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Gruel   /grˈuɪl/   Listen
Gruel

noun
1.
A thin porridge (usually oatmeal or cornmeal).






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Gruel" Quotes from Famous Books



... be thoroughly flushed, the wet sheet pack or tepid bath used frequently, and cold wet compresses applied to the afflicted limb. The patient may drink cold water freely, and the diet should consist mainly of Indian or wheat-meal gruel. ...
— The Royal Road to Health • Chas. A. Tyrrell

... strolled with me round my garden on the following morning that he was regarding my paltry, unadventurous life with a sincere pity, as the life of one who had stolen from the brisk encounters of wit and revelry to a quiet bedroom and a basin of gruel. And yet the curious thing was that I felt no kind of resentment about it at all. I did not envy him his youth and his pride; indeed, I felt glad to have escaped from it, if I was like what he was at his age. The world seemed full to me of a whole range ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson

... becoming a hypochondriac, or you are treating me to half confidences. Your cold is not worth speaking about. Go home, and get to bed, and take a basin of gruel, or a glass of something hot, after you are in bed, and your cold will be well in the morning. But there is something more than a cold the matter with you. What has come to you, to make a few rheumatic pains and a slight sore throat seem ...
— The Uninhabited House • Mrs. J. H. Riddell

... ground, established himself as my nurse. A doctor was sent for, who, being homaeopathic, gave me as much medicine, in the course of a fortnight's attendance, as would have laid on the point of a needle. They fed me on water-gruel, and I speedily became a skeleton above ground. But, after all, I have many precious recollections connected with ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... delighted to see that there were women on board. Rectus and I were carried below, too, and three or four rough looking fellows, who didn't speak a word that we could understand, set to work at us and took off our clothes, and rubbed us with warm stuff, and gave us some hot tea and gruel, and I don't know what else, and put us into hammocks, and stuffed blankets around us, and made me feel warmer, and happier, and more grateful and sleepy than I thought it was in me to feel. I expect Rectus felt the same. In about five minutes, ...
— A Jolly Fellowship • Frank R. Stockton

... Isabella," said he, fondly taking her hand, and interrupting for a few moments her busy labors for some one of her five children, "how long it is, how terribly long since you were here! And how tired you must be after your journey! You must go to bed early, my dear,—and I recommend a little gruel to you before you go. You and I will have a nice basin of gruel together. My dear Emma, suppose we all have a ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various

... christening is that a feature of the latter is a christening cake and caudle. The christening cake is generally a white "lady" cake elaborately iced, sometimes with the baby's initials, and garlands of pink sugar roses. And although according to cook-books caudle is a gruel, the actual "caudle" invariably served at christenings is a hot eggnog, drunk out of little punch cups. One is supposed to eat the cake as a sign that one partakes of the baby's hospitality, and is therefore its friend, and to drink the caudle to its ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post

... constitutions of the people who lived chiefly upon oatmeal; and, instead of being inflammatory, he asserted, that it was a cooling sub-acid, balsamic and mucilaginous; insomuch, that in all inflammatory distempers, recourse was had to water-gruel, and ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett

... down on Ujjayini with their round faces, the crystal windows, from which strings of pearls are dangling. The porter sits there and snoozes as comfortably as a professor. The crows which they tempt with rice-gruel and curdled milk will not eat the offering, because they can't distinguish it from the mortar. ...
— The Little Clay Cart - Mrcchakatika • (Attributed To) King Shudraka

... screaming, wailing, stamping their feet, and beating their breasts, renouncing (in the earliest times) even their clothes, dwelling, and belongings to the dead, removing to mourning-sheds of clay, fasting, or eating only rice gruel, sleeping on straw with a clod for a pillow, and speaking only on subjects of death and burial. Office and public duties were resigned, and marriage, music, and separation from the ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner

... Green, and as I stopped at the village inn to refresh my horse with a pail of gruel and myself with a glass of ale, who should come up but old Tawney, Tom Cuffe's second horseman! Besides being an adept at his calling, familiar with every cross-road and almost every field in the county, he knew ...
— Mr. Fortescue • William Westall

... says—"As the tanks dry up the fish congregate in the little pools till at last you find them in thousands in the moistest parts of the beds, rolling in the blue mud which is at that time about the consistence of thick gruel." ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent

... Well—this fellow, Sir, took nature by the heels and capsized her, as we say. I have a strong idea that he had sold himself to the devil. Well—what does he do, but he catches salmon and puts them into tanks, and every day added more and more salt, till the water was as thick as gruel, and the fish could hardly wag their tails in it. Then he threw in whole pepper corns, half-a-dozen pounds at a time, till there was enough. Then he began to dilute with vinegar, until his pickle was complete. The fish did not half like it at first; but habit is every ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat

... blood, the casein of cheese and the legumin of chickpeas—undergo a similar modification, in varying degrees. Fed, from the moment of leaving the egg, on any one of these substances, the worms thrive very well, provided that they escape drowning when the gruel becomes too clear; they would not fare better on a corpse. And, as a general rule, there is not much danger of going under: the matter only half liquefies; it becomes a running pea soup, ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre

... another field, subduing by the way a band of mutinous teamsters into her firm friends and allies; or at the terrible battle at Antietam, where the regular army supplies did not arrive till three days afterward, furnishing from her wagons cordials and bandages for the wounded, making gruel for the fainting men from the meal in which her medicines had been packed, extracting with her own hand a bullet from the cheek of a wounded soldier, tending the fallen all day, with her throat parched and her face blackened by ...
— Modern Americans - A Biographical School Reader for the Upper Grades • Chester Sanford

... general good. He says, "The remedy I gave was one drachm of nitrous acid (not nitric, that has foiled me), one ounce of peppermint-water or camphor mixture, and 40 drops of tincture of opium. A fourth part every three or four hours in a cupful of thin gruel. The belly should be covered with a succession of hot cloths dry; bottles of hot water to the feet, if they can be obtained; constant and small sippings of finely strained gruel, or sago, or tapioca; no spirit, no wine, no fermented ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 493, June 11, 1831 • Various

