"Mess" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... I know, but having tried my own way and made a dreadful mess on 't, I concluded that the Lord knows what's best for us, and things go better when He manages than when we go ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... letter came. You read blunt, jerky sentences that told you Mark had died suddenly, in the mess room, of heart failure. Captain Symonds said he thought you would want to know exactly how it happened.... "Well, we were 'cock-fighting,' if you know what that is, after dinner. Peters is the heaviest man in our battery, and Major Olivier was carrying him on his back. We ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair
... bodied men, armed with rifles, are hiding away in corners so that they shall not be drafted away to the outer defences. Everywhere a contemptible spirit is being displayed, because a feeling prevails that there are no responsible chiefs in whom absolute trust can be placed. A pleasant mess in all truth. It is now everyone for himself and nobody looking after ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... then a sound not unknown to many of us put a stop to the conversation. "Shall I leave the room children?" came in merry tones from another corner and immediately an old lady came forward giving both hands to him. "That miserable oil of Dom Amaral's has put me into a pretty mess," said Adams half annoyed, but laughing as he greeted the lady. "Don't berate me before my face dear friend about my light, especially when you are so soon to take our brightest light away from us." "Fairly trapped, Dom Amaral," cried Adams laughing heartily at this third ...
— In Macao • Charles A. Gunnison
... Big wigs, gold-headed canes, Latin prescriptions, shops full of abominations, recipes a yard long, "curing" patients by drugging as sailors bring a wind by whistling, selling lies at a guinea apiece,—a routine, in short, of giving unfortunate sick people a mess of things either too odious to swallow or too acrid to hold, or, if that ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... over him. It is enough that he is out of sight, for it is such a bad night out of doors; by-and-by I'll do it better. But just let me have the sheet to wipe myself with—he was so bloody—and I have made myself in such a mess ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent
... afford to have any row or scandal. It must somehow be managed without noise, for the sake of—the ladies, most of all, and next, for the sake of Captain Sabine. As a Frenchman and an officer, it would certainly be a lot worse for him than for us, if we landed him in any mess ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... will go on strike, more or less seriously as the case may be, or perhaps, rather, they will try and remember their usual course, and fail; they will therefore try some other, and will probably make a mess of it, as people generally do when they try to do things which they do not understand, unless indeed ...
— Life and Habit • Samuel Butler
... upon the bed and took stock of his position. "It doesn't seem to me," thought Johnny, "that I'm ever going to get out of this mess." Johnny, still muttering, unfastened his stays. "Thank God, that's off!" ejaculated Johnny piously, as he watched his form slowly expanding. "Suppose I'll be used to them before I've finished ...
— Tommy and Co. • Jerome K. Jerome
... iron kettles, with iron covers, and legs a few inches long. Under these kettles, out of doors, the fire is made, and coals put upon the flat covers. In this way the hoe-cake is baked in one, while the bacon is fried in the other. These two viands, with an occasional mess of greens or potatoes, constitute the bill of fare month in and month out. No wonder the poor girl lost her appetite. She was supplied from the Home with what she needed to make herself comfortable in the one very small room which she is fortunate ...
— American Missionary, Volume 50, No. 8, August, 1896 • Various
... could bring a boy to his bearings sooner than any man in the army." Yet he was a favorite with them all. There was a regular ovation among those "Godless horsemen" whenever he came into the Club, or into their mess-rooms; they hung upon his simplest words with a touchingly devout attention, and thought it was their own stupidity when they could see nothing in them to laugh at or admire; they wrote off all that they could remember of his sarcasms and repartees—generally strangely ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... taking sugar with our tea, and had by this time discovered its qualities, mixed a little in a spoon, which she at once put before the bill of the little humming-bird. At first it was far too much alarmed to taste the sweet mess. At length, growing accustomed to the gentle handling of the Indian girl, it poked out its beak and took a sip. "Ho, ho!" it seemed to say, "that is nice stuff!" and then it took another sip, and very soon seemed perfectly satisfied that it was not ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston
... amount of two penny loaves per day. Mohammed was a good type of this Arab abstemiousness and voracity. When he kept himself, he only took a small and most frugal meal once a day. Of his gluttony I may add, that I was obliged to separate his mess from that of Said when he dined with me. If not, he would eat Said's mess and his own before I could see what they were about. At last Mohammed began to soften and to confess adroitly, for he was one of the acutest Arabs I ever met with. He observed to me, in a whining ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... characters, nasal grooves— no internal nares— fins, spiracle, scales passing over lips, and cloaca. Cut off tail below the cloacal opening. The males are distinguished by the large claspers along the inner edge of the pelvic fin. Open up body cavity. Usually this is in a terrible mess in the fish supplied by dealers, through the post-mortem digestion of the stomach. Wash out all this under a stream of water from a tap or water-bottle. Frequently the testes are washed out of the male in this operation and ova from the loose ovaries in the female. Now compare with ...
