smiled in mirth And cried, 'Now, by the Maker of Heaven and Earth! I'm a Jewess of Jewry's driest e'er seen And thou art naught save a Nazarene. Why seek my favours? Thine's other caste; An this deed thou do thou'lt repent the past. Say, does Love allow with two Faiths to play? Men shall blame thee like me, at each break of day! Wilt thou ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton

... represent a futurity, implied by the dependence of the clause."—Id. "Cry, cries, crying, cried, crier, decrial; Shy, shier, shiest, shily, shiness; Fly, flies, flying, flier, high-flier; Sly, slier, sliest, slily, sliness; Spy, spies, spying, spied, espial; Dry, drier, driest, drily, driness."—Cobb, Webster, and Chalmers cor. "I would sooner listen to the thrumming of a dandizette at her piano."—Kirkham cor. "Send her away; for she crieth after us."—Matt., v, 23. "IVIED, a. overgrown with ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... The eggs hatch underground and the immature prawns dig their way out in the spring. If there's been a lot of rain, most of them drown in their holes or as soon as they emerge. According to growth rings on trees, last spring was the driest in the Beta Piedmont in centuries, so most of them survived, and as they're parthenogenetic females, they all laid eggs. This spring, it was even drier, so now they have land prawns all over central Beta. And I don't know that anything ...
— Little Fuzzy • Henry Beam Piper

... gather it? My song shall rise, Although none heed or hear it: rise it shall, And swell along the wastes of Nineveh And Babylon, until it reach to thee, Layard! who raisest cities from the dust, Who driest Lethe up amid her shades, And pourest a fresh stream on arid sands, And rescuest thrones and nations, fanes and gods, From conquering Time: he sees thee, and turns back. The weak and slow Power pushes past the wise, And lifts them up in triumph ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various

... poet, and he was one; he now wished to be a merry chirping bird: but when he was metamorphosed into one, the former peculiarities ceased immediately. "It is really pleasant enough," said he: "the whole day long I sit in the office amid the driest law-papers, and at night I fly in my dream as a lark in the gardens of Fredericksburg; one might really write a very pretty comedy upon it." He now fluttered down into the grass, turned his head gracefully on every side, and with his bill pecked the pliant blades of grass, which, in comparison ...
— Andersen's Fairy Tales • Hans Christian Andersen

... clear purple in the upper petals, gradated into deep blue in the lower ones; the centre, gold. Not larger than a violet, but perfectly formed, and firmly set in all its petals. Able to live in the driest ground; beautiful in the coast sand-hills of Cumberland, following the wild geranium and burnet rose: and distinguished thus by its power of life, in waste and dry places, from the violet, which needs kindly earth ...
— Proserpina, Volume 2 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin

... o' some crack that just holds the roots;" she went on to say, "right on the pitch o' one o' them bare stony hills where you can't seem to see a wheel-barrowful o' good earth in a place, but that tree'll keep a green top in the driest summer. You lay your ear down to the ground an' you'll hear a little stream runnin'. Every such tree has got its own livin' spring; there's folk made ...
— The Country of the Pointed Firs • Sarah Orne Jewett

... Coleridge's opium and of Mill's blameless and energetic life. But this explains little. That Coleridge was a man of genius and, moreover, of exquisitely poetical genius, and that Mill was at most a man of remarkable talent and the driest and sternest of logicians is also obvious. It is even more to the purpose that Coleridge was overflowing with kindliness, though little able to turn goodwill to much effect; whereas Mill's morality took the form ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen

... In the driest parts of the wood, here the ground is thickly carpeted with dead leaves, you may some day notice a little bunch of them, that look as if a plant, in pushing its way up through the ground, had raised the leaves, rootlets, and ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan

... thing that lives and breathes in the neighborhood; or if you will but stand where you are, and look up into the blue sky, and watch the clouds that are now drifting, as before a strong wind, over the driest and busiest thoroughfares of your crowded city; changing from shadow to sunshine, and from sunshine to shadow, every uplifted countenance over which they pass, you will find yourself at the very next ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various