... Roland in Holland had better be committed to Mr. Dumas in Holland, as lawsuits must be always attended to by some person on the spot. For the same reason, I think that of La Vayse and Puchilberg should be managed by the agent at L'Orient, and Gruel's by the agent at Nantes. I shall always be ready to assist the agents of L'Orient and Nantes in any way in my power; but were the details to be left to me, they would languish necessarily, on account of my distance from the place, and perhaps suffer too, for want ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson

... the gruel was in!" cried Scrooge, starting off again, and going round the fireplace. "There's the door by which the Ghost of Jacob Marley entered! There's the corner where the Ghost of Christmas Present sat! There's the window where I saw the wandering ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various

... demulcent drinks, such as barley-water, white of egg and water, linseed-tea and gruel (but not oils), with a hypodermic injection of morphine ...
— Aids to Forensic Medicine and Toxicology • W. G. Aitchison Robertson

... open the drawing-room door? No; it was stealthily opened by the hand of Briggs. Briggs had been on the watch. Briggs too well heard the creaking Firkin descend the stairs, and the clink of the spoon and gruel-basin the neglected ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray

... She left the gruel to simmer by the fire, and taking the coverlid from the bed, spread it over the arm-chair, then she lifted the sick woman as if she had been a child, and placed her in it. Then she put a pillow behind her, and ...
— Allison Bain - By a Way she knew not • Margaret Murray Robertson

... that way himself. He really does. But he is a wonderful person; only I feel sorry for his wife sometimes. She's quite a cultured person. Has been wealthy, you know. She was a New York society girl. Just imagine it; out in these wilds taking gruel to the dirty little Indians! How she ever came to do it! Of course she adores him, but I can't really believe she is happy. No woman could be quite blind enough to give up everything in the world for one man, no matter how good he was. Do you think she could? It wasn't ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill

... Kiestut his way, To whose crosletted doys {32} bitter gruel! There is amber like gravel, cloth worthy to travel, And priests deck'd in diamond ...
— Targum • George Borrow

... other, encircling its walls. Here and there on the floor are cots, which Mr. Praiseworthy informs us are for those whose cases he would not give much for. Black nurses are busily attending the sick property; some are carrying bowls of gruel, others rubbing limbs and quieting the cries of the frantic, and again supplying water to quench thirst. On a round table that stands in the centre of the room is a large medicine-chest, disclosing ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams

... tea in a jug, with boiling water poured over it and dry bread broken into it, formed the breakfast, which lasted five minutes; dinner, at one, was of broth or curry; and at eight at night they had some meal or gruel. If wine were sent them, it was reserved for the communions or for the sick. Swartz only began, very late in life, to take a single glass in the middle of ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... I do all the work in the house myself. I know how to make gruel, and porridge, and beef tea, and soup; and mon pere ...
— Make or Break - or, The Rich Man's Daughter • Oliver Optic

... than she otherwise would do, than they would fit a man to undergo great fatigue for days together, or to go through a walking tour in Switzerland. A tumbler of one-third milk and two-thirds good grit gruel taken three times a day will have greater influence in increasing the quantity of milk than any conceivable amount ...
— The Mother's Manual of Children's Diseases • Charles West, M.D.

... the ship's provision is Beefe and Porke, Fish, Butter, Cheese, Pease, Pottage, Water-Gruel, Bisket, ...
— The Mayflower and Her Log, Complete • Azel Ames

... "Had some gruel and went to bed," said Bonteen. "They say these scenes in the House never disturb him at home." From which conversations it may be inferred that Mr. Monk and Messrs. Ratler and Bonteen did not agree in their ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope

... uninviting breakfast of dry bread and water gruel, she was placed in a cab by one of the men who had accompanied them from the station on ...
— Little Folks (November 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various

... may be eaten without further preparation, but it is generally made into a gruel by mixing with water. Alone it is very sweet, and berries of the aromatic sumac, and frequently walnuts, are crushed with it to give ...
— The North American Indian • Edward S. Curtis

... much surprised at the new visitor, and the way in which he had been caught, hastened to get some gruel ready for him. As soon as it was ready they gave it to the boy, who then fell back on the bed with exhaustion, and was soon in a sound sleep. He slept soundly all that night; and the next morning, when he awoke, he ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat

... sir! I'll just fetch a little sewing, and then I'll sit as long as you please. But you've caught cold: I saw you shivering, and you must have some gruel ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte

... twice a day with one ounce of borax and one fluid ounce of myrrh mixed in one quart of water or a mild solution of Pratts Dip and Disinfectant. Give Pratts Cow Remedy daily. If the mouth is very sore give the remedies in gruel form. Feed animal on regular gruel feed. If it occurs in calves, give Pratts Cow Remedy with milk and use ...
— Pratt's Practical Pointers on the Care of Livestock and Poultry • Pratt Food Co.

... about that," I answered emphatically. "He is badly hit, and he takes it pretty well considering. I know I shouldn't have taken my gruel so coolly. In fact, that is just what I don't like about him. One never knows what is going on behind ...
— The Motor Pirate • George Sidney Paternoster

... suppose I am going to speak of those cattle that way? Do you suppose my subscribers are going to stand such gruel as ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... let Mrs. Lovell see!" Edward echoed. "She has seen it lots of times, my dear Algy. Come; this looks lively. I was sure she would soon be sick of the water-gruel of peace." ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... be taken between dinner and supper but water. And after the supper hour, a walk out into the cool night air should be enjoyed with the husband and on going to bed about ten P. M., an eggnog or glass of milk may be taken. At the close of the other meals a cup of oatmeal gruel or milk or any other ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler

... Had they been left behind? I ran down below, and I had scarcely reached the bottom of the steps when I met Miss Minturn's maid. 'It seems to me,' she said, sharply, 'that the people on this ship are neglecting their duty. There's nobody in the kitchen, and I want some gruel.' 'My good woman,' said I, 'who do you want it for?' 'Who!' she replied; 'why, for Mr. Minturn, of course; and Miss Minturn may like ...
— The Rudder Grangers Abroad and Other Stories • Frank R. Stockton