— Text Book of Biology, Part 1: Vertebrata • H. G. Wells
... "Mess-John Urquhart writes for me, that am no clerk," said Randal, "and, to spare his pains, as he writes for the most of us, I say no more than this: come now, or come never, for the Maid will ride to see Paris in three days, or four, let the King follow ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... industry. When day was gone, 95 And from their occupations out of doors The Son and Father were come home, even then, Their labour did not cease; unless when all Turned to the [10] cleanly supper-board, and there, Each with a mess of pottage and skimmed milk, 100 Sat round the [11] basket piled with oaten cakes, And their plain home-made cheese. Yet when the [12] meal Was ended, Luke (for so the Son was named) And his old Father both betook themselves To such convenient ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... protests against lynching and lends its aid in favor of the enforcement of law. It works for the highest well-being of our soldiers and sailors and especially for suitable temperance canteens and a generous mess. It works for the protection of the home, especially against its chief enemy, the liquor traffic, and for the redemption of our Government from this curse, by the prohibition of the manufacture and sale of intoxicating ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... hearthrug—it was in Mr. Hornby's study, which I was tidying up at the time. Here I was found by Reuben, and a dreadful fright it gave him at first; and then he tore up his handkerchief to tie up the wounded finger, and you never saw such an awful mess as he got his hands in. He might have been arrested as a murderer, poor boy, from the condition he was in. It will make your professional gorge rise to learn that he fastened up the extemporised bandage with red tape, which he got from the writing table after rooting about among the ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman
... the Convent door. This was granted without difficulty: His sweet voice, and in spite of his patched eye, his engaging countenance, won the heart of the good old Porteress, who, aided by a Lay-Sister, was busied in serving to each his Mess. Theodore was bad to stay till the Others should depart, and promised that his request should then be granted. The Youth desired no better, since it was not to eat Soup that He presented himself at the Convent. He thanked the Porteress for ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... out of the mess quite so easily as his father wished. Two questions arose about Major Tifto, outside the racing world, but within the domain of the world of sport and pleasure generally, as to one of which it was impossible that Silverbridge should not express an opinion. ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... what a rotten mess I have made of myself. I'm not going to hand you a lot of mush, dad, but I want to try to do something that will give you reason to at least have hopes of rejoicing before I come home again. If I fail I'll come home anyway, and then neither one of us will ...
— The Efficiency Expert • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... cut a stick on my whole piece 'cause Ged claims he'll have a right to replevin an equal number of sticks cut, if the surveyors back up his contention. Nasty mess. The original line was run years and years ago, and they're not many alive today in the Big woods that know the ...
— Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp - or, The Old Lumberman's Secret • Annie Roe Carr
... they leave behind, what mud pies they make and little daily dug-up gardens of philosophy, ethics, literature, and general scandal; they will grow out of the need to make them—and meanwhile, making this sort of mess will help them grow. ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee
... The mess-tent is full, and the glasses are set, And the gallant Count Thomond is president yet; The veteran stands, like an uplifted lance, Crying—"Comrades, a health to the monarch of France!" With bumpers and ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... and now commands an army— do send me the newspapers.' These were certainly the words of his note, and, at the only time I heard him speak on the subject of religion he discomfited his adversary in an argument at the mess by 'Why, sir, you do not suppose that I believe in those fellows, Luther, Calvin, and ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... construction you happen to put upon them! Wake up, and realize what a fool you are to try to buck the conventions! What you need is to study other people's morals, not to be eternally justifying and analyzing your own. I don't know how you'll come out of this thing. Upon my word, it's the worst mess we ever got into since you misquoted Professor Diggs and he sued ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... to the depth of several feet. Much of the refuse of the army, including some dead animals, had been left upon the surface of the ground. Sickness was general among the inhabitants. Health was the exception. We had our quarters upon the levee, and before a long time had passed we organized a mess with General Strong, the officer in command at that point. For myself I drank only tea and water from Iowa ice. With this drink and a moderate diet, I preserved my health. It was our fate each evening to witness and endure a collision of the thunder ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 1 • George Boutwell
... young, for the babe in arms, and the strong man from his field of toil, the provision is the same, so in all our class-work we have the sameness of provision with almost as great disparity of capacity and need. If, out of the whole mental "mess of pottage" that can be taken which builds the student up in true wisdom and knowledge, it is fortunate; but if nothing is assimilated on which the mind could truly thrive, no fault is found with the provision, nor is resultant ignorance considered ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 21, August, 1891 • Various
... when we reached the court, an inspector met us with a very long face. "Look here, gentlemen," he said, "I'm afraid you've committed a very serious blunder. You've made a precious bad mess of it. You've got yourselves into a scrape; and, what's worse, you've got us into one also. You were a deal too smart with your sworn information. We've made inquiries about this gentleman, and we find the ...