... fair Harry-nobles as ever were melted into sack by a good fellow. So, luck to your enterprise, since you will needs venture on Tony Foster; but, by my credit, you had better take another draught before you depart, for your welcome at the Hall yonder will be somewhat of the driest. And if you do get into peril, beware of taking to cold steel; but send for me, Giles Gosling, the head-borough, and I may be able to make something out of Tony yet, for as proud ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott

... BRAIN.—Anatomy is considered the driest and most difficult of biological studies, but a careful attention to our description of the brain will show that it is very intelligible. After we get through with the anatomy, the description of organs and their functions is simple and practical. Every one should understand the outlines ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, April 1887 - Volume 1, Number 3 • Various

... Parson amused himself, between sermons of powerful doctrine and parochial duties of a more human interest, with educating Lucinda, whose intellect was more like his own than her mother's. A strange training it was for a young girl,—mathematics, metaphysics, Latin, theology of the driest sort; and after an utter failure at Greek and Hebrew, though she had toiled patiently through seven books of the "Aeneid," Parson Manners mildly sniffed at the inferiority of the female mind, and betook himself to teaching ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various

... Mission houses. She thought these should be as simple as possible, and semi-native in style; such, she believed, to be the driest and most healthy. In any case disease could come into a house costing L200, as into one costing L20, and "there was such a thing as God's providence." Still, she recognised the importance of preserving the health of newcomers, and admitted that her ideas might not apply ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone

... glows instead; or when, a particularly obvious and commonplace knock assaulting the ear, she exclaims in tragic accents, "There's someone at the door;" or when the detective drags from the bottom of the lake a pair of the driest of dry old boots. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, June 2, 1920 • Various

... the generation now passing away. Still at such a time as this it is interesting to make some endeavor to estimate the value of what Mr. Mill has done in the way of criticism. It is at least worth while to examine whether one who has shown himself capable of grappling effectively with the driest and most abstruse problems that vex the human intellect was versatile enough to study poetry with an understanding heart, and to be alive to the distinctive powers ...
— John Stuart Mill; His Life and Works • Herbert Spencer, Henry Fawcett, Frederic Harrison and Other

... in absolute want of food, to raise fifteen pounds, appeared to him an insult—which probably it was not meant to be. Mr. Henson, the printer and bookseller, had very little knowledge of the actual state of his correspondent, and looking upon the whole scheme of publishing poetry as the driest matter of business, addressed Clare as he would have any other customer. This, however, was not the way in which the deeply-distressed poet viewed the proceedings. He gave way to his feelings in a very ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin

... rain which penetrated the canvas, and made it nearly as uncomfortable inside, as it would have been out. We were not prepared to catch water, having nothing to put it in. Our next object was to get fire, and after gathering some of the driest fuel to be found, and having a small piece of cotton wick-yarn, with flint and steel, we kindled a fire, which was never afterwards suffered to be extinguished. The night was very dark, but we found ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms

... debauch; and this course of life made him cold in love, but passionate and angry, which argues a hot constitution. And some report his sweat was fragrant and perfumed his clothes; which is another argument of heat, as we see the hottest and driest climates bear frankincense and cassia; for a fragrant smell, as Theophrastus thinks, proceeds from a due concoction of the humors, when the noxious moisture is conquered by the heat. And it is thought probable, that he took a ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch

... "seems to be the driest and the wettest, in parts, of any country; and all its great rivers, except the ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville

... trees begin to rattle and break into pieces as the wind blows against them. Although they keep their greenness, they act like the driest leaves ...
— Common Science • Carleton W. Washburne

... and dry sticks. Vincent had still in his pocket the newspaper he had bought in the streets of Nashville, and he always carried lights. A piece of the paper was crumpled up and lighted, a few of the driest leaves they could find dropped upon it, then a few twigs, until at last ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty

... it continued to behave until the hands pointed to three. Then, instead of leaving me to infer the time from the arbitrary symbolism of three strokes on a bell, the same voice which had before electrified me informed me, in tones which would have lent a charm to the driest of statistical details, what the hour was. I had never before been impressed with any particular interest attaching to the hour of three in the morning, but as I heard it announced in those low, rich, thrilling contralto tones, it appeared ...
— With The Eyes Shut - 1898 • Edward Bellamy