... it, though it is occasionally ejected in a curdled state. A child of a week old, which had been taken from the breast of its dying mother, and had by some uncommon error been suffered to take no food but water-gruel, became sick and griped in twenty-four hours, and was convulsed on the second day, and died on the third! When all young quadrupeds, as well as children, have this natural food of milk prepared for them, the analogy is so strong in favour of its salubrity, that a person should have ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin

... in it, set it on the fire, and pouring some water in it, began to stir it vigorously. It was thick and slimy, and altogether a most repulsive-looking mixture, and Mrs. Murray no longer wondered at Macdonald Dubh's distaste for gruel. ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor

... printing-press is to be one of the wheels of the Lord's chariot. The good newspapers will overcome the bad ones, and the honey-bees will outnumber the hornets. Instead of the three or four religious newspapers that once lived on gruel and pap, sitting down once a week on some good man's door-step to rest, thankful if not kicked off, now many of the denominations have stalwart journals that swing their scythe through the sins of the world, and are avant ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage

... required. One night, however, when the dumb, sad bit of an Indian was with Moody, the man was aroused from his dreams by some one's presence. It was Barney, too worried to sleep, surreptitiously come to the tiny captive's fruit-box cradle, and gently urging the wee bronze man to eat of some gruel prepared at that silent hour of the darkness. He was willing that Moody should have the credit of taking good care of the motherless baby, if only the child could be made a little more happy. Thereafter, by night and day, the cook was ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various

... gruel of fine oatmeal, sift it, mix it first to a thick batter with a little cold water, and then put it into the saucepan of boiling water. Stir it all the time it is boiling, lifting the spoon gently up and down, and letting the gruel fall slowly back ...
— The Whitehouse Cookbook (1887) - The Whole Comprising A Comprehensive Cyclopedia Of Information For - The Home • Mrs. F.L. Gillette

... September we went to a very good boarding-house in Philadelphia, kept by Mrs. Sandgren. She possessed and showed me Tegner's original manuscript of "Anna and Axel." I confess that I never cared over-much for Tegner, and that I infinitely prefer the original Icelandic Saga of Frithiof to his sago-gruel imitation of ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland

... joining him we received the melancholy intelligence, that our best draught mare had just breathed her last—another lay rolling on the ground in agony—and the third appeared but little better. After moistening their mouths with water, we made gruel for them with flour and water, and gave it to them warm: this they drank readily, and appeared much revived by it, so that I fully hoped we should save both of them. After a little time we gave each about four gallons ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre

... along to the back door, and lifted the latch. His grandmother stopped with a bowl of gruel in her hand, and said, "O, Horace!" that was all; but she could say no more for tears. She set down the bowl, and went up to him, trying to speak; but the words ...
— Captain Horace • Sophie May

... agent may be administered in doses of from five to ten drops, largely diluted in water or gruel. ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce

... written in vigorous blank verse. Queen Common-Sense is conspired against by Firebrand, Priest of the Sun, by Law, and by Physic. Law is incensed because she has endeavoured to make his piebald jargon intelligible; Physic because she has preferred Water Gruel to all his drugs; and Firebrand because she would restrain the power of Priests. Some of the strokes must have gone home to those receptive hearers who, as one contemporary account informs us, "were dull ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson

... of each half a drachm, in warm ale or water gruel, or what you like best, at night, going ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous

... amusing to see around poor plank sheds, the only tents our soldiers had, the most magnificent furniture, silk canopies, priceless Siberian furs, and cashmere shawls thrown pell-mell with silver dishes; and then to see the food served on these princely dishes,—miserable black gruel, and pieces of horseflesh still bleeding. Good ammunition-bread was worth at this time treble all these riches, and there came a time when they had ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... not, neither to Podden place or his lodging in the neighborhood. Days elapse and still he comes not; even Poole does not know where he has gone; even Poole has not seen him! But that worthy is now laid up with a serious rheumatic fever—confined to his room and a water gruel. And Jasper Losely is not the man to intrude himself on the privacy of a sick chamber. Mrs. Crane, more benevolent, visits Poole cheers him up—gets him a nurse—writes to Uncle Sam. Poole blesses her. He ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... at night but omitted the black draught in the morning. He thought an emetic better, and secured it by tartarized antimony. Between the puke and the purge his patients were fed on stale bread, skim milk, and water-gruel. And this heroic practice he pursued day after day, for weeks and months together, in spinal caries, hip caries, tuberculosis, urethral stricture ...
— Pioneer Surgery in Kentucky - A Sketch • David W. Yandell

... outbuildings for the purpose of ascertaining whether the numerous watchmen were at their posts, peered into the kitchen (where, under the pretence of seeing whether his servants were being properly fed, he made a light meal of cabbage soup and gruel), rated the said servants soundly for their thievishness and general bad behaviour, and then returned to his room. Meditating in solitude, he fell to thinking how best he could contrive to recompense his guest for the latter's measureless ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol

... by the bed stood a wooden bowl containing gruel. The woman had not eaten for days, and the stuff had a thick scum on it. The place was very stuffy, for it was a hot and sickly autumn day and skins which darkened the window holes kept out the little freshness that was in the air. Beside ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan

... matrimony. Some one will say: 'To have some one to care for him when sick.' This is complimentary to woman—indicating that she marries to become a nurser of the sick and old. And must a man endure all the pains and throes of years of matrimonial cyclones that he may have some one to stew his gruel during the brief space of his last illness? If a bachelor have money, he will have friends to care for him, no fear, and if he be poor, a wife is the last thing in the world he needs. She divides his ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern

... matter was that the child was half-starved. Still the doctor insisted that she should have nothing but mutton or rice gruel, and those only in very small quantities. Under such treatment she wasted to a mere shadow of ...
— A Little Florida Lady • Dorothy C. Paine

... is not so much a story as a sort of essay. The average reader will therefore turn from it with a shudder. The condition of the average reader's mind is such that he can take in nothing but fiction. And it must be thin fiction at that—thin as gruel. Nothing else will ...
— Further Foolishness • Stephen Leacock