— An African Millionaire - Episodes in the Life of the Illustrious Colonel Clay • Grant Allen
... appeared worried. He was walking to and fro in an aimless manner like a headless chicken. After having paced backward and forward past a pile of mess-chests several times, each time sizing it up, he suddenly began to mount it, planted himself on the very pinnacle, and with a fog-horn voice ...
— Bamboo Tales • Ira L. Reeves
... Surrendered were the sterner principles which instructed and enacted that the man who sought office or preferment from a British Minister unfitted himself as a standard-bearer or even a raw recruit in the ranks of Irish Nationality. The Irish birth-right was bartered for a mess of pottage and, worst of all, the fine instincts of Ireland's glorious youth were being corrupted and perverted. The cry of "Up the Mollies!" became the watchword of the new movement and the creed of selfishness and sectarianism supplanted the evangel of self-denial and self-sacrifice. It was ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... of the palsy, was left behind at the hide-house under the charge of Captain Arthur. The poor fellow wished very much to come home in the ship; and he ought to have been brought home in her. But a live dog is better than a dead lion, and a sick sailor belongs to nobody's mess; so he was sent ashore with the rest of the lumber, which was only in the way. By these diminutions, we were short-handed for a voyage round Cape Horn in the dead of winter. Besides S—— and myself, there were ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... specimen I had ever seen, an' the think that occurred to me was that some time a woman had rocked him to sleep an'—kissed him. That's the queer thing about me. My face don't change, but I never got into a mess in my life without some outlandish, foreign idea poppin' into my head an' tryin' to ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason
... to a boy who lived near his own home, who was on his way to the front and "over the top" in the Argonne mess. Three days afterward, at a hospital base where a hospital train was just discharging its load of wounded, Bok walked among the boys as they lay on their stretchers on the railroad platform waiting for bearers to carry them into the huts. As he approached one stretcher, a cheery voice called, ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok
... first took me into Leary's bookstore in Philadelphia, descanting with his usual gusto on its merits. Then and lastly he was keenly and wisely interested in various currents of local politics, society and finance, although he always considered the first a low mess, an arrangement or adjustment of many necessary things among the lower orders. He seemed to know or sense in some occult way everything that was going on in those various realms. His mind was so full and rich that merely to be with him was a delight. He gushed like a fountain, and yet not ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... do think you mid as well be quiet; You'll meaeke things wo'se, i'-ma'-be, by a riot. You'll get into a mess, Tom, I'm afeaerd; You'll goo vor wool, an' then ...
— Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect • William Barnes
... could hardly tell it was hair, it was that smooth. You'd nearly think somebody had painted it on his skull. He couldn't make me out when I said I'd rather starve than let a halfpenny of my money be used to make a mess of Glendalough, an' he talked about the necessity of havin' a broad outlook on the world. I suppose he went away an' told everybody that I was a reactionary an' a bad landlord. Oh, I can hear him spoutin' away about me ... he got into parliament ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... the presence of a person, without technical knowledge, once in each twenty-four hours. No filtering medium whatever is required, which is a great advantage for the following reasons: (1) Filtering materials require periodical cleaning and renewal, which not only occasion much trouble and mess, but are also frequently inefficiently performed. (2) Experience has shown that the filtering material, whether cloth, charcoal, or other substance, is extremely liable to become mouldy or musty, which makes the wafer both unwholesome and ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 392, July 7, 1883 • Various
... played in the yard. But I don't see why we mightn't bring him up. He's the watch-dog, and watch-dogs are only wanted there at night. It couldn't be any harm to have him up here only for half an hour or so. I'll wipe his paws on the mat so that he sha'n't make any mess. And he doesn't bark much unless he hears a noise at night, so I am sure ...
— Terry - Or, She ought to have been a Boy • Rosa Mulholland
... me, sir—'I told you to do it, ain't that enough?' Well, this Schuster, sir, he worried all the time. He got so he cut himself shaving. Damnedest thing. Oh, hell, maybe for the last week, every morning, he came out a bloody mess. Patches of toilet paper all over his face. 'I can't shave,' he'd say. 'My God, I can't shave.' He wasn't nervous, either. His hands were okay. They didn't shake. It's just that he couldn't shave. Like I say, he ...