... not so certain of that," said Boxall. "I have heard that in the driest sand, provided the sea does not wash over it, drinkable water may be procured by digging deep down. Let us try, ...
— Saved from the Sea - The Loss of the Viper, and her Crew's Saharan Adventures • W.H.G. Kingston

... annually. The cones sometimes open and liberate the seeds as soon as they are ripe, but commonly they remain on the tree for years, with their seeds carefully sealed and protected beneath the scales. So far as I have observed, the trees on the driest soil cling longest to their seeds. For an old lodge-pole to have on its limbs twenty crops of unopened cones is not uncommon. Neither is it uncommon to see an extensive lodge-pole forest each tree of which has upon it several hundred, and many of the trees a ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills

... Springs are nothing in comparison to the others; there are only two that are running, but they are very good. The country travelled over to-day has been very well grassed, with salt bush; take it altogether I have not seen better runs in the colony, and in the driest summer the furthest distance from water will not be above five miles at the most, but the feed is so abundant that they would not require to go so far. On that account they will feed double and treble the number of stock ...
— Explorations in Australia, The Journals of John McDouall Stuart • John McDouall Stuart

... until he could get the very commonplace but obstreperous moon into harmony with his law of falling bodies;—the story of Darwin, with his twenty-odd years of the most patient and persistent kind of toil; delving into the most unpromising materials, reading the driest books, always on the lookout for the facts that would point the way to the explanation of species;—the story of Morse and his bitter struggle against poverty, and sickness, and innumerable disappointments up to the time ...
— Craftsmanship in Teaching • William Chandler Bagley

... affliction that was assuredly sufficient to irritate the naturally sweet temper of Mr. Brown, only ceased as that industrious personage paused at the corner of the street, for the purpose of selecting the driest path through which to effect the miserable act of crossing to the opposite side. Occupied in stretching his neck over the kennel, in order to take the fullest survey of its topography which the scanty and agitated lamps would allow, the unhappy wanderer, lowering his umbrella, suffered a cross and ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... lower than on the Soormah: the mean difference between all these observations and the contemporaneous ones at Calcutta was .003 in favour of Calcutta, and the temperature half a degree lower; the dew-point and humidity were nearly the same at both places. This being the driest season of the year, it is very probable that the mean level of the water at this part of the delta is not higher than that of the Bay of Bengal; but as we advanced northwards towards the Khasia, and entered the Soormah ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker

... the berries. The Gharkad, which from the colour of its fruit is also called by the Arabs Homra delights in a sandy soil, and reaches its maturity in the height of summer when the ground is parched up, exciting an agreeable surprise in the traveller, at finding so juicy a berry produced in the driest soil and season.[Might not the berry of this shrub have been used by Moses to sweeten the waters of Marah? The words in Exodus, xv. 25, are: "And the Lord shewed him a tree, which when he had cast into the waters, the waters were made sweet." The Arabic ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt

... creeks and ponds, with a luxuriant vegetation around them undergoing decomposition, and all the other evils attendant on the settlement of a new and unbroken country. Under such circumstances, can it be surprising that many were sick, and that many died? The summer of 1820 was the hottest and driest ever known in this country. For weeks in succession, the thermometer, in the shade at St. Louis, was up to 96 deg. for hours in the day. Not a cloud came over the sun, to afford a partial relief from its burning influence. The fevers of that season were unusually rapid, malignant, and unmanageable. ...
— A New Guide for Emigrants to the West • J. M. Peck

... Van Dyke, making his observations from the summit of the Cuyamaca, in San Diego County, 6500 feet above the sea-level, "how land thus rising a mile or more in fifty or sixty miles, rising away from the coast, and falling off abruptly a mile deep into the driest and hottest of American deserts, could have a great variety of climates.... Only ten miles away on the east the summers are the hottest, and only sixty miles on the west the coolest known in the United States (except on this coast), and between them is every ...
— Our Italy • Charles Dudley Warner