... so conscious of it all? The answer is—by experience. He knows because any day he may see a gentleman enter a restaurant and ask himself, "What shall I have to eat today? I will have such and such a dish," while all the time the poor man will have nothing to eat that day but gruel. There are men, too—wretched busybodies—who walk about merely to see if they can find some wretched tchinovnik or broken-down official who has got toes projecting from his boots or his hair uncut! And when they have found such a one they make a report of the circumstance, ...
— Poor Folk • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... drink, their hose and their shirts and all their other needs and affairs, and the same children find elsewhere a good home and good counsel from some other woman, who receives them and takes thought to warm them with some poor gruel with her and to give them a bed and keep them tidy, mending their hosen, breeches, shirts, and other garments, then those lads cleave to her and desire to be with her, and to sleep warm between her breasts, and are altogether ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power

... suppose Frank is locked up there!" cried the old lady, "with a basin of gruel and a book of Watts's hymns." A servant entered at this moment, answering Lady Walham's summons. "Peacock, the Countess of Kew says that she proposes to stay here this evening. Please to ask the ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray

... said the earl, "but I thought a derringer was a kind of dish that babies ate gruel out of." He ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris

... made gruel twice for her and she's all right, only she'll be lame and sore-like for a good while, but I must go to work, I've been gone long enough. Where's your mother?" And the dear old ...
— The Harvest of Years • Martha Lewis Beckwith Ewell

... give the men medicine and gave them gruel and they appeared verry much better at night. We had twelve women on board and some worse than the devil—they quarreled like cats and dogs and in fact I had to make use of rash (harsh) means ...
— Journal of an American Prisoner at Fort Malden and Quebec in the War of 1812 • James Reynolds

... as if it were a thing with a disordered stomach. That's your way of showing it respect. You approach the shrine with an offering of water gruel. Now look ye here!"—The professor paused beside the tea-table—"The soul wants its bread, depends upon it, as much as the body, and the church that is free with the loaves is the church to get a real hold on real men. Flummery ...
— The Dweller on the Threshold • Robert Smythe Hichens

... writer, "are very good for old people that are dull and without courage; they gladden and comfort the spirits, and do increase their lusty strength." The juice is slightly aperient, and abundantly lacteal when mixed with goat's milk, or in gruel. Physicians formerly held this herb in high esteem, as capable of curing most chronic disorders connected with the urinary passages, and gravel. Some have even asserted that if these distempers will not yield to a constant use of Chervil, they win be scarcely ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie

... gruel like a man. Two askaris were beating him. The blows fell at random anywhere below the neck and above the heels, raising a great welt where they did not actually cut the skin. He had buried his face in his forearms, and Will had gone to stand near him, stooping down to ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy

... Arm and ankle and wounded head were doing well—there was no fever to speak of—Mr. Rand had an unabused constitution and would make a rapid recovery. For precaution's sake, best let a little blood. Rest, gruel, and quiet, and in a few days Mr. Rand would be downstairs with the ladies. The blood was let, and the doctor rode away. Joab and the culprit Selim went on Rand's errands to the town and to the home on the Three-Notched Road. Mammy Chloe, in white apron ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston

... what a catalogue! Whatever made you think Numbers should mix in a way never seen? 3, that's a flood of milk, 20, a flood of ink, Touching a gruel-like ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, April 9th, 1892 • Various

... excited with every alarm, thrown into flurries and panics quite to Aunt Pen's mind, running after the doctor at two o'clock of the morning, building a fire in the range ourselves at midnight to make gruel for her, rubbing her till we rubbed the skin off our hands, combing her hair till we went to sleep standing; but Aunt Pen had cried wolf so long, and the doctors had all declared so stoutly that ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various

... pressure of hunger. At this juncture the sepoys came to Clive, not to complain of their scanty fare, but to propose that all the grain should be given to the Europeans, who required more nourishment than the natives of Asia. The thin gruel, they said, which was strained away from the rice, would suffice for themselves. The devotion of Clive's little band equaled that of the Tenth Legion of Caesar, or of the ...
— Ten Great Events in History • James Johonnot

... all poor people should have the alternative (for they would compel nobody, not they) of being starved by a gradual process in the house, or by a quick one out of it. All relief was inseparable from the workhouse, and the thin gruel issued three times ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.

... or gruel of bread crumbs, toast, or flour combined with milk, stock, or water; used ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter

... policy; and how much more with a whole cellar - a whole bodily existence! People may lay down their lives with cheerfulness in the sure expectation of a blessed immortality; but that is a different affair from giving up youth with all its admirable pleasures, in the hope of a better quality of gruel in a more than problematical, nay, more than improbable, old age. We should not compliment a hungry man, who should refuse a whole dinner and reserve all his appetite for the dessert, before he knew whether ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson

... most absurd of you to offer it! You might have known, if you had had any sense, that no old sailors ever like gruel!" ...
— The Game of Logic • Lewis Carroll

... I. 'So you three chaps will have it to share between you. I don't see that we can do better. A fight's a fight, and if Patsey got his gruel it might have happened to Mr. Knightley himself. As for shooting in cold blood, I'm not on, and so ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood

... noticed the soup," said the Senator. "Fact is, soup to me is just—soup. I presume there are different kinds, but beyond knowing most of them from gruel I don't pretend to be ...
— A Voyage of Consolation - (being in the nature of a sequel to the experiences of 'An - American girl in London') • Sara Jeannette Duncan

... "Miss" was still confined, in Steele's day, to very young girls or to young women of giddy or doubtful character. Thus Pastorella in No. 9 is called "Miss," and similarly we find "Miss Gruel" in No. 33. In the "Original Letters to the Tatler and Spectator," printed by Charles Lillie (i. 223) there is a "Table of the Titles and Distinctions of Women," from which what follows is extracted. ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken

... effort or give up entirely; so I roused myself, and with the assistance of the cabin-boy gained a seat, and promised to take any and every remedy which should be recommended. They gave me hot-water gruel with wine and sugar; but it was not enough to be obliged to force this down, I was further compelled to swallow small pieces of raw bacon highly peppered, and even a mouthful of rum. I need not say what strong determination was required to make me submit to such a regimen. ...
— Visit to Iceland - and the Scandinavian North • Ida Pfeiffer

... solely for the benefit of consulting the physician; is going to have him exchanged into a dragoon regiment, which doesn't go to that odious India; and has an idea that his chest is delicate, and that he takes gruel every evening, when he puts his feet in hot water. Her Ladyship resides at Cheltenham, and is of a ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray

... in the same direction as my own, I tried it on a small scale. I calcined some very troublesome ore till it was fairly "sweet," triturated it, and having reduced it with water to about the consistency of invalid's gruel, put it into a little berdan pan made from a "camp oven," which I had used for treating small quantities of concentrates, and from time to time drove a spray of mercury, wherein a small amount of zinc had been dissolved, into the pasty mass by means of a steam jet, added about half an ounce of sulphuric ...
— Getting Gold • J. C. F. Johnson

... far as to be able at eight o'clock P.M. to bite Topping. His night was peaceful. This morning at daybreak he appeared better; received (agreeably to the doctor's directions) another dose of castor oil; and partook plentifully of some warm gruel, the flavor of which he appeared to relish. Towards eleven o'clock he was so much worse that it was found necessary to muffle the stable-knocker. At half-past, or thereabouts, he was heard talking to himself about the horse and Topping's family, and to add some incoherent expressions ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster

... giving the finishing touches of order to his wooden spoon and salt-cellar, his tin knife, plate, and pint cup for gruel, when a Warder Jennings peeped in with, "No. 76—you are to follow the assistant warder at once", and Hogarth descended to an ante-room where an official handed him a letter, which had been read and initialed by ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel

... a needle and thread?" asked Mrs. Lewis, stirring away at some gruel in a tin basin, and not even ...
— Tip Lewis and His Lamp • Pansy (aka Isabella Alden)

... ere the quarrel Gets too grave (Already in her hand A bowl of gruel), Says, "Don't you know That doctors do not shave? And then besides, It really ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole

... men in the party, including the general, and a harder-looking set for want of nourishment could hardly be imagined. They moved forward hoping to find game, as their allowance was half a pint of flour a day per man. This was made into a kind of gruel. If it happened that a duck or goose was killed, it was shared as fairly ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman

... be kept at rest, preferably in bed, to diminish the general tissue waste; and the diet should be restricted to fluids, such as milk, beef-tea, meat juices or gruel, and these may be rendered more easily assimilable by artificial digestion if necessary. To counteract the general effect of toxins absorbed into the circulation, specific antitoxic sera are employed in certain forms of infection, such as diphtheria, streptococcal septicaemia, ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles

... cases it is born dead or putrid. If there should appear to be any chance of saving it, it should be washed with warm water, carefully dried, and fed frequently with small quantities of new milk, mixed, according to the apparent weakness of the animal, either with raw eggs or good gruel; while the bowels should, if occasion requires, be opened by means of small doses of castor-oil. If any considerable period is to elapse before the natural time of pregnancy would have expired, it will usually be necessary to bring up the little ...
— Cattle and Their Diseases • Robert Jennings

... none. He snatched the child, and ran up the area-steps to the room above, and borrowed their only saucepan with some water in it. Then he began, with the useful skill of a working-man, to make some gruel; and when it was hastily made, he seized a battered iron table-spoon (kept when many other little things had been sold in a lot, in order to feed baby), and with it he forced one or two drops between her clenched teeth. The mouth ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell

... the present he lives in and delights in. Thus, in one of those admirable comedies in which Robson acted, we find the son a wanderer, the mother's heart nearly broken, the father torn and broken by a suspicion of his son's dishonesty, but the grandfather all the while concerned only about his gruel and his handkerchief. Even the pains and troubles incident to his state visit the old man lightly. Because Southey sat for months in his library, unable to read or touch the books he loved, we are not to infer that he was unhappy. If the stage darkens as the ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller

... distinguish themselves. What can be expected from a stable which always runs its trials at one o'clock in the morning, with nobody but Mr. JEREMY to look on? No doubt we shall hear all about it in the columns which Mr. J. devotes to the edification of dough-faced, gruel-brained noodles who accept him ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, 1890.05.10 • Various

... the same time with the spoon in the right hand, to mix the meal with the water in such a manner as to prevent lumps being formed. The meal should be added so slowly that when the water is brought to boil, the mass should not be thicker than water-gruel, and half an hour more at least, should be employed to add the additional quantity of meal necessary for bringing the pudding to be of the proper consistency, during which time it should be stirred about continually, and kept constantly boiling. The ...
— The Bobbin Boy - or, How Nat Got His learning • William M. Thayer

... back full of delicious gruel, well boiled, and supplemented with cream. I am sure the way in which she transformed that basin of gruel has been a lesson to me ever since as to the quality of the work I did. No boy or girl can have a much better lesson than—to do what must be done as well as it ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald

... till the butter comes. Then he takes it out with his black hands, and I carry it off and wash and salt it. We only get five ounces now at a time, though there are six cows in milk; but the calves are such miserable little things they have to be helped first, and fed with rice-gruel also. The butter finished, I go up to the sewing-class, who are very busy making their Easter clothes, both boys and girls; and I help them with my sewing-machine until half-past ten, only running away twice—once to see what the school cook has brought for ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall

... Rochesterplace, Lambeth. The villain was acquainted with the cook, and, coming into the bishop's kitchen, took an opportunity, while the cook's back was turned to fetch him some drink, to fling a great quantity of poison into the gruel, which was prepared for dinner for the bishop's family, and the poor of the parish. The good bishop escaped. Fortunately, he that day abstained from food. The humility and temperance of that good man are strongly marked in this relation, for he partook of the same ordinary food with the most wretched ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, - Volume 12, No. 329, Saturday, August 30, 1828 • Various