— General Max Shorter • Kris Ottman Neville
... said reprovingly, 'you do make such a mess.' She brushed tobacco ashes from his coat. Mother, without looking up, went on talking to him about the bills-washing, school-books, boots, blouses, oil, and peat. And as she did so a puzzled expression was visible in his eyes akin to the expression in Jane ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... canoes, if the inhabitants should be so unreasonable as to refuse to lend them. These different parties assorted together into messes; any orders were given through their head man, and when food was obtained he distributed it to the mess. Each party knew its own spot in the encampment; and as this was always placed so that our backs should be to the east, the direction from whence the prevailing winds came, no time was lost in fixing the sheds of our encampment. They ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... of this World to those who are above it? In these, or not much wiser Thoughts, I had like to have lost my Place at the Chop-House, where every Man according to the natural Bashfulness or Sullenness of our Nation, eats in a publick Room a Mess of Broth, or Chop of Meat, in dumb Silence, as if they had no pretence to speak to each other on the Foot of being Men, except they ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... from Brighton on Monday, apparently quite recovered; in good looks, good voice, and good spirits. The horrible mess in which everybody is mixed up who has anything to do with Covent Garden, and in which she is so deeply involved, renewed her annoyances and vexations immediately on her arrival in town; but I passed the evening with her yesterday, and she did not seem the worse for ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... glimpse of which I could just catch under the foot of the fore-topsail, and I could see that the men were all alive down there with pleasurable excitement at the prospect of a possible fight. Young Hudson—a smart little fellow, barely fourteen years old, and the most juvenile member of our mess—was soon on deck again with the second lieutenant's telescope; but by this time the fog had shut the stranger in again, so, for the moment, friend Hennesey's curiosity had to remain unsatisfied. Not for long, however; the presumably French frigate had not been lost sight of more than ...
— A Pirate of the Caribbees • Harry Collingwood
... more than the English, and much separated at that. It was thought that he had the opportunity of beating them in detail.[184] The accounts accessible are too meagre to permit an accurate judgment upon this opinion, which probably reflected the mess-table and quarter-deck talk of the subordinate officers of the fleet. Hughes's own report of the position of the two fleets is vague, and in one important particular directly contradictory to the French. If the alleged opportunity offered, the English admiral in declining to use ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... past-master at making a mess of things," William continued. "Your coming back that way fits neatly into your departure. You needn't think people have forgotten that you ran off with another man's wife. And your coming back right now, just when the Montgomerys had buried the ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... managed, Sankey. I shall have to appoint you as caterer instead of Willesden. He pays honestly for all he wants for the mess, but I see that if we entrust the charge to you, we shall not have to draw for a farthing upon our treasure chest. And ...
— With Buller in Natal - A Born Leader • G. A. Henty
... mess it happened. The shifting of men had brought Novak in the same squad with Luke and they came in to sit at the long table together. Kulan eyed them narrowly from the ...
— Vulcan's Workshop • Harl Vincent
... heart, and sends you to breakfast ravening. They emptied a big tin dish of juicy fragments of fish—the blood-ends the cook had collected overnight. They cleaned up the plates and pans of the elder mess, who were out fishing, sliced pork for the midday meal, swabbed down the foc'sle, filled the lamps, drew coal and water for the cook, and investigated the fore-hold, where the boat's stores were stacked. It was another perfect day—soft, mild, ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling
... to-day. His name is Igluk. It is only the eldest boy of a family, in this tribe, who bears his father's surname. My eldest alone goes by the name of Mackintosh. His eldest will bear the same name, and so on. But these Eskimos make a sad mess of it. I doubt if my Scotch kinsmen would recognise us under the name of Makitok which ...
— The Giant of the North - Pokings Round the Pole • R.M. Ballantyne
... course through the big top Teddy had gathered up several handfuls of sawdust and dirt which he had stirred well into the water as he ran, making a pasty mess of it. ...
— The Circus Boys Across The Continent • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... a-goin' to touch me? Called in a watchman. Whole mess of 'em had cut. Who knows 'em? Nobody knows 'em. Man that was stuck never see the fellers as stuck him in all his life till then. Didn't know which one of 'em did it. Didn't know nothing. Don't now, an' never will, 'nless he meets 'em in hell. That's all. Feller's dead, an' who's a-goin' ...