... to Farmer Brown's boy that he must be dreaming. He never, never had seen anything like this before, not even in the very driest weather of the hottest part of the summer. He looked this way and looked that way. The Green Meadows looked just as usual. The Green Forest looked just as usual. The Laughing Brook—ha! What was the matter with the Laughing Brook? He couldn't hear it and that, you know, was very unusual. ...
— The Adventures of Paddy the Beaver • Thornton W. Burgess

... is the driest and best known almost anywhere, and all the hills are as sound and hard as the road. The climate is also dry, and in general not very cold, though we had one or two very cold days. There is a deer forest—many roe deer, and on the opposite hill (which does not belong to us) grouse. There ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria

... is defined as the degree of its approach to saturation. Air completely saturated is represented by 100, and that absolutely free of vapour by 0. As a matter of fact, however, the latter never occurs; even in the driest regions of Arabia a humidity of 10 per cent. is almost unknown. For its estimation the Wet and Dry Bulb thermometers are employed. These consist of two ordinary thermometers. One has its bulb exposed so as to register the temperature of the air. The bulb of the ...
— The Art of Living in Australia • Philip E. Muskett (?-1909)

... picking out the driest and shortest way, first by a meadow, then by the backs of the village huts; but in one place the peasants would not let them pass, in another it was the priest's land and they could not cross it, in another Ivan Ionov had bought a plot from the landowner and had dug a ditch ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... near the entrance of the place. More within, on the driest part of the ground, lay a child asleep. Between them were scattered some withered branches and decayed leaves, which were arranged as if to form a fire. In many parts this scanty collection of fuel was slightly blackened; but, wetted as it was ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins

... generally used ignores most of the continent out of sight of Melbourne and Sydney, though both Victoria and New South Wales could be stowed away in little more than half the area of Queensland. Do we reflect that Australia includes some of the driest tracts in the world, as well as areas in which the rainfall approaches the phenomenal—that not very much more than half of the territory of the Commonwealth lies within the temperate zone—that there are as marked differences between Tasmania and North Queensland as between ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield

... hole in the ground for a home. It chooses a soft place in a bank, where, at first, it can dig up, so that it will not be disturbed by water. Its home has several entrances, so that, if pursued, it can escape by running in or out. In one of its driest rooms it makes its nest of dried grass; and here it stays in stormy weather, only coming out ...
— Friends in Feathers and Fur, and Other Neighbors - For Young Folks • James Johonnot

... with an important air. "Are you all ready? This is the driest thing I know. Silence all round, if you please! 'William the Conqueror, whose cause was favored by the pope, was soon submitted to by the English, who wanted leaders, and had been of late much ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various

... The Sea Captain (METHUEN) I do not think that the hero ought to be the driest of dry-bobs for nearly a quarter of it. If, however, Mr. H. C. BAILEY is a slow starter he knows how to make the pace when he once gets going; indeed, he travels so fast and so far that merely to follow him in fancy ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 15, 1914 • Various

... me a-thinkin' on a new track. She come to see me one day while you was at the mill, and we had a real speret'al tussel. I argufied my case in such a way that she couldn't git round it, and I proved to her that I was the driest and crookedest old stick that ever the devil twisted out o' shape when it was a-growin'. On a suddent she turned the argerment agin me in a way that has stumped me ever since. 'You are right, Mr. Growther,' she said, 'it was ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe

... late Dr. Barth, informed me, the Bornu name for a most excellent African contrivance, used in some parts of the Sahara desert, by means of which tent-ropes may be secured, or horses picketed in sand of the driest description, as in that of a sand dune, whence a tent-peg would be drawn out by a strain so slight as to be almost imperceptible. I have made many experiments upon it, and find its efficiency to be truly wonderful. ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton

... pace somewhat when they reached solid ground, but before they were within the sheltering confines of their private car, Jimmy Grayson was launched upon his great and thrilling tariff speech, in which he invested the driest subject in the world with an interest that absorbed the attention ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler

... flashes of expiring skill in various reigns, this may be considered as a period of gradual but certain decline to a state worse than death, for though the monks of Greek and Russian convents still kept up the execution of MSS., it was only with the driest and most lifeless adhesion to the Manual. This so-called art still exists, but more like a magnetised corpse ...
— Illuminated Manuscripts • John W. Bradley