... locality; a numb, soporifical good-for-nothingness; an ossification all over; an oyster-like insensibility to the passing events; a mind-stupor; a brawny defiance to the needles of a thrusting-in conscience? Did you ever have a very bad cold, with a total irresolution to submit to water-gruel processes? This has been for many weeks my lot and my excuse. My fingers drag heavily over this paper, and to my thinking it is three-and-twenty furlongs from here to the end of this demi-sheet. I have not a thing to say; ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb

... attempting it, he finds his optics will not penetrate the mist, let him ask himself whether dame Nature is a good setter of bones, or is very expert in stopping dangerous bleedings from wounded arteries;—or if a simple diet, say for example hasty-pudding and water-gruel, personified by any fertility of poetic fancy, can smooth one's pillow when his head aches, or bathe one's body when burning with fever? No good surgeon pretends to heal wounded parts, but he is positively useful nevertheless, by placing them so as to render the efforts of nature efficient ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr

... beside this great, this momentous event, and the man who walked a hundred miles in twenty-four hours is nowhere. He realizes the cruel fact that Fame is fickle, and he makes one desperate effort to grasp it, by offering determinedly to walk around the world in ninety days, stopping for his gruel ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 39., Saturday, December 24, 1870. • Various

... and external only; while the genera are so numerous that doubtless to each species is consigned the performance of a special office. Some seem to delight in a diet of slush of the consistency of thin gruel; others prefer fine grit; others, again, coarse particles of shell and coral grit and rough gravel. Peradventure the actual food consists of the micro-organisms in the slush and on the superficies ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield

... school-boy readings I dimly remembered how the priests and pilgrims of St. Bernard used to go out in the storms and dig these dogs out of the snowdrifts when lost and exhausted, and give them brandy and save their lives, and drag them to the monastery and restore them with gruel. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... said my aunt, savagely. "And now do have some more of this nice, good gruel," which set me ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell

... make an end of yourself, my friend," returned the Doctor decidedly. "You stay where you are, and go on with your gruel and poultices—by-the-bye you needn't make those poultices quite so thick, Mrs. Tyrer—and I'll come and see you on Wednesday. You mustn't think of getting up. If you go out in this east wind, it will be the death of you. Really you ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)

... for me to go to roost. I will have my gruel abed," said my Lord Mohun: and limped off comically on Harry Esmond's arm. "By George, that woman is a pearl!" he said; "and 'tis only a pig that wouldn't value her. Have you seen the vulgar trapesing orange-girl whom Esmond"—but here Mr. Esmond interrupted him, saying, that ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray

... the bunk-house, he found three tall strong men awaiting him. Their faces, tanned by many suns, exhibited a curious uniformity of tint—the colour of dirty gruel. ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell

... on except at matinees," replied another veteran, who was standing in front of the mirror trimming his long, silvery beard, and just then an attendant came in with several basins of gruel, and the old Jests tucked napkins under their chins and sat down to partake of a little nourishment ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume III. (of X.) • Various

... first time he came in contact with that element in the modern church that is afflicted with spiritual invalidism. It is composed of women for the most part, who hunger and thirst after a kind of gruel gospel, and who are forever wanting to consult the pastor between times about their spiritual symptoms. They are almost without exception the victims of the same epidemic of moral inertia and emotional heavings. They do not rise to the dignity of being sinners, and personally I would ...
— A Circuit Rider's Wife • Corra Harris

... that it was nothing but pickle and the very brine of salt, more brackish in taste than the saltest water of the sea. And because in that very day Pantagruel was born, his father gave him that name; for Panta in Greek is as much to say as all, and Gruel in the Hagarene language doth signify thirsty, inferring hereby that at his birth the whole world was a-dry and thirsty, as likewise foreseeing that he would be some day supreme lord and sovereign ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais

... in the immediate vicinage of a country village called Highbury. The father, a good-natured, silly valetudinary, abandons the management of his household to Emma, he himself being only occupied by his summer and winter walk, his apothecary, his gruel, and his whist table. The latter is supplied from the neighbouring village of Highbury with precisely the sort of persons who occupy the vacant corners of a regular whist table, when a village is in the neighbourhood, and ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson

... that I am the woman I could wish to be. The time of worrit as I had with Mrs. Colliber, the baker's lady, which was so bad in her mind with her first, that she would not so much as look at bottled stout, and kept to gruel through the month, has agued me, Mrs. Harris. But ma'am,' I says to her, 'talk not of Margate, for if I do go anywheres, it is elsewheres and not there.' 'Sairey,' says Mrs. Harris, solemn, 'whence ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster

... care!" he said to himself. "I shall never squeal at any penalty. I shall never say in the great round-up that I was weak and I fell. I'll take my gruel expecting it, not fearing it—if there is to be any gruel ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... Was strange and new to Kazan. Pierre's hand, as well as the girl's, stroked his head. It was the man who brought him a gruel of meal and tallow, and urged him to eat, while Joan sat with her chin in her two hands, looking at the dog, and talking to him. After this, when he was quite comfortable, and no longer afraid, he heard a strange small cry from the furry bundle on the ...
— Kazan • James Oliver Curwood

... to be in bed, my dear fellow, with gruel and mustard plasters and all the rest of it. Go home and take care ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing

... moved many to penance. In bis old age, instead of relaxing, he increased his austerities and fasts. He had three hair-shirts which he now and then changed. He never would admit of the least thing to give a savor to the herbs or meal-gruel on which he supported himself. If any thing was brought him better dressed, he, for the greater self-denial, applied it to his nostrils, and said: "O gluttony, gluttony, thou shalt never taste this; perpetual war is declared against thee." His disciples also were remarkable for their ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler

... simple,—and the "simple life" at close range is apt to lose many of its charms. In the corner of the one windowless room that serves for all domestic purposes stands the earthen pot of black gruel. It is made from the ragi, little, hard, round seeds that resemble more than anything else the rape seed fed to a canary. It looks a sufficiently unappetizing breakfast, but contentment abounds because the pot is full, and that happens only when rains are abundant and ...
— Lighted to Lighten: The Hope of India • Alice B. Van Doren