— Little Classics, Volume 8 (of 18) - Mystery • Various
... squadron had passed Beveland, and entered the Belgian territory, Paul went down to recite his Greek, as usual. He could not help seeing that Mr. Hamblin's lip quivered, and that he was laboring under strong emotions, when he took his place at the mess table. The captain was hardly less embarrassed, but he hoped an opportunity would soon occur for him to perform some kind ...
— Dikes and Ditches - Young America in Holland and Belguim • Oliver Optic
... I learned that his name was Ivan Zourine; that he was a chief of a squadron of Hussars stationed then at Simbirsk recruiting soldiers, and that his quarters were at my inn. He invited me to mess with him, soldier-fashion, pot-luck. I accepted with pleasure, and we sat down to dinner. Zourine drank deeply, and invited me to drink also, saying that I must become accustomed to the service. He told stories of garrison life which made me laugh till I held my sides, and we rose from the ...
— Marie • Alexander Pushkin
... birthright for a mess of pottage, mother. I will not sell my honor for a sum of money, however acceptable that sum might be. It would never prosper with me, if ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... public roads. But Hyldy was all docility. He ate his way through the grant, the office stationery, and the central tin dump with the most disarming naivete. He was the spoilt darling of every mess. The reflected glory which Isinglass and myself ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug 15, 1917 • Various
... to visitors, as the man who had failed at West Point, and who was working his way up from the ranks, and the men of his company thought that he thought, God help him, that he was too good for them, and made his life hell. Do you suppose I'd show my musket to men of my old mess, and have the girls I've danced with see me marching up and down a board walk with a gun on my shoulder? Do you see me going on errands for the men I've hazed, and showing them my socks and shirts at inspection so they can give me a good mark for being a clean and tidy soldier? No! I'll not enlist. ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis
... about 6, and having dressed (which is not a long process) he starts work. Until 10, if you go into his mess, you will see him "grinding" away at his text-book, under the most amazing conditions for work—usually stretched out upon his bed or sitting on the side of it. The room is almost always shared with some other occupant, usually with two or three or more other ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... a barrack-room, with a mess-table, and a group of intoxicated Celtic officers telling funny stories, and giving challenges to duel. I see a young Irish gentleman capable of performing prodigies of valor. I learn incidentally that the acme of all heroism is the cornetcy of a dragoon regiment. I hear a good deal of French! ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... the sheer steep of Leucas, far seen of mariners and washed by the Ionian sea, receive of sailors this mess of hand- kneaded barley bread and a libation mingled in a little cup, and the gleam of a brief-shining lamp that drinks with half-saturate mouth from a sparing oil-flask; in recompence whereof be gracious, and ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... lamentable change, I am afraid, in this ancient and goodly institution of civic banquets. People used to come to them, a few hundred years ago, for the sake of being jolly; they come now with an odd notion of pouring sober wisdom into their wine by way of wormwood-bitters, and thus make such a mess of it that the wine and wisdom reciprocally spoil ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... through Front Royal but no enemy was found. He then recrossed and took position on commanding ground half a mile or so back from the river, and ordered the horses to be unsaddled and fed and the men to cook their dinner. Headquarters wagons were brought up, mess chests taken out, and we were just gathering around them to partake of a hastily prepared meal, when Fitzhugh Lee's cavalry, which had stealthily approached the ford, charged across and made a dash at our pickets. Major H.H. Vinton, of the Sixth ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd
... should only make a mess of so much money," said he, laughing. "She understands how to manage"—meaning that she had a talent for administration of affairs—"five thousand times better than I do. Her father has taught her all sorts of good things, ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... "Dicky Duff," Paddy declaring that it required no reformation. An old mate who was always grumbling, and two young one who had just passed their examination, with an assistant-surgeon, two clerks, and a master's assistant, made up the mess; and pretty closely stowed they were in the narrow confines of the berth. The only other person worthy of note was the third warrant-officer, the carpenter, who rejoiced in the designation of Caractacus Chessle, the name of the British hero having been bestowed on him by his father, ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... was behind the whole mess. In spite of Boyd's horrified refusal to believe such a thing, Malone was sure of it. Three years ago, of course, he wouldn't have considered the notion either. But since then a great many things had happened, and his horizons had widened. ...