... Pine "When you come to eat 'em they need to be b'iled twice. They're jest the driest bird there ...
— Two Arrows - A Story of Red and White • William O. Stoddard

... looked sharply at him. "How may I get to your house?" he asked. "We live in different elements, you and I. We mice want to be in the driest of dry places, while you frogs have ...
— The Golden Fleece and the Heroes who Lived Before Achilles • Padraic Colum

... beautifully, and Jack and I went out on the river to catch what might be caught. Jack's joyful excitement was extreme at my announcing to him the fact that Mr. —— had consented to try ploughing on some of the driest portions of the island instead of the slow and laborious process of hoeing the fields; this is a disinterested exultation on his part, for at any rate as long as I am here, he will certainly be nothing but 'my boy Jack,' and I should think after my departure will never be degraded to the rank ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble

... remember to have seen the white honeysuckle or clover growing once, and they could go dry with shoes only in summer. Now there is nothing but blue-joint and sedge and cut-grass there, standing in water all the year round. For a long time, they made the most of the driest season to get their hay, working sometimes till nine o'clock at night, sedulously paring with their scythes in the twilight round the hummocks left by the ice; but now it is not worth the getting when they can come at it, and they look sadly round to their wood-lots ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau

... decided to do something almost but not quite so terrible, so I went West. The third time I proposed, she accepted me, and out of sheer joy I very stupidly got drunk. So, you see, there is always something to live for," he concluded, with his driest smile. ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon

... vintages, and you will be told that the local Attic wine is not very desirable, although of course it is the cheapest. Black wine is the strongest and sweetest; white wine is the weakest; rich golden is the driest and most wholesome. The rocky isles and headlands of the Aegean seem to produce the best vintage—Thasos, Cos, Lesbos, Rhodes, all boast their grapes; but the best wine beyond a doubt is from Chios.[*] It will fetch a mina ($18 [1914 or $310.14 2000]) the "metreta," i.e. nearly ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis

... the driest manner; "especially to your sisters. However this is no time to joke. I fear you will get the worst of it, John. Do you know a man of about Gwenny's shape, nearly as broad as he is long, but about ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore

... deal while thus talking over what she was to see and do. She read every scrap she could lay her hand on which related to Rome or Florence or Venice or London. The driest details had a charm for her now that she was likely to see the real places. She went about with scraps of paper in her pocket, on which were written such things as these: "Forum. When built? By whom built? More than one?" "What does Cenacola mean?" "Cecilia Metella. ...
— What Katy Did Next • Susan Coolidge

... retain moisture. Nothing robs a soil of water more surely than a breaking-plow. Its use is a necessity in farming, but this effect of plowing must be borne in mind when a seeding is planned for the driest period of the year. It goes without saying that sods should not be formed on land that is too solid for admission of air. A thorough plowing is needed by most soils prior to making a sod that will prevent further stirring of the ground for a long period of time. It is best when this ...
— Crops and Methods for Soil Improvement • Alva Agee

... inflammable dresses with the blankets of the party. So soon as this precaution was observed, the old man approached the opposite margin of the grass, which still environed them in a tall and dangerous circle, and selecting a handful of the driest of the herbage he placed it over the pan of his rifle. The light combustible kindled at the flash. Then he placed the little flame in a bed of the standing fog, and withdrawing from the spot to the centre of the ring, ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper

... and took out the stopper. Once more he crept forward towards the bull, and as near the snout of the latter as it was safe for him to go. Holding the horn by its thick end, and reaching far out, he poured upon the levellest and driest spot a large quantity of powder; and, then drawing the horn gradually nearer, he laid a train for ...
— The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains • Mayne Reid

... and, in the first sketch of the Critique, naturally fell into their proper places. But I very soon became aware of the magnitude of my task, and the numerous problems with which I should be engaged; and, as I perceived that this critical investigation would, even if delivered in the driest scholastic manner, be far from being brief, I found it unadvisable to enlarge it still more with examples and explanations, which are necessary only from a popular point of view. I was induced to take this course from the consideration also that the present work is ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant

... point—where the sand was thrown up in a "wreath," like snow in a storm—that the castaways had chosen for their couch. But little pains had been taken in selecting the spot. It was the most conspicuous, as well as the driest; and, on stepping out of the water, they had tottered towards it, and half mechanically chosen it for ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid

... of chalk, one of which our route intersected, on the top of the ridge, where also the action of water was extremely well marked. The action of water remains a long time visible in The Great Desert, perhaps twelve, twenty, nay, fifty years, during which several periods, even in the driest regions of The Sahara, there is sure to be a heavy drenching rain,—an overflowing, overwhelming mass of water falls on the desert lands. The districts of Ghat remained some eight or ten years without an abundant rain, till this last winter, when it came in most overpowering showers[99]. ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson

... and six other small towns, which are situated near its borders, and have their lands irrigated from it. Besides water for their fields, this lake yielded the people abundance of water-chestnuts[3] and fish. In the driest season the water has been found sufficient to supply the wants of all the people of those towns and villages, and those of all the country around, as far as the people can avail themselves ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman

... those historical recollections which they transmit; they are considered superior to his history. But of all the letters of this or of the preceding age, none are more rich, more varied, or more pleasing than those of Redi, who threw into this form his discoveries in natural history. The driest subjects, even those of language and grammar, are here treated in an ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta

... rapidly in any but the driest atmosphere, by its affinity for damp, and, consequently, often caused mildew in cases of birds, etc, into which it had been introduced. The fumes of sulphur during combustion are, on the contrary, really of service in destroying insect life, as evidenced in the fumigation of hospital ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne

... note: the coldest, windiest, highest (on average), and driest continent; during summer, more solar radiation reaches the surface at the South Pole than is received at the Equator in ...
— The 2002 CIA World Factbook • US Government

... degrees 28 minutes S. At this point the bed of the Broughton is of considerable width, and its channel is occupied by long, wide and very deep water holes, connected with one another by a strongly running stream, which seldom or never fails even in the driest seasons. The soil upon its banks however is not valuable, being generally stony and barren, and bearing a sort of prickly grass, (Spinifex). Wild fowl abound on the pools. On a former occasion, when I first discovered the Broughton, I obtained both ducks and swans from its ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre

... violently, and walked up and down the room several times, giving vent to his anger in oaths of various kinds; then he returned to Daniel, and said in his driest tone,— ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau

... my last paper. But its rich red marls, wherever they come to the surface, are one of God's most precious gifts to this favoured land. On them, one finds oneself at once in a garden; amid the noblest of timber, wheat, roots, grass which is green through the driest summers, and, in the western counties, cider-orchards laden with red and golden fruit. I know, throughout northern Europe, no such charming scenery, for quiet beauty and solid wealth, as that of the New Red marls; and if I wished to show ...
— Town Geology • Charles Kingsley

... 497,975![39] Had similar returns been procured from the other seven colonies (including Mauritius, Antigua, Barbadoes, and Granada,) the decrease must have been little, if at all, less than 100,000! Now it was plain to every one that if this were really so, the system could not last. The driest economist would allow that it would not pay, to let the working classes be slaughtered. To work the laboring men of our West Indies to death, might bring in a good return for a while, but could not be a profitable enterprise in the long run. Accordingly, ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various

... sort of fair from what they have nowadays. One thing is, honey, they have the fairs too soon. It never was intended for folks to go to fairs in hot weather, and here they've got to havin' 'em the first week in September, about the hottest, driest, dustiest time of the whole year. Nothin' looks pretty then, and it always makes me think o' folks when they've been wearin' their summer clothes for three months, and everything's all faded and dusty and drabbled. That's the ...
— Aunt Jane of Kentucky • Eliza Calvert Hall

... to twelve feet in height, by from fifteen to twenty in depth; the columns of the pitch stone-bed immediately above it seem perilously hanging in mid air; and along their sides there trickles, in even the driest summer weather,—for the Scuir is a condenser on an immense scale—minute runnels of water, that patter ceaselessly in front of the long deep hollow, like rain from the eaves of a cottage during ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller

... did not prepare one for the desolation of the place itself. Imagine a gigantic ash heap, a place where dust and rubbish have been cast for years outside some dry, derelict, God-forsaken up-country township. Imagine some broken-down creek bed in the driest of our dry central Australian districts, abandoned for a generation to the goats, in which the hens have been scratching as long as men can remember. Then take away the hens and the goats and all traces of any living or moving thing. You must not even ...
— Letters from France • C. E. W. Bean

... her furniture thither from Sandbourne. Whenever the afternoon was fine he would call for her and they would take a stroll together towards the Beal, or the ancient Castle, seldom going the whole way, his sciatica and her rheumatism effectually preventing them, except in the driest atmospheres. He had now changed his style of dress entirely, appearing always in a homely suit of local make, and of the fashion of thirty years before, the achievement of a tailoress at East Quarriers. He also let his iron-grey beard grow as it would, and ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy

... the sun was Sasasquit; and about his business he went. He built the fire of sacrifice, piling it high with the driest trees of the forest, and he laid thereon the best offering he could procure—a fat fish from the river beside his cabin. He sung as before a song or invocation, in which he mentioned the wants of the wretched Indians, and the cunning ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones

... little carbonized tinder, of Irritability; with so much nitre of latent Passion, and sulphurous Humor enough; the whole lying in such hot neighborhood, close by "a reverberating furnace of Fantasy:" have we not here the components of driest Gunpowder, ready, on occasion of the smallest spark, to blaze up? Neither, in this our Life-element, are sparks anywhere wanting. Without doubt, some Angel, whereof so many hovered round, would one day, leaving "the outskirts of AEsthetic Tea," flit higher; and, by electric Promethean ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle

... driest of men, rose with a moistened eye and flushing cheek—"Monsieur le Marquis, vouchsafe me the honour to shake hands with you. I, too, am by descent gentilhomme, by profession a speculator on the Bourse. In both capacities I approve ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... married yet; although upon Uncle Reuben's death she came into all his property; except, indeed, 2000 pounds, which Uncle Ben, in his driest manner, bequeathed "to Sir John Ridd, the worshipful knight, for greasing of the testator's boots." And he left almost a mint of money, not from the mine, but from the shop, and the good use of usury. For the mine had brought in just what it cost, when the vein of gold ended suddenly; ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore

... ramifications into the impending mound of gypsum and marl. The roof of this inner cavern was hung with undripping solid icicles, and the floor was a conglomerate of ice and frozen earth. They were assured that the cold is always greatest within when the external air is hottest and driest, and that the ice gradually disappears as winter approaches, and vanishes when the snow comes. The peasants were unanimous in these statements, and asserted that they could sleep in the cave without sheepskins in the ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne

... science here, but I fully subscribe to the belief that a general knowledge of science is essential. But the result of our believing that it is advisable to know so much, is that we attempt to spread the thinnest and driest paste of knowledge over the mind, and all the vivid life of it evaporates in the process. The thing is, frankly, far too big to attempt; and, we must henceforth set our faces against the attainment; of mere knowledge as either advisable or possible. What we must try to do is to educate the ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various

... his speech. He said he required, not only the most especial indulgence, but even the toleration of the House, 'for of all the dry and dull subjects which could possibly be introduced, the question which it is now my misfortune to bring under the consideration of the House is the driest and the dullest. If this question had been one merely of pounds, shillings, and pence, it would have been dull and complicated enough; but this is a question in which are concerned not pounds and shillings, but pence, and halfpence, ...
— Lord George Bentinck - A Political Biography • Benjamin Disraeli

... was having hard going now, and I helped him as much as I could, but I was aching with cold. We gained the clearing, a small bare spot on a lesser peak, and I directed the two Darkovan brothers who were the driest to gather dry brushwood and get a fire going. It was hardly near enough sunset to camp; but by the time we were dry enough to go on safely, it would be, so I gave orders to get the tent up, ...
— The Planet Savers • Marion Zimmer Bradley

... you,' said Henry huskily, as with the driest of throats, and a perceptible shudder, he turned to go away; the Doctor pausing to caress little Mab, and say, 'I had better take home this poor little thing. She may come to harm here, and may be a ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge



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