... asunder by sympathy and remorse. Uncle Reuben, coming up with some hot gruel, found him sitting on the bed beside his sister, on whom he had heaped all the clothing he could find, the ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... the habit of getting a pint of oatmeal gruel for supper. This pint of gruel was supposed to contain two ounces of meal; but in order to make it part better it was made thinner, so that every night there was a surplus. This surplus the prisoners ...
— Six Years in the Prisons of England • A Merchant - Anonymous

... Some gruel and bread stood upon this little improvised side-board. If they had been the greatest luxuries imaginable, he could not have swallowed a morsel. The sunlight had faded away; his dream of retribution was over; he seemed to be touching the utmost verge of human wretchedness. Was it possible to ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn

... extend a thread from the house of death to the grave, carrying it in a straight line over every obstacle. Froeebel states that among the Woolwas all property of the deceased is buried with him, and that both husband and wife cut the hair and burn the hut on the death of either, placing a gruel of maize upon the ...
— A Further Contribution to the Study of the Mortuary Customs of the North American Indians • H.C. Yarrow

... from incapacity with an appalling sense of misery and general apprehension of coming evil. I passed sleepless nights and was troubled with irregular action of the heart, a constantly feverish condition, and the most excruciating tortures in my stomach, living for days on rice water and gruel, and, indeed, the digestive functions ...
— The Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56, No. 2, January 12, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various

... all peters down to prison, eating gruel with a wooden spoon," said the cynical old-timer; "then, some day, we shall be treated as those poor creatures were yesterday—hurried off with a guard of soldiers to see us safe ...
— Orphans of the Storm • Henry MacMahon

... done, 'to send such as her to the workhouse, don't it?' 'Workhouse!' says Peggy, firing up directly; 'I only wish we could catch the man who's got her in that scrape, and put him in there on water-gruel for the rest of his life. I'd give a shillin' a wheal out of my own pocket for the blessed privilege of scoring the thief's face with my whip, till his own mother wouldn't know him!' And then she went on, sir, abusing all the men in her Irish ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins

... minutes, she returned: "I've come back," she said, "to tell you that if old Clutch is off his meat—and I shouldn't wonder if he was—wi' neglect and wi' drawing such a weight—then you'd best set to work and make him gruel. Jonas can't afford to lose old Clutch, just becos he's got a wife." Then she ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould

... mixt just abaat that that time, an all aw know is 'at awve been i' bed for ommost a wick, an awm soa stiff yet wol aw can hardly stir. One hawf o' mi heead is covered wi stickin' plaister, an awm covered wi black an blue marks throo mi neck to mi knees. As aw sit at th' winder suppin' mi gruel, aw can hear th' rows gooin on across th' street just as usual, an if they keep at it wol aw interfere agean they willn't have to drop it just yet, for it's towt me 'at it's best to let fowk feight ther own battles, for when it's nobbut one to one they've booath a chonce, ...
— Yorksher Puddin' - A Collection of the Most Popular Dialect Stories from the - Pen of John Hartley • John Hartley

... whisper—"Give me twenty copecks, and pass quickly." The demand was willingly gratified, and with some difficulty he procured a night's lodging, lying on the floor amidst a crowd of peasants, who had previously supped on radish-soup, dried fish, oatmeal gruel, with ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox

... Hah!" with a loud smack of the lips. "I've tasted almost every kind of wine, sir, from ginger up to champagne, and I've drunk tea and coffee, and beer, and curds and whey, thin gruel, and cider, and perry, but the whole lot ain't worth a snap compared to a drink of water like this; only," he added with a laugh, "you want to be thirsty as ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn

... of Tobago Who lived on rice, gruel, and sago, Till much to his bliss, His physician said this: "To a leg, sir, of mutton, you ...
— The Real Mother Goose • (Illustrated by Blanche Fisher Wright)

... Hopkins, of Williams College: "If your young folks want to know the meaning of epicureanism, tell them to take some bits of coarse bread (one ounce or a little more), soak them in three gills of coarse meal gruel, and make their dinner of them, and nothing else; beginning very hungry, and leaving ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.

... war? [said he]; you might as well talk of humanizing hell! When a silly ass got up at the first Hague Peace Conference in 1899, and talked about the "amenities of warfare" and putting your prisoners' feet in warm water and giving them gruel, my reply, I regret to say, was considered brutally unfit for publication. As if war could be "civilized"! If I am in command when war breaks out, I shall issue as my orders, "The essence of war is violence. Moderation is imbecility. Hit first, ...
— Lights and Shadows in Confederate Prisons - A Personal Experience, 1864-5 • Homer B. Sprague

... he visited a poor, wretched woman, in an apparently dying condition. He at once lighted a fire, made some gruel for her, and fed her with his own hand. He afterwards appointed a nurse to look after her, and sent a doctor to her, and it is believed that she is still residing at Gravesend, a living testimony ...
— General Gordon - A Christian Hero • Seton Churchill

... thin gruel to satisfy one's wondering soul, but it was shortly thickened by the beadle. He was waiting for us at Mr. Blake's, wishing instruction about some task that fell within his duties, but he managed to have ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles

... of this country break their fast with (el hassua) barley-gruel; they grind the barley to the size of sparrow-shot, this they mix with water, and simmer over a slow fire two or three hours. This food is esteemed extremely wholesome, and is 243 antifebrile. The Emperor ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny

... modifying it to meet the needs of an infant. Cow's milk is modified sometimes by diluting it to make it digest easier and adding other ingredients to it. In order to increase the fuel value of diluted milk, carbohydrate food of some soluble, easily digested kind is added. Sometimes gruel or cereal water is used as one of ...
— School and Home Cooking • Carlotta C. Greer

... fine watch. He said that food was cheap in America and that a man could earn nearly ten times as much there as in Sweden. There seemed to be no end to his money." Sickness came, with only black bread and a sort of potato soup or gruel for food, and at last it was decided that the older brother was to go to America. The first letter from him contained this: "I have work with a farmer who pays me sixty-four kroner[10] a month and my board. I send you twenty kroner, ...
— Aliens or Americans? • Howard B. Grose