— Supermind • Gordon Randall Garrett
... serpents. I used to wonder who found it worth while to hire us to bring such bizarre and useless things into England. Once one of the twenty-five hundred weight barrels of palm oil slipped from the slings and fell on the deck with a soft crash. It smashed like an egg, of course. Indeed, as the mess burst and splashed all over everybody on the after-deck, it was not unlike an enormous yolk in its brilliant gamboge colour, with the split and dismembered staves lying radially round it like dirty white of egg. And someone muttered that 'there was twenty quid gone.' The leopards, too, struck me ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... have deranged all his deeply meditated schemes of policy. He therefore wisely determined that the pursuers, if they overtook him, should be hailed in their own mother tongue, and adjured, by an admiral under whom they had served, and whom they esteemed, not to fight against old mess-mates for Popish tyranny. Such an appeal might possibly avert a conflict. If a conflict took place, one English commander would be opposed to another; nor would the pride of the islanders be wounded by learning that Dartmouth had been compelled to ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... dis matter dat I vish to see you, my dear sare. I persvade der man to sell ten cases. He be very nearly vot you call in der mess. He valk into de Gazette next week. He shtarve now. I pity him. De ten cases cost him ten pounds. I give fifty shilling—two pound ten. He buy meat for de childs, and is tankful. I take ten shillings for my trouble. Der Christian satisfied mit ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... a few months, however, there were even graver doubts as to the wisdom of having entrusted the enterprise to Grant, for by the end of March, 1863, the general opinion was that no one could have made a worse mess of it than he was making, and that it was hopeless to expect anything as long as he ...
— On the Trail of Grant and Lee • Frederick Trevor Hill
... the wagon for you, officer, only I'm afraid these people might overpower you and get away with that trunk of pictures. You see what a nice mess they've been making of my picture gallery. Why, if I hadn't happened in to-night they would have walked off with half a ...
— Officer 666 • Barton W. Currie
... quarters were the scene of extravagance and amusement. Jugurtha recommended himself on the one side to Scipio by activity and good service, while on the other he made acquaintances among the high-bred gentlemen in the mess-rooms. He found them in themselves dissolute and unscrupulous. He discovered, through communications which he was able with their assistance to open with their fathers and relatives at Rome, that a man with money might do what he pleased. Micipsa's treasury ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... Here was I, who had scarcely been at all to blame, humiliated, an outcast, so to speak, while Angel, who had made the beastly mess, went unscathed. As for The Seraph! I could scarcely bear to think of him with his tell-tale ...
— Explorers of the Dawn • Mazo de la Roche
... manage the smile which should have greeted this sally. She looked down soberly at the white-pine top of the kitchen table and said, "I guess there is enough sparrow-grass up in the garden for a mess, too, if you'd ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... for money, into the shoe store and you get shoes for money, but go into the saloon and the bargain is all on one side. It's bar-gain on one side and bar-loss on the other; ill-gotten gains on one side, mis-spent wages on the other, a mess of pottage on one side and the birthright of some mother's boy on ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain
... Ethel, 'it is a great mess, but they are to have a regular cabinet, when Richard has time, or Aubrey has ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... heating, he squeezed the sour grapes and plums into what Joe called a "mush," mixed it with a spoonful of sugar, and emptied it into the pot. He also skimmed a quantity of the fat from the remains of the turkey soup and added that to the mess, which he stirred with earnest diligence till it boiled down into a sort ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... had various kinds of colored and colorless wines and brandies, with unpronouncable names, imported from China in little crockery jugs, and which he offered to us in dainty little miniature wash-basins of porcelain. He offered us a mess of birds'-nests; also, small, neat sausages, of which we could have swallowed several yards if we had chosen to try, but we suspected that each link contained the corpse of a mouse, and therefore refrained. Mr. Sing had in his store a thousand articles of merchandise, curious ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... that they had recourse to tears to work themselves up when they wanted to make a scene. But Astrid Bagge, a gentle, quiet housewife and mother, declared she kept all her troubles for the evenings when her husband dined at the volunteer's mess, because he hated to see anyone crying. Then she sat alone and in darkness and wept away the accumulated annoyances ...
— The Dangerous Age • Karin Michaelis
... a better bit of work," he commented as he washed it off. "Now let's get this thing out of the window and clear up the mess." ...
— Baseball Joe Around the World - Pitching on a Grand Tour • Lester Chadwick
... her, and then ambled over to the first chair and slipped into the high seat. His reflection in the mirror, strangely gray in the dim light, made him groan. His clothes were a mess, and he needed a shave. If only ...
— Dream Town • Henry Slesar
... theory, how to make The matutinal tea and coffee, And, when at school, I used to bake A gruesome mess described as toffee; But these, which form my whole cuisine, Are scarce the kind of thing ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 14, 1893 • Various
... annoyed by the pitiful attempt to cling to a revealed secret. "The time for bluffing is past, man! The whole game is up. You'll be lucky to escape a prison term, even if you get out of to-night's mess. That's what I'm here for. Barricade the house, first of all. I noticed you have iron shutters on the windows, and that they're new. You must have been looking for something like ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... the most damnable mess that politics have ever been in in my time. Gladstone and Dizzy seem to cap one another in folly and in pretence, and I do not know which has made the greatest ass of himself. Blessed are they that hold their tongue and wait to be wise after the event. To this sagacious ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... outfit will make excellent postcards, modern methods having got rid of the dark room and much of the mess, and postcard-size prints can be pasted on ...
— Epilepsy, Hysteria, and Neurasthenia • Isaac G. Briggs
... MESS. O wretched hapless daughter of the chief Agamemnon, revered Electra, hear the unfortunate words which I am ...
— The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. • Euripides
... now hurtful to me to look upon, and he clutched my hand, deeply moved, though it was another house with its little things he saw. I was ashamed to harass him thus, but he had not a sufficiency of the little things, and besides my impulsiveness had plunged me into a deuce of a mess, so I went on distastefully. Was there no profession in this age of specialism for taking away children's garments from houses where they were suddenly become a pain? Could I sell them? Could I give them to the needy, who would probably ...
— The Little White Bird - or Adventures In Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... been too long in the water. You look quite cold and blue. I'd lay hold of one of the sweeps if I were you. It will warm you to help pullin'. Here, hallo!" he shouted, "who's let all that net go trailing overboard? Here's a mess! we shall have to run it all through ...
— A Terrible Coward • George Manville Fenn
... "Then you wouldn't mess around in Cape Cod Bay. You'd set a course as far from other craft and harbours as you could. If they went south they'd be among boats right along, and they'd know that we'd work the wires and that folks would be ...
— The Adventure Club Afloat • Ralph Henry Barbour
... out of their dark roofs and corners. Around the anvils the children were watching the work, or ran to fetch water to the hissing, red-hot metal; and Marius too watched, as he took his hasty mid-day refreshment, a mess of chestnut-meal and cheese, while the swelling surface of a great copper water-vessel grew flowered all over with tiny petals under the skilful strokes. Towards dusk, a frantic woman at the roadside, stood and cried out the words of some philter, or malison, in verse, with weird ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... then two opposing clients,—the two claimants to the vast property as to which a cause was to come on for trial in a few weeks,—did bewilder Mr. Flick. "I suppose the Solicitor-General sees his way, but he may be in a mess yet," said Mr. Flick. Mr. Norton only scratched his head. It was ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope
... consent to sell our birthright for so poor a mess of pottage as this petty jealousy offers. A teachable spirit in matters of which we are ignorant, is usually as profitable and respectable as abundant self-conceit, and rendering to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, quite as honest ...
— Farm drainage • Henry Flagg French
... could be finer than to see him snatch away a barbed-wire entanglement of blackberry-bushes, clutch a three-inch thorn sapling with his hairy left, and with one swing of his terrible right cut the taproot through. I had figured that it would take a month to clear away that mess along the brook, but on the evening of the fifth day Pop had the last bit of its tangle cut and piled. Of such stuff were warriors of the olden time. Given armor and a battle-ax, and nothing could have stood before him. One could imagine him ...
— Dwellers in Arcady - The Story of an Abandoned Farm • Albert Bigelow Paine
... Mr. Blake said. "Give him half an hour's rest, and he'd keep up with us back to Killicuddery. But where is your horse, and how did you get into this mess? The boy tells me he ...
— Friends, though divided - A Tale of the Civil War • G. A. Henty
... sent messes unto them from before him; but Benjamin's mess was five times so much as any ...
— Diversions in Sicily • H. Festing Jones
... a lengthy pause he turned and pocketed Mordaunt's keys, and rang the bell for Holmes to clear up the mess on ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... to go a-visiting any distance from home, and the wind was ahead, I might have to wait days, maybe, for a change; and I could see, too, that these things could not be any use at all in a gale; if you tried to run before the wind, you would make a mess of it, for there isn't anyway to shorten sail—like reefing, you know—you have to take it ALL in—shut your feathers down flat to your sides. That would LAND you, of course. You could lay to, with your head to the wind—that is the best you could do, and right hard work you'd find it, too. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... beautiful, as you will see. The Gingerbread family have never been as foolish as some of the other cakes. Wedding is the worst; such extravagance in the way of wine and spice and fruit I never saw, and such a mess to eat when it's done! I don't wonder people get sick; serves 'em right." And Snap flung down a pan with such a bang ...