... fellow," said the nurse, beguiling the patient while he tucked the spoonfuls down, "I was like you: I wouldn't take what the doctor ordered, and they used to pretend I must take it for the others of the family,—a kind of vicarious milk diet, or gruel, or whatever it was. 'Here's a spoonful for mother, poor mother,' they would say; and of course it couldn't be refused when mother needed it so much. 'And now ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote

... to the hard gruel of the great game the eleven had received a blow that had left its supporters dazed and despairing. There had been a scandal, of which the public had heard little and the students scarcely more, resulting in the expulsion of the five best players of the team. The crisis ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach

... seated beside his bed, but where he could not see her, stirring some gruel in a basin, to cool it from him, I saw her take a little phial from her bosom, and I knew by the expression of her face both what it was and what she was going to do with it. Fortunately the cork was a little hard to get out, and this gave me one ...
— Adela Cathcart - Volume II • George MacDonald

... roundly the brother or sister who made any mistake; he scourged their lagging aspirations toward perfection. If it is ever necessary to account for bad temper in musicians, one might suggest that the water-gruel diet had impaired his temper and theirs; certain it is that out of the production of so much heavenly harmony there sprang discord. The brethren and sisters grew daily more and more indignant at the severity of the director, whom they reverenced ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston

... she to return to life?" And these thoughts affected him so deeply that he became ill, his head ached, his pulse beat high, and his body burned with fever. The sun rose high, but he did not leave his couch. His domestics were all perplexed. Rice gruel was served up to him, but he would not touch it. The news of his indisposition soon found its way out of the mansion, and in no time a messenger arrived from the Imperial Palace to make inquiries. His brother-in-law also came, but Genji only allowed To-no-Chiujio to enter his room, saying to him, ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various

... carucate of land in Addington in the county of Surrey, by the service of making one mess in an earthen pot in the kitchen of our Lord the KING, on the day of his coronation, called De la Groute," i. e. a kind of plum-porridge, or water-gruel with plums in it. This dish is still served up at the royal table at coronations, by the Lord of the said manor ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner

... leading into the sisters' bedroom was ajar, and Gwen found Patty in bed, and Deb vainly endeavouring to make her swallow a basin of gruel. ...
— The Carved Cupboard • Amy Le Feuvre

... to freshen the air, and helped her to wash her face and smooth her tangled hair; then she produced a little basin of gruel and a triangular bit of toast, and Katy found that her appetite was come again and she ...
— What Katy Did Next • Susan Coolidge

... were kept open, and I always had a view of the pathetic looking little table with its cups of gruel and bottles of medicines. And as I gazed at these things, so suggestive of sickness, they took on strange shapes in the darkness of the silent room,—and at such times there passed through my head a procession of ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti

... then erect a defence. His efforts went unrewarded, and behind him in the dock Mr. Morgan ground his teeth with vexation. That he was not getting his friends' money's worth was obvious. He did not expect to get off, but if he could have seen Lyveden discredited he would have taken his gruel with a grin. ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates

... movements. The religious instruction was of the simplest character. The life of the convert also was somewhat childlike, in marked contrast with his experience in his savage condition. His breakfast consisted of a kind of gruel made of corn, called Atole. The dinner was Pozoli, and the supper the same as breakfast. The Christian Indians lived in adobe huts—of which the Padres kept the keys. Some of the Missions were noted for their wealth. For example, as you may read in the Annals of ...
— By the Golden Gate • Joseph Carey

... of life were dear, and work scarce. Many who once wore boots went barefoot now. He who could formerly have bought a new coat, now contented himself with having the old one mended; the shoemaker and tailor breakfasted on water-gruel instead of coffee; the shopkeeper was unable to pay his debts to the merchant, and the merchant unable to discharge his obligations to other firms. He who had to recover money from men thus depressed had a hard task indeed, as Anton soon found out. On every side he heard lamentations which ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag

... sunrise. Would give us three meals a day cause de old woman always give us supper fore us mammy come out de field dat evenin. Dem bigger ones, dey would give dem clabber en boil peas en collards sometimes. Would give de little babies boil pea soup en gruel en suck bottle. Yes, mam, de old woman had to mind all de yearlin chillun en de babies, too. Dat all her business was. I recollects her name, it been Lettie. Would string us little wooden bowls on de floor in a long row en us ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration

... repeating this process at short intervals, she continued the tender assiduities, with only occasional snatches of repose, till the welcome morning light broke over the forest. She then rose, and, with a miniature camp-kettle found among her patient's effects, prepared some gruel from the pounded parched corn which she had brought with her. This he mechanically took from her hand, when aroused for the purpose, but immediately relapsed again into the same state of unconsciousness ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson

... summers, and who before his last visit to the treadmill, where he was erroneously incarcerated for six months as a vagrant (being unfortunately mistaken for another gentleman), had a very melodious and plaintive tone of voice, which, though it is now somewhat impaired by gruel and such a getting up stairs for so long a period, I hope shortly to find restored. I have taken down the words from his own mouth at different periods, and have been careful to preserve his pronunciation, together ...
— The Loving Ballad of Lord Bateman • Charles Dickens and William Makepeace Thackeray

... band gave to their beloved commander; the Sepoys came to Clive with a request that all the grain should be given to the Europeans, who required more nourishment than the natives of Asia, declaring that they would be satisfied with the thin gruel which strained away from the rice. Rajah Sahib at length made an attempt to take the place by storm; he was defeated with great loss, principally by Clive's personal exertions, upon which he abandoned the siege, leaving behind him a large ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 2 of 8 • Various

... put into the gruel, Mary?' said a pale, sickly-looking man one evening, taking something out of his mouth, which he held towards the feeble gleams emitted by a farthing rush-light ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 428 - Volume 17, New Series, March 13, 1852 • Various



Words linked to "Gruel" :   loblolly, porridge, jook, skilly, congee



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