— The Louisa Alcott Reader - A Supplementary Reader for the Fourth Year of School • Louisa M. Alcott
... "spiritualist" philosophers were to be asked what is the philosophy of these proceedings, he would probably reply with a mess of balderdash pretty ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... me, viewing it all round, a wonderful good chance. An opening that isn't likely to come in one's way twice. Mr. Bates' son has bin and got himself into such a mess over a horse-racing transaction that he's had to make a bolt of it. I can't tell you the facts, because I don't rightly know them; but it's bad—something to do with checks that'll put him to hidin' for ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... unpleasant," Wally repeated. "Aunts haven't much sympathy, you know. They don't like mess, and I was no end messy. We won't talk about it, I think, thank you." Wally rolled over on his back, produced an apple and bit ...
— A Little Bush Maid • Mary Grant Bruce
... the darkness and confusion there was a doubt about who had led the retreat, but Dick was blamed and made no defense. In spite of this, he was acquitted at the inquiry, perhaps because he was a favorite and Colonel Challoner was well known upon the frontier; but the opinion of the mess was against him. He left the service, and the ...
— The Intriguers • Harold Bindloss
... again to-day about eleven. The length of all marches has to be regulated by water and wood, and as the first stream on the road to Camp Supply is at Bluff Creek, only ten miles from here, there was no necessity for an early start. This gives us an opportunity to get fresh supplies for our mess chests, ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... the dark mess shack was thick with steam from the kitchen at one end. The men filed past the counter, holding out their mess kits, into which the K. P.'s splashed the food. Occasionally someone stopped to ask for a larger ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... of the best French work, and it has the breadth of English, but never falls into confusion, clumsiness or extravagance. Mr. Belloc does not experience difficulties with his relative pronouns or bog himself in a mess of parentheses. The habit of exposition has taught him to disentangle his sentences and ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell
... distinct as the other. It was all very well to say, 'Follow your nose;' but if I looked down one road that would be following my nose, and so it would be when I looked down either of the other roads. I had to chance it; and a pretty mess I made of it, for I completely lost my way, and didn't get to my journey's end till after dark.—Now, some of these scientific gents as has got too wise to believe in the old-fashioned Bible and its plain meaning, what sort of directions ...
— True to his Colours - The Life that Wears Best • Theodore P. Wilson
... and I don't want publicity before I get something out of this dirty mess that scoundrel left behind!" cried Skidder, snapping his eyes like mad and swinging his arms. "I got to get something, haven't I? Isn't this property mine? Can't ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... laboratory. His mother said she counted, at one time, no less than two hundred bottles of chemicals, all shrewdly marked POISON, so that no one but himself would dare to touch them. Before long the lad took up so much room in his mother's cellar with his 'mess,' as she called it, that she told him to take it ...
— Radio Boys Cronies • Wayne Whipple and S. F. Aaron
... careful about what you tell Us, Baron," said the Queen. "And, really, there was no need to bring those dreadful heads into our Throne Room, making all that horrible mess! It's a piece of bad taste which, perhaps—in an under gardener—please have them removed directly. Well, young man," she continued to the indignant Mirliflor, who, it need not be said, had nothing to do with the gruesome introduction of the heads, "I'm sure we are all very much obliged ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... was a question of performing day after day the same rather unnecessary duties, seeing the same people, listening to the same chatter, the same jokes, the same chaff. And added to the incurable dulness of the mess was the irksome feeling of being merely an overgrown schoolboy at the beck and call of every incompetent and foolish senior. Life was too short to waste in such solemn trifling, masquerading in a ridiculous costume which had to be left ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham
... and confession' of Gabriel Le Noir, confided to me to be used in restitution after his decease. But, come! There is the second bell. Our mess are going in to breakfast; join us and afterwards you and I will retire and compare notes," said Herbert, taking the arm of his friend as they followed the moving ...
— Capitola's Peril - A Sequel to 'The Hidden Hand' • Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth
... Brier to choose a lunatic asylum to go to. What a wooden-headed old fellow he must be, to have got the affair into such a mess. Do? I should do nothing. You certainly don't suppose Howard is really concerned in the affair. Not he; that sort of thing isn't in his line. It'll all come right enough by and by, so, don't fidget yourself, my ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 5, March, 1878 • Various
... a woeful mess I've made of my life; and I've had so many chances, my dear, that I dare not hope for one more. And I don't blame ...
— Till the Clock Stops • John Joy Bell
... administering the Government in the true spirit of its institutions. The alarm, which pervaded all political circles so soon as this was understood, is remembered well. It was a bomb exploded under the mess-table, scattering the mess and breaking to fragments all their cunningly devised machinations for rule and preferment—an open declaration of war against all cliques and all dictation. His inaugural was startling, and his first message explicit. His ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks |
