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Mouldy   /mˈoʊldi/   Listen
Mouldy

adjective
(compar. moldier or mouldier; superl. moldiest or mouldiest)
1.
Covered with or smelling of mold.  Synonyms: moldy, musty.  "A moldy (or musty) odor"






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Mouldy" Quotes from Famous Books



... dangling over the edge within a couple of feet of the water. The day had been fiercely hot, and the water around had steamed like a smoking cauldron. With the moon had come a brisk breeze, that swept the stagnant, mouldy vapours away, and left a clear landscape and cool air. Dan was stuffing tobacco into a pipe of bamboo, and urging the two gentlemen to follow his example, the smoke of the weed being, he declared, an antidote against the malarial poisons breathed out by the foul mud and rotting ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan

... them old grandfathers and aunts you brag of; a set of poor souls you won't let rest in their coffins; mere clay and dirt! fine things to be proud of! a parcel of old mouldy rubbish quite departed this life! raking up bones and dust, nobody knows for what! ought to be ashamed; who cares for dead carcases? nothing but [carrion]. My little Tom's ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)

... bestowed themselves in safety for a season. A prize of about five hundred prisoners was all which rewarded the sagacity of the enterprise. It is needless to add that they were all immediately executed. It is a wearisome and odious task to ransack the mouldy records of three centuries ago, in order to reproduce the obscure names of the thousands who were thus sacrificed.. The dead have buried their dead, and are forgotten. It is likewise hardly necessary to state that the proceedings before the council were all 'ex parte', and that an information was ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... egg-production. Skim milk and butter milk, fish scrap made from oil-free fish, beef scrap, fresh cut green bone and good grades of digester tankage are all excellent. But use only feeds of this character which are of prime quality. Oily fish, poor beef scrap and mouldy green bone will surely ...
— Pratt's Practical Pointers on the Care of Livestock and Poultry • Pratt Food Co.

... for the knights of chivalry, has made them galley-slaves in the next world, their business being to help Charon row his boat over the river Styx, and their payment a piece of mouldy bread and a fillip on the nose. Somebody should write a burlesque of the enormities in Dante's poem, and invent some Rabelaesque punishment for a great poet's pride and presumption. What should ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt

... let's away from this mouldy gaol, Before old heeltaps takes a fit. Your son Will be a full-grown shepherd before we leave— And his old mother, trapped between four walls— If you don't ...
— Krindlesyke • Wilfrid Wilson Gibson

... Brazil were worthless. No, indeed. These remarks apply merely to that particular portion of Brazil in which I was then travelling—where, barring the burity palms in the moist lands and marshes, the trees were mostly rickety and dwarfed, with mouldy barks, malformed limbs, and scanty leaves. That is why, when we came to the healthy mass of burity palms and the lovely young grass, one felt just the same as when, after having been through a hospital, one emerges into the fresh ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor

... have an hour of leisure; for, to say the truth, the day hangs rather heavy till the shooting season begins. Come; as you have a friend with you, I will be your cicerone myself about the house, and show you whatever mouldy objects ...
— The Ancestral Footstep (fragment) - Outlines of an English Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... they have retired only to form again for the attack, but are as far away to-day from planting their flag in that citadel as when they first began. It does not matter to them what is inside; there may be (as in this case) only mouldy old halls and a group of people with antiquated ideas and ways. It is enough for a certain type of woman to know that she is not wanted in an exclusive circle, to be ready to die in the attempt to get there. This point of view reminds one of Mrs. Snob's saying about a new ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory

... snug here,' said Mr Dennis, pulling out a mouldy pocket-handkerchief, which looked like a decomposed halter, and wiping his forehead in ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens

... houses and they wasted that which they had taken from their mother and became of the wretched naked beggars. So at times they would come to their mother, humbling themselves before her exceedingly and complaining to her of hunger; and she (a mother's heart being pitiful) would give them some mouldy, sour smelling bread or, if there were any meat cooked the day before, she would say to them, "Eat it quick and go ere your brother come; for 'twould be grievous to him and he would harden his heart against me, and ye would disgrace me with him." So they would eat in haste and go. One day among ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton

... stage trappings can neither add nor detract from our respect for death. He is the same grim old gentleman, be his mouldy bones naked, or clothed in robes of the most gaudy or brilliant hues. A blue death, a red death or a yellow death is just as grizzly and awe-inspiring as one of any shade of gray. Even a black death excites no emotions not touched by the first name, ...
— The Black Wolf Pack • Dan Beard

... and in order. The bedding from the berths was then spread on deck, and dried, and aired; the deck-tub filled with water; and a grand washing begun of all the clothes which were brought up. Shirts, frocks, drawers, trowsers, jackets, stockings, of every shape and color, wet and dirty—many of them mouldy from having been lying a long time wet in a foul corner—these were all washed and scrubbed out, and finally towed overboard for half an hour; and then made fast in the rigging to dry. Wet boots and shoes were spread out to dry in sunny places on deck; and the whole ship ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana

... of ribaldry. But I am old; me list not play for age; Grass time is done, my fodder is now forage. This white top* writeth mine olde years; *head Mine heart is also moulded* as mine hairs; *grown mouldy And I do fare as doth an open-erse*; *medlar That ilke* fruit is ever longer werse, *same Till it be rotten *in mullok or in stre*. *on the ground or in straw* We olde men, I dread, so fare we; Till we be rotten, can ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer

... is supposed to be "rough on rats" would have been of advantage; for the very first night many of the men were awakened by those creatures nibbling at their toes! Everything on board was dirty: the tin pannikins were rusty, the biscuit was mouldy and full of creatures that the captain called weevils and Macleod styled wee-deevils. Some of the biscuit was so bad that it had to be thrown away, and the remainder eaten, as Moses said, ...
— Blue Lights - Hot Work in the Soudan • R.M. Ballantyne

... withdraw and become useless; I see the scaffold untrodden and mouldy—I see no longer any axe upon it; I see the mighty and friendly emblem of the power of my own race—the ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman

... gold and red and brown produced a striking picture of sweet poetic beauty. I stood in contemplative admiration meditating, as I waited for my coolies, who sat moodily under a dilapidated roadside awning, nonchalantly picking out mouldy monkey-nuts from some coarse sweetmeat sold by a frowsy female. Then upwards we toiled in the dark, the weird groans of my exhausted men and the falling of the gravel beneath their sandalled feet alone breaking the hollow's gloom. Uncanny ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle

... English kick away as toadstools, these are dried in the sun or the oven, and packed in casks with a mixture of hot water and dry meal in which they ferment. The staple diet of the peasant consists of buckwheat, rye meal, sauerkraut, and coarse cured fish" (little, however, but black bread, often mouldy and sauerkraut, nearly putrid, is found in the generality of Russian peasant homes). No milk, butter, cheese, or eggs are allowed in Lent, all of which are permitted to the Roman Catholic, and the oil the peasant uses for his cooking is linseed instead of olive oil, which last ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various

... into market more bad butter than all that is made in all the rest of the world together. The varieties of bad tastes and smells which prevail in it are quite a study. This has a cheesy taste, that a mouldy,—this is flavored with cabbage, and that again with turnip, and another has the strong, sharp savor of rancid animal fat. These varieties, I presume, come from the practice of churning only at long intervals, and keeping the cream meanwhile in unventilated ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various

... moonlight, the torn linings hanging down in loops inside the skirts, pale and discoloured, like the shreds of banners in a cathedral; his shirt loose at the neck, his breeches unbuttoned at the knees, and a gigantic, misshapen, and mouldy pair of slippers clinging and clattering about his feet, came down the steps, his light, round little eyes and queer, quiet face peering at them into the shade, and a smokified volume of divinity tucked under his arm, with his finger between the ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... development and illustration of the principles by which we are governed in applying those words to their legitimate purpose, namely, that of forming a correct and convenient medium by means of which we can communicate our thoughts? Does philosophy consist in ransacking the mouldy records of antiquity, in order to guess at the ancient construction and signification of single words? or have such investigations, in reality, any thing to do ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham

... was in great danger in that hot climate. Twice during the month we received a box from Kuching, sent by a native boat. Once it contained our mail—an immense pleasure; also some bread and biscuits, but they were wet with salt water, and mouldy besides. However, Mab and Alan could eat them. I used to look with thankful astonishment at those children, both so delicate generally, but who throve all the time we were without proper food or shelter. But baby Edith shrank and ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall

... still it exists, at South Kensington or in the Louvre, along with the earlier monuments of the Christian slope. As for that uninteresting and disreputable end, official nineteenth-century art, it can be studied in a hundred public galleries and in annual exhibitions all over the world. It is the mouldy and therefore the obvious end. The spirit that came to birth with the triumph of art over Graeco-Roman realism dies with the ousting of art by the picture ...
— Art • Clive Bell

... riotous yellow stream that cut the town into two parts, and was spanned here and there by rough-hewn stone bridges, which it sometimes sportively washed away. It was a brave old town that had stood sieges and plagues, and was full of mouldy, picturesque buildings and a gayety that has since grown somewhat mouldy. A goodly place to rest in for the wayworn pilgrim! He dimly recollected that he had letters to one or two illustrious families; but he cared not to deliver them at once. It was pleasant to stroll ...
— A Midnight Fantasy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... notice yer can niver tell exactly w'en yer drop off? I've tried all I know, but ye're awake one minit, an' chasin' a butterfly wi' a cow's 'ead the next. But that ain't wot I'm a-talkin' about. Paasch 'e's blue mouldy, an' couldn't catch a snail unless yer give 'im a start; an' if yer went ter Packard's, yer'd tell the manager ter go to 'ell, an' git fired out the first week. Yous must be yer own boss, Joe. I've studied yer like a book, an ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone

... received by a smart divine, tres bien poudre, and with black satin breeches—but they are giving new wings and red satin breeches to the good old hostel too, and destroying a gallery with a very rich ceiling; and nothing will remain of ancient but the front, and an hundred mouldy portraits, among apostles, sibyls, and Kings of England. On Sunday I shall settle at Strawberry; and then woe betide you on post-days! I cannot make news without straw. The Johnstones are going to Bath, for the healths ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole

... rummaging leisurely amid the contents of an old mahogany book-case. He found rather a medley of worn school-books—old-fashioned geographies and histories and foreign conversation grammars; of mouldy novels, many in French and Italian; of illustrated lives of actresses, prime donne, and celebrated courtezans. Most of the novels and non-scholastic books were of a shoddy, sensational type. Here, then, he ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill

... old and stale, it was to be taken away, and new and warm put in its place, to show that God has but little delight in the service of his own people when their duties grow stale and mouldy. Therefore he removed his old, stale, mouldy church of the Jews from before him, and set in their rooms upon the golden table the warm ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... One of the casks was always left full, in case of emergency, should bad weather come on, and it be impossible to keep the stove alight. Again they were on a short allowance of food; the wet flour had become perfectly mouldy, and the biscuits were in very little better condition. Starving people ...
— The Voyages of the Ranger and Crusader - And what befell their Passengers and Crews. • W.H.G. Kingston

... Golgotha: a perpetual sway to and fro of the human tides, seething with sobs and quarrels; flowing into the planless maze of chapels and churches of all ages and architectures, that, perched on rocks or hewn into their mouldy darkness, magnificent with untold church-treasure—Armenian, Syrian, Coptic, Latin, Greek, Abyssinian—add the resonance of their special sanctities and the oppression of their individual glories ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... gale had subsided they examined the bread, and found a great deal of it had become mouldy and rotten; but even this was carefully kept and used. The boat was now near some islands, but they were afraid to go on shore, as the natives might attack them; while being in sight of land, where they ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various

... night to his companions. "When the sister of charity hides her youth and her sex under a grey shroud, and gives up her whole life to woe and solitude, to sickness and pain, is that unreal because it is wonderful? A man paints a spluttering candle, a greasy cloth, a mouldy cheese, a pewter can; 'How real!' they cry. If he paint the spirituality of dawn, the light of the summer sea, the flame of arctic nights, of tropic woods, they are called unreal, though they exist no less than the candle and the cloth, the cheese and the can. Ruy Blas is now ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida

... arranged them on the three-cornered shelf at the head of my cot, I felt, with a glow of satisfaction, that the foundations of that education to which President had contributed were already laid in my brain. If the secret of the future had been imprisoned in those mouldy books, I could hardly have attacked them with greater earnestness; and there was probably no accident in my life which directed so powerfully my fortunes as the one that sent me stumbling into that second-hand shop on that afternoon in mid-August. I can imagine what ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow

... said. "Come into a place where we can talk. There's an old fellow over there who's ready to murder any member who even whispers. We won't excite his angry passions. You know we're all literature-mongers here,—we've each got our own little particular stall where we sort our goods—our mouldy oranges, sour apples, and indigestible nuts,—and we polish them up to look tempting to the public. It's a great business, and we can't bear to be looked at while we're turning our apples with the best side outwards, and boiling our oranges to ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli

... there were no slave merchants. The hundred young ladies and gentlemen, of all ages from seven to seventeen, were, as they would have expressed it, "on their own hook." Ranged under the dead brick wall of the railway arch, there was a generally mouldy appearance about them. Instead of a picturesque difference of colour, there was on every visage simply a greater or less degree of that peculiar neutral tint, the unmistakable unlovely hue of London dirt. In this respect, too, they differed from the fresh country lads ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies

... all round, Teddy, 'undreds of books, beyond-rhyme or reason, as the saying goes, green-mouldy and dry. I was for leaven' 'em alone—I was never much for reading—but ole Higgins he must touch em. 'I believe I could read one of 'em ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells

... Venice to-day is mouldy and wasting. The palace in which Catarina Cornaro spent her girlhood is now a pawnbroker's shop. The last living representative of the haughty house of Lusignan—Kings, in their day, of Cyprus, of Jerusalem, and of Armenia—is said to be a waiter in ...
— Historic Girls • E. S. Brooks

... Mrs. Hoskyn," said Lord Worthington, looking cunningly at the bewildered Bedford. "You shall have a celebrity—a real one—none of your mouldy old Germans—if I can only get him to come. If any of her people don't like him they can tell ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw

... wished it, unless we had put in there in distress, we continued our course for Port Jackson. It was time for us to be in port. We had eaten up all the fowls except those we wanted to land; the biscuits were becoming mouldy, the water bad, the hay was nearly consumed, and the sheep, put on short allowance, were looking thin, ...
— Peter Biddulph - The Story of an Australian Settler • W.H.G. Kingston

... pinn'd up in the several rags You had raked and pick'd from dunghills, before day; Your feet in mouldy slippers, for your kibes; A felt of rug, and a thin threaden cloke, That scarce would cover ...
— The Alchemist • Ben Jonson

... everything I've had to do with," said Hilary, as the hours glided by, and he began to suffer acutely. Visions of delicious country breakfasts, for which he had longed, had now given place to the humblest of desires, for he felt as if he would have given anything for the most mouldy, weevilly biscuit that ever came out of a dirty bag in a purser's locker. He had fasted before now, but never to such an extent as this, and he sat upon his straw heap at last, chewing pieces to try ...
— In the King's Name - The Cruise of the "Kestrel" • George Manville Fenn

... historical ideas are made emphatic only through association and observation. How the vague sense of Roman dominion is deepened as we trace the outline of a camp, the massive ranges of a theatre, or the mouldy effigy on a coin, in some region far distant from the Imperial centre,—as at Nismes or Chester! How complete becomes the idea of mediaeval life, contemplated from the ramparts of a castle, in the "dim, religious light" of an old monastic chapel, or amid the obsolete trappings and weapons ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various

... moment from the witch, who, however, as she went away, exclaimed: "Self has burnt me; Self shall sleep till the new year!" When the Lapp had finished his repast he lay down to repose. On awaking he rummaged in his provision-sack: he found its contents mouldy and putrid. Nor could he understand this before he got home and learned that he had ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland

... week.' I was too astonished to speak, and Henry, he chuckled. 'To see you coming in here,' says he, 'with your face as solemn as a tombstone and sitting down there with your hands clasped over your stomach, and passing me out a blue-mouldy old item of news like that! It'd make a cat laugh, Jim Boyd,' says he. 'Who told you?' says I, stupid like. 'Nobody,' says he. 'A week ago Tuesday night I was lying here awake—and I jest knew. I'd suspicioned it before, but then I KNEW. I've been keeping up ...
— Anne's House of Dreams • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... not what to think on't. I have us'd all means; and the last night I caus'd His host, the tapster, to turn him out of doors; And have been since with all your friends and tenants, And on the forfeit of your favour, charg'd them, Tho' a crust of mouldy bread would keep him from starving, Yet they ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 4, April 1810 • Various

... in the heart of a bustling, indifferent city, seen from the windows of a gloomy-looking inn, is at no time an object of enlivening suggestion; and the spectacle is not at its best when the mouldy tombstones and funereal umbrage have received the ineffectual refreshment of a dull, moist snow-fall. If, while the air is thickened by this frosty drizzle, the calendar should happen to indicate that the blessed vernal season is already six weeks old, it will be ...
— The Europeans • Henry James

... are balanced well; one plant Sucks in the beams the sleepy moon sends down, Another drinks the waking draught of dawn. That made him sleep, but this—Ah! A mouldy mummied corse that in the tomb A thousand years had lain, would wake once more, If but three drops of this should touch its lips. I'll give you, sir, ...
— The Scarlet Stigma - A Drama in Four Acts • James Edgar Smith

... live, you shall live in my heart—living or dead though you be. And believe me, the pleasure of life is but a very little thing; it is sweet, but how quickly it passes! And the curses or praises of men—these, too, only a few mouldy rolls of books keep for decay! What profits it to Miltiades this hour, that a few marks on a papyrus sheet ascribe to him renown; or how much is the joy of Sextus Tarquinius darkened because a group of other marks cast ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis

... In this mouldy old house Katy waxed plump and pert and wholesome and as beautiful and freckled as a tiger lily. She was the good fairy who was guilty of placing the damp clean towels and cracked pitchers of freshly laundered ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry

... Annie's brothers. I did; but that's because I'm only Aunt Fanny, which makes a difference, you see. I'm so little, that half the time the children forget I am quite old. They catch hold of me, and make me play so hard, that I am afraid I shall never get to be a very mouldy old lady, sitting in a corner, with my head tied up in a flannel petticoat, to keep off the draught. I'm afraid I shall always be frisky. What do you think about it, you ...
— Little Mittens for The Little Darlings - Being the Second Book of the Series • Frances Elizabeth Barrow

... jaded and forlorn, Welters and wanders wearily—wretchedly—on; Yet in and out among the ribs Of the old skeleton bridge, as in the piles Of some dead lake-built city, fall of skulls, Worm-worn, rat-riddled, mouldy with memories, Lingers to babble, to a broken tune (Once, O the unvoiced music of my heart!) So melancholy a soliloquy It sounds as it might tell The secret of the unending grief-in-grain, The terror of Time and Change and Death, That wastes this ...
— The Song of the Sword - and Other Verses • W. E. Henley

... them some damaged bread at one quarter the usual price. It was all mouldy, you know," said Potts, trying to make Brandon see the joke. "I declare Clark and I roared over it for a couple of months, thinking how surprised they must have been when they sat down to ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille

... his grandchildren were at play, and pretending to hide, he turned up a flat hearthstone in an old stance,[86] and went out of sight. He spread out his gold on a big stone in the sunlight, and he muttered, "Ye are mouldy, ye are hoary, ye will be better for the sun." The grandchildren came sneaking over the knoll, and when they had seen and heard all that they were intended to see and hear, they came running up with, ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme

... sleighs ready to yawn at every crack, all are here: poor relations in a broken-down family. But children love this yard. They come, hand in hand, with a timid confidence in their right, and ask at the back door for the privilege of playing in it. They take long, entrancing journeys in the mouldy old chaise; they endure Siberian nights of sleighing, and throw out their helpless dolls to the pursuing wolves; or the more mercantile-minded among the boys mount a three-wheeled express wagon, and drive noisily away to traffic upon the road. This, in its dramatic ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown

... your mouldy institutions, they continue to be simply because they have been. Old Governments are like those ancient dykes which are rotten at the base, and only stay in position by their weight ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... crumbs of bread among them, which increased their apparent number. He blew the crumbs from the raisins, and ate them one by one, stalks and all, for I did not see him throw anything away, adding to them the pieces of bread, which had got such a colour from the lining of his pocket, that they looked mouldy, and were so hard that he could not get them down, though he chewed them over and over again. This was lucky for me, for he threw them to me, saying, "Catch, dog, and much good may it do you." Look, said I to myself, what nectar and ambrosia this poet gives me; for that is the ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... chambers, had left an indelible impression upon the dreamer. Every line traced by the "lean annuitant" was as familiar to Tom Folio as if he had written it himself. Stray scraps, which had escaped the vigilance of able editors, were known to him, and it was his to unearth amid a heap of mouldy, worm-eaten magazines, a handful of leaves hitherto forgotten of all men. Trifles, yes—but Charles Lamb's! "The king's chaff is as good as other people's corn," says ...
— Ponkapog Papers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... made no disturbance, but shrank under a feeling of being accursed. Providence must be hostile to him, since the same blow had been aimed at him twice. In the daytime he sought relief in hard work and reading; at night he lay on his dirty, mouldy-smelling mattress and wept. He no longer tried to overthrow his conception of Ellen, for he knew it was hopeless: she still tragically overshadowed everything. She was his fate and still filled his thoughts, but not brightly; there was indeed ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo

... name of the occupant was written. Thus it was that I, with others, was forced into Sister Magdalen's cell. On her couch lay Gisborne, pale unto death, but not dead. By his side was a cup of water, and a small morsel of mouldy bread, which he had pushed out of his reach, and could not move to obtain. Over against his bed were these words, copied in the English version: 'Therefore, if thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell

... for Prickett's old shacks, and his mouldy pastures that are all burdock and fluke. If Joanna Godden had had any know, she could have beaten him down fifteen hundred—he was bound to sell, and she was a fool not to make him sell ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith

... men of present valor, stalwart old iconoclasts, Unconvinced by axe or gibbet that all virtue was the Past's; But we make their truth our falsehood, thinking that hath made us free. Hoarding it in mouldy parchments, while our tender spirits flee 70 The rude grasp of that great Impulse which ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... in this story, Hamlet, the moody moraliser upon charnel-houses and mouldy bones, is identified with the jolly companion of the Mermaid, the wine-bibbing joker of the Falcon, and the Apollo saloon? It is because Hamlet is the most elaborately-painted character in literature. It is because the springs of his actions are so ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton

... Philo Gubb. "You'd sort of expect it to get mouldy, but you wouldn't call it threatening at the ...
— Philo Gubb Correspondence-School Detective • Ellis Parker Butler

... starving dog coming out, a living skeleton, from the wet, mouldy church, reminds us sharply of the changed times we live in and of the days when the Church was still sleeping very peacefully, not yet turning uneasily in its bed before opening its eyes; and when a comfortable rector of Codford thought ...
— A Shepherd's Life • W. H. Hudson

... well knowing how to get rid of this applicant, and feeling the more embarrassed because his manner and appearance claimed a delicacy in which the worthy Mr. Boffin feared he himself might be deficient, that gentleman glanced into the mouldy little plantation or cat preserve, of Clifford's Inn, as it was that day, in search of a suggestion. Sparrows were there, dry-rot and wet-rot were there, but it was not ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes

... what a book those Essays of his make, to lie down with under trees! It is the honest, lovable simplicity of his nature that makes the keeping good. He is the Izaak Walton of London streets,—of print-shops, of pastry-shops, of mouldy book-stalls; the chime of Bow-bells strikes upon his ear like the chorus of a milkmaid's ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various

... moving on Ranjitgarh, or that this or the other Sirdar was about to cut the communications with Agpur, and in the society of James Antony and his intimates these were the topics that everybody discussed. But spending the mid-day hours in the damp heat of the drawing-room, where paper grew mouldy and the covers peeled off books, under the influence of the rains, with Mrs Antony occupied at a discreet distance with reading or letter-writing, Gerrard endured what would have been martyrdom but for the bitter-sweet sense of Honour's presence—possessing which he could not ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier

... stager,(2)whose sagacious head Was never upon mouldy parchments fed, Says "Love makes Petrarchs, just as many lambs And little occupation, Abrahams." But who ...
— Love's Comedy • Henrik Ibsen

... of that pathetic message from my dead mother, held me to my purpose. And, as if to encourage me, the candle stood where I had found it once before on the little ledge, and beside it, to my astonishment, a small crust of bread. It must have stood there a week, and was both stale and mouldy. But to my famishing taste it was a repast for a king, and put a ...
— Kilgorman - A Story of Ireland in 1798 • Talbot Baines Reed

... drifting in this dismal pack. July and August,—the days are growing shorter again. "Will nobody come and take care of me, and cut off these horrid blocks of ice, and see to these sides of bacon in the hold, and all these mouldy sails, and this powder, and the bread and the spirit that I have kept for them so well? It is September, and the sun begins to set again. And here is another of those awful gales. Will it be my very last? all alone ...
— The Man Without a Country and Other Tales • Edward E. Hale

... miserable profit, and to save the expense of wood, the praefect John of Cappadocia had given orders that the flour should be slightly baked by the same fire which warmed the baths of Constantinople; and when the sacks were opened, a soft and mouldy paste was distributed to the army. Such unwholesome food, assisted by the heat of the climate and season, soon produced an epidemical disease, which swept away five hundred soldiers. Their health was restored by the diligence ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon

... and Jack-of-all-trades to the matadors in the bull-fighting ring; I, that have been slave to every black beast who cared to set his foot on my neck; I, that have been starved and spat upon and trampled under foot; I, that have begged for mouldy scraps and been refused because the dogs had the first right? Oh, what is the use of all this! How can I TELL you what you have brought on me? And now—you love me! How much do you love me? Enough to give up your God for me? Oh, what has He done for you, ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich

... plentiful fortune, powerful friends, and great merit entitle him to in England, has inured himself to the greatest hardships that any the meanest inhabitant of this new Colony could be exposed to; his diet has been mouldy bread, or boiled rice instead of bread, salt beef, pork, &c., his drink has been water; and his bed the damp earth, without any other covering than the canopy of heaven to shelter him: and all this to set an example to this new Colony how they might ...
— Biographical Memorials of James Oglethorpe • Thaddeus Mason Harris

... of "bit" calico, dingy red or dreary brown,—her feet shod in the heavy store-shoes which were brought us from Catlettsburg by the returning flat-boat men,—her sharp-featured face, the forehead and cheeks covered with brown, mouldy-looking spots, the eyes deep-set, with a livid, dyspeptic ring around them, and the lips thin and pinched,—the whole face shaded by the eternal sun-bonnet, which never left her head from early sunrise till late bedtime (no Sandy woman is ever seen without her sun-bonnet). ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various

... with remains of vinegar dried up at the bottom; mustard pots containing a dark and wicked mixture that had once been mustard; a broken hand-bell used at long-past dinners, to summon servants long since dead; an old wine register with entries in it of a quarter of a century back; a mouldy bottle of Worcester sauce, still boasting on its label that it would impart a relish to viands otherwise dull; and some charming Dresden china fruit-dishes, adorned with cheerful shepherds and shepherdesses, ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp

... hovering in the air, waiting till the new bodies which they were to animate were made ready for their reception. The spirits of those that had been foully slain wandered about with gashed limbs; and skeletons, whose mouldy bones were held together by bits of blackened sinew, followed them as the murderer does his victim. Malignant witches with shriveled skins, horrid eyes and distorted forms, crawled and crouched over the earth; whilst ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton

... piece of it; but, on opening the cask, so disgusting and pestilential a smell took possession of the hold as compelled me instantly to quit it. Two tons of this stinking salt meat, and some sacks of mouldy black biscuit, were the only nourishing provisions on board for twenty invalids, for, to this number, (out of seventy,) they actually amounted before the Maria (the vessel they were on board) left St Peter and St Paul (for Kodiak)." Was not the practice said to have been adopted at Jaffa by ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr

... hands any longer. While we were tearing our hair over poor Kitty's possible demise, and agonising as to the uncertain sex of the baby, it did not matter. But now even that dear creature, Saint Julius, is beginning to pick up, and looks less as if his diet was mouldy peas and his favourite plaything a cat-o'-nine-tails. Scourge?—Yes, of course, but it's all the same in the application of the instrument, you know. And then in your secret soul, Mary dear," she added, not unkindly, "there's no denying it's far from obnoxious to you to spend a trifle ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet

... with a grievance. Despite the confusion, Mr. Vickers soon learned that it was a case of "two's company and three's none," and that Mr. Russell, after turning a deaf ear to hints to retire which had gradually increased in bluntness, had suddenly turned restive and called Mr. Tasker a "mouldy image," a "wall-eyed rabbit," and divers other obscure and contradictory things. Not content with that, he had, without any warning, kissed Miss Vickers, and when Mr. Tasker, obeying that infuriated damsel's commands, tried to show him the door, had facetiously offered to show that gentleman ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs

... there," said the landlord, and pointed to the tree-tops of the park, above the opposite houses. Newman followed the first cross-road to the right—it was bordered with mouldy cottages—and in a few moments saw before him the peaked roofs of the towers. Advancing farther, he found himself before a vast iron gate, rusty and closed; here he paused a moment, looking through the bars. The chateau was near the road; this was at once its merit and its defect; ...
— The American • Henry James

... prison next the Bridge of Sighs and locked her up in one of the mouldy cells below the water line—dark, dismal pockets where, in the old ...
— The Veiled Lady - and Other Men and Women • F. Hopkinson Smith

... him on the beach. He had, he said, brought but five turtle that day, but would fetch an equal number or more on the morrow if they could be obtained. The captain was pleased. Fresh food, he said, he was very anxious to obtain, as they had nothing on board but salt beef and mouldy biscuit. He gave old Takai (Kaibuka's father) some tobacco, and a knife, and said that the young women might go on board and dance for the amusement of the sailors. This was exactly what the old man desired, for ...
— The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton - 1902 • Louis Becke

... and proceeded to wind up this satin cordage on her crown, "what men are in their minds, can woman know? Old ladies, not unfrequently, wear their old coal-scuttle bonnets long past the fashion, but it is from want. This man is his own master and not poor. His companion is a negro, and his taste a mouldy hat, old as America. How happy are we that it is not necessary to pry into such minds! A little refinement is the next blessing ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend

... opportunity had at length arrived for solving the great doubt that had long perplexed the minds of the inhabitants as to whether the soil in the neighbourhood was crustaceous or carboniferous. The crustaceous party had been long triumphing in the fact, that a mouldy piece of bread had been found at two feet below the surface, when digging for the foundation of a swing erected in a garden in the neighbourhood; but the carboniferous enthusiasts had been thrown into ecstacies, by the sexton ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 2, 1841 • Various

... group of Erysiphei, in which well-authenticated polymorphy prevails. These fungi are developed on the green parts of growing plants, and at first consist of a white mouldy stratum, composed of delicate mycelium, on which erect threads are produced, which break up into subglobose joints or conidia. The species on grass was named Oidium monilioides before its relationship was known, but undoubtedly this is only the conidia of ...
— Fungi: Their Nature and Uses • Mordecai Cubitt Cooke

... class, when he discusses socialism, is condemned an ignoramus out of his own mouth. He does not know the literature of socialism, its philosophy, nor its politics. He wags his head sagely and rattles the dry bones of dead and buried ideas. His lips mumble mouldy phrases, such as, "Men are not born equal and never can be;" "It is Utopian and impossible;" "Abstinence should be rewarded;" "Man will first have to be born again;" "Cooperative colonies have always failed;" and "What if we do divide up? in ten years there ...
— War of the Classes • Jack London

... burden and pressure of arms cannot be borne without support to the inside." They laid a table for him at the door of the inn for the sake of the air, and the host brought him a portion of ill-soaked and worse cooked stockfish, and a piece of bread as black and mouldy as his own armour; but a laughable sight it was to see him eating, for having his helmet on and the beaver up, he could not with his own hands put anything into his mouth unless some one else placed it there, and this service one of the ladies rendered him. But ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... wise economy I had employed. Of course, this was pulled down to get at the turf. The stairs also were pulled down and burned, though there was no scarcity of firing. As the walls were plastered and papered before they were quite dry, the paper grew mouldy, and the plaster fell off. In the hurry of finishing, some of the woodwork had but one coat of paint. In Ireland they have not faith in the excellent Dutch proverb, "Paint costs nothing." I could not get my workmen ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth

... of wind last night, ahead, dreadful sea; took in sail and lay to all night.... Beginning to think of our provisions; bread mouldy and little left; sugar, little left; fresh provisions, little left; beans, none left; salt pork, little left; salt beef, a plenty; water, plenty; stores of passengers, some gone and the rest drawing to a conclusion; patience drawing to a conclusion; in short all ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse

... Giotto's, for they are as fresh as roses, and are done in an exceedingly workmanlike style; but they are allegories of Fame and Plenty and other matters, such as I could never understand. Our whole accommodation is in similar style,—spacious, magnificent, and mouldy. ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... country looked more beautiful, and, in short, when he perceived, at the end of its gloomy avenue, his chateau bathed in the white light, he found the spectacle rather enjoyable than otherwise. And when he had once more ensconced himself in the maternal domicile, and inhaled the odor of damp paper and mouldy trees that constituted its atmosphere, he found great consolation in the reflection that there existed not very far away from him a young woman who possessed a charming face, a delicious voice, and a ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet

... are clammy. I am constantly dipping a broken pen in mouldy ink; but if I don't write to you now, you won't get any news of me for three weeks. This evening I board the Roland of the North German ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann

... wreaths and garlands, gather'd in the dew. Some spread the snowy canvas, propp'd on high O'er shelter'd tables with their whole supply; Some swung the biting scythe with merry face, And cropp'd the daisies for a dancing space. Some roll'd the mouldy barrel in his might, From prison'd darkness into cheerful light, And fenced him round with cans; and others bore The creaking hamper with its costly store, Well cork'd, well flavour'd, and well tax'd, that came From Lusitanian ...
— May Day With The Muses • Robert Bloomfield

... first cooled—the great cavern seemed to return to its awful original mood. The three dwarfed humans became wholly conscious of it. They felt it almost a living thing, stretching vastly around them, tightening its unheard spell on them. Its smell, of mouldy earth and rocks down which water slowly dripped, filled their nostrils and somehow added to ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various

... Mahony nodded his assent. He also added, gratuitously, that he had before now been obliged to reclaim on casks of mouldy mess-pork. At which Ocock ceased coddling his chin to point a straight forefinger at him, with a triumphant: "You see!"—But Purdy who, sick and tired of the discussion, had withdrawn to the window to watch the rain zig-zag in runlets down the dusty panes, and hiss and spatter on ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson

... she came out of her swoon she never knew. The cellar was dark; but it was nothing compared to the darkness enveloping her mind. She lay there on the damp and mouldy straw, hardly able, scarcely wanting, to move, overwhelmed by the extraordinary adventure which had befallen her. Was this to be the end of the pleasant trip into the country on which she had embarked so readily only ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams

... her lover, Mr. (afterwards Sir John) Manners, who had long been haunting the neighboring forest as an outlaw. We strolled through the ancient garden, all ivied and moss-grown, admired the stone balustrade, which, time-stained and mouldy, is still the student's favorite bit of architecture, and at last made our way back to the farm-house,—I am sure I do not remember how, for we were as deficient in a guide as on our first attempt at ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various

... makes loops and wriggles; that springs from a thin, sprawling and helpless beginning, and develops into almost miraculous lengths, and ramifies and twists and turns in "verdurous glooms," ascends and descends, grovels in the moist earth and among mouldy leaves, clasps with aerial rootlets every possible support, and eventually clambers and climbs above the tallest tree, twirling its armed tentacles round airy nothings. It blossoms inconspicuously, and its fruit is as hard, tough and dry as an argument on torts. Ordinary mortals ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield

... Captain, "think of being obliged to fight like that on two meals a week, the meals consisting of boiled horse and mouldy crackers, drinking the same swamp water you have been standing in all day! And I suppose you think that our regiment lost heavily, Colonel? Eh? Well, you are mistaken! We had the crack regiment and scarcely suffered at all, in comparison with some of the others. They took ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford

... the real seat of legislation in this country, and it is surprising that Mr. BAGEHOT gave it no place in his account of the Constitution. It is also surprising, in view of its importance, that it should be such a dismal, ill-furnished and thoroughly mouldy room. It is a rotten room. Mr. ASQUITH, when a Private Secretary, is reported to have said of it, "In the whole course of my political career I can recall no case of administrative myopia at all parallel to the folly or ineptitude which ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, April 14, 1920 • Various

... civil broil. Thou canst not doubt its fellow's excellence, Which Thomas, ere my coming, hath declar'd So courteously unto thee. But the track, Which its smooth fellies made, is now deserted: That mouldy mother is where late were lees. His family, that wont to trace his path, Turn backward, and invert their steps; erelong To rue the gathering in of their ill crop, When the rejected tares in vain shall ask Admittance ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante

... above the sandbags, and the ragged tears and holes in the upper part of the opposite wall. In an upper corner a gaping shell-hole had linen table-cloths five or six fold thick hung over to screen the light from showing through at night. In a corner lay a heap of mouldy straw and a bed-mattress; the table and fireplace were littered with dirty pots and dishes, the floor with empty jam and biscuit tins, opened and unopened bully-beef tins, more being full than empty because the British soldier must be ...
— Between the Lines • Boyd Cable

... striking, in common Italian life, than the contrast between out-doors and in-doors. Without, all is fragrant and radiant; within, mouldy, dark, and damp. Except in the well-kept palaces of the great, houses in Italy are more like dens than habitations, and a sight of them is a sufficient reason to the mind of any inquirer, why their vivacious and handsome inhabitants ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various

... were rusted, and the floor within was choked with fallen rubbish. At length we forced an entrance. I thought I had never seen a more dreary interior. My father's old chaise was yet standing there, with both wheels off. The mouldy harness was dropping to pieces on the walls. The beams were festooned with cobwebs. The very ladder leading to the loft above was so rotten that I scarcely dared trust ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards

... onions, 1 pound Beans, enough for five months if we have them once a week Rice—damaged—for five months, once a week Lemon Extract, 1 bottle Salt and Pepper Worcestershire sauce, 1 bottle Dried bear meat Bear fat, rancid Rolled oats—mouldy—four months Tea and Coffee Three boxes candles Two ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby

... The use of ordinary hay or straw. After being mixed with the pulp for about twelve hours, fermentation commences, and this soon renders the most mouldy hay palatable, and animals eat with avidity that which they would otherwise reject. This fermentation softens the straw, makes it more palatable, and puts it in a state to assimilate more readily with the other food. In this respect I think ...
— The Stock-Feeder's Manual - the chemistry of food in relation to the breeding and - feeding of live stock • Charles Alexander Cameron

... gentlemen; to tell you true, I cannot endure to see the rabble of these ground ciarlitani, that spread their cloaks on the pavement, as if they meant to do feats of activity, and then come in lamely, with their mouldy tales out of Boccacio, like stale Tabarine, the fabulist: some of them discoursing their travels, and of their tedious captivity in the Turks' galleys, when, indeed, were the truth known, they were the Christians' galleys, where very temperately they eat bread, and drunk ...
— Volpone; Or, The Fox • Ben Jonson

... kneeled, she flung Her loveliness at his feet: "I am tired of being blown and swung In the rain and the snow and the sleet! But better no rest than stillness among Things whose names would defile my tongue! How I hate the mouldy sheet! ...
— Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Vol. 2 • George MacDonald

... defence against the outside world. It seemed now to have definitely decided to abandon the struggle. The water streamed down the panes of my window opposite my bed. One patch of my ceiling (just above my only bookcase, confound it!) was coloured a mouldy grey, and from this huge drops like elephant's tears, splashed monotonously. (Already The Spirit of Man was disfigured by a long grey streak, and the green back of Galleon's Roads was splotched with ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole

... at night (the Superintendent of Police, Captain Miller, and Symonds) we found a complete layer of human beings stretched upon the floor, often fifteen to twenty, some clad, others naked, men and women indiscriminately. Their bed was a litter of mouldy straw, mixed with rags. There was little or no furniture, and the only thing which gave these dens any shimmer of habitableness was a fire upon the hearth. Theft and prostitution form the chief means of subsistence of this population. No one seemed to take the trouble to cleanse this Augean ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels

... that some minutes of wakefulness were required to establish the fact that he was still in his own room and bed. It struck Hawkins as strange that the bedclothes, tucked about his head, seemed wet and heavy and mouldy. He pulled them tightly about his shivering body, curled his legs up until the knees almost touched the chin and—yes, Hawkins said damn twice or thrice. It was not long until he was sufficiently awake to realise that he was very ...
— Her Weight in Gold • George Barr McCutcheon

... It is easy to picture to ourselves the hideous gloom, the walls sweating unwholesome vapors, the oppressive thickness of the air, never stirred by a fresh breath from heaven, the jar of water and mouldy crust, the miserable garments, the pallid face and emaciated form of a prisoner in such a place. It is less easy to guess what might be the thoughts of one sitting there in expectation of an instant summons to execution. More than seventy ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848 • Various

... voice, while behind him shone a room lighted with small candles, from which issued Sabbath smells and a quiet monotonous dreary sound of singing. Jasiek drank a few glasses one after the other, gnawed half-consciously some mouldy rolls as tough as leather, which he seasoned with a herring, and looked now at the door, now at the window, or listened to the murmur of ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various

... bottle of rum, for any sort of strong waters indeed, guessing that a dram would help us both; and after I had made a meal off some raw pork and molasses spread upon the ship's biscuit, which was mouldy and astir with weevils, I took my lantern and again went on deck, and made my way to the galley where the oil jar stood, and here in a drawer I found what now I most needed, but what before I had overlooked; I mean a parcel; of ...
— The Honour of the Flag • W. Clark Russell

... in time. I would have had old Rockhold Hall prepared as it should be for the reception of my father's bride, though I do so strongly disapprove the marriage. Do you know, Cora, that old house has never had its furniture renewed within my memory? Some of the rooms are positively mouldy and musty. And whoever heard of a wealthy man like my father bringing his wife home to a neglected old country house like Rockhold, without first ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... now, did about this place of Tom's. He says—him as was here just now—'When Tom shut up the house, mate, to go to rack, the beds was left, all made, like as if somebody was a-going to sleep in every bed. And if you was to walk through the bedrooms now, you'd see the ragged mouldy bedclothes a heaving and a heaving like seas. And a heaving and a heaving with what?' he says. 'Why, with the rats ...
— Tom Tiddler's Ground • Charles Dickens

... its landlord the kindest and most hospitable of hosts. Twenty years later I went back to the locality, hoping to find something of the old time; but there was only a deserted hostel, the weeds growing over the courtyard, and the sealed and mouldy doors and ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James

... bank of the Thames, and is certainly one of the most beautiful and interesting places in the vicinity of London. From the time of Edward I., the English monarchs had a royal residence here, but by the time of Charles II., this old palace had become a rather mouldy and tumble-down affair, so he commanded that it should be demolished entirely, and a magnificent structure of freestone erected in its place. We read that "riches take to themselves wings," but King Charles's riches seem to have gone off with one wing, for he had only means enough to finish ...
— Stories and Legends of Travel and History, for Children • Grace Greenwood

... of the mouldy cab and began automatically to unfasten the strap of her watch. At least she must ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell

... White and several kinds of hairy mouldy spots, which are observable upon divers kinds of putrify'd bodies, whether Animal substances, or Vegetable, such as the skin, raw or dress'd, flesh, bloud, humours, milk, green Cheese, &c. or rotten sappy Wood, or Herbs, ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke

... issued forth to a place hard by, where sea-stores were sold, purchased a second-hand hammock, and had it slung in seamanlike fashion from the ceiling of the counting-house. He also caused to be erected, in the same mouldy cabin, an old ship's stove with a rusty funnel to carry the smoke through the roof; and these arrangements completed, surveyed them with ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens

... gates of the garden without the courtyard, she saw before them a strange and horrible coach. And the only light that came from this dark carriage was from the red eyes of the six horses who drew it, and their trappings swept the ground, black and mouldy. Now, the body of this coach was shaped like a coffin, and at the ...
— The Story and Song of Black Roderick • Dora Sigerson

... yourn. The hull o' it. They's only a loaf, a trifle stale—one them three-centers, kind of mouldy on the corners where't can be cut off—an' two the finest chops you ever set your little white ...
— A Sunny Little Lass • Evelyn Raymond

... saw it get Adam." She pointed to a new mound of mouldy clothes on the floor. "Oh, it is hideous for me to be so glad, but he was going to destroy everything and everyone except me. He made the ray projector for that ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various

... he says, "drinks old beeswinged Setian wine, served to him in a gold goblet by a beautiful boy; to you a coarse black slave brings in a cracked cup wine too foul even to foment a bruise. His bread is pure and white, yours brown and mouldy; before him is a huge lobster, before you a lean shore-crab; his fish is a barbel or a lamprey, yours an eel:—and, if you choose to put up with it, you are rightly served." The relation, though not held to be disgraceful, involved sometimes bitter mortifications, and seems ...
— Horace • William Tuckwell

... find a nest for his blanket in the mouldy straw of the unfinished barn loft, he could not sleep. He restlessly watched the stars through the cracks of the boarded roof, and listened to the wind that made the half-open structure as vocal as a sea-shell, until past midnight. Once or twice he had fancied he heard ...
— By Shore and Sedge • Bret Harte

... old soldier looked at him scornfully. "He goes an' saves yer mouldy life and then yer bleats. Got yer bib, ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile

... seat them around in their mouldy places, Now and then bending towards me a glance of wistfulness, A strange upbraiding smile upon all their faces, And in the bearing ...
— Time's Laughingstocks and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy

... of mouldy joys can give me no delight; I'll take my chances with the world, I'd rather live and fight. Though Fortune laughs along my track, or wears her blackest frown, I'll try to do the world some good before I tumble down. Let's fight for things that ought to be, ...
— In the Days When the World Was Wide and Other Verses • Henry Lawson

... he, as he concluded his report; "but to them their death was a boon and a release. The information brought by our spies concerning the cruelty with which they were treated, exceeds belief. Crowded into loathsome dungeons, deprived of the commonest necessaries of life, fed on mouldy bread and putrid water, and overwhelmed with blows if they ventured to expostulate—such were the tender mercies shown by the agents of Christina to the unhappy Orrio and his gallant companions. Although their imprisonment was but of three weeks' duration, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various

... of very small, mouldy, and ill-furnished rooms; he took them unwillingly, overcome by the landlady's doleful story of their long lodgerless condition, and, in the exercise of a heavenly forbearance, remained year after year. The woman did not cheat him, and Thomas knew enough of life to respect her for this remarkable ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing

... turning the maid out, Margaret suddenly opened the door wide and stood on the threshold, breathing with relief the not very sweet air that came down the corridor from the stage. It came laden with a compound odour of ropes, dusty scenery, mouldy flour paste and cotton velvet furniture, the whole very hot and far from aromatic, but at that moment as refreshing as a sea-breeze to the impatient singer. The smell had already acquired associations for her during the ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford

... headlong and crashing silence. You know that a tree is but a creature tied to the ground by one leg. You will not let assassins with their Swedish daggers shed the green blood of such a being. But if so, why am I not in custody; where are my gyves? Produce, from some portion of your persons, my mouldy straw and my grated window. The facts of which I have just convinced you, that my name is Chesterton, that I am a journalist, that I am living with the well-known and philanthropic Mr. Blank of Ilkley, cannot have anything to do with the question ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton

... really be no more bother about morals in the world. Native good sense would decide. Even as it is, the native good sense of mankind is deciding certain questions and will presently push the lawyers into codifying their mouldy laws, and then give reason a chance to cleanse the whole archaic lump of them; but as it is, Estelle—Take Marriage, for example. I agree with her all the way—in theory. But when you come to view the situation in practice—you're up ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts

... which the painter lived when he returned to his native town, still stands in the little Piazza Monte Vecchio, and its whole facade retains the frescoes, mouldy and decaying, with which he decorated it. The design is in four horizontal bands. First comes a frieze of children in every attitude of fun and frolic. Then follows a long range of animals—horses, oxen, and deer. Musical instruments and flowers make a border, with allegorical representations ...
— The Venetian School of Painting • Evelyn March Phillipps

... Wilde's last years, Gide tells us that "he had suffered too grievously from his imprisonment.... His will had been broken ... nothing remained in his shattered life but a mouldy ruin,[23] painful to contemplate, of his former self. At times he seemed to wish to show that his brain was still active. Humour there was; but it was far-fetched, ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris

... to see the curiosities of Clavering meanwhile; but not having a taste for architecture, Doctor Portman's fine church did not engage his attention much and he pronounced the tower to be as mouldy as an old Stilton cheese. He walked down the street and looked at the few shops there; he saw Captain Glanders at the window of the Reading-room, and having taken a good stare at that gentleman, he wagged ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray

... matter was settled clearly by my finding the sloop's log-book lying open on the cabin table, just as it had lain there, and had entries made in it, while the action was going on. And a very strange thrill ran through me as I read on the mouldy page in brown faint letters the date, "October 5, 1814," and across the page-head, in bigger brown faint letters: "U.S. Sloop-of-war Wasp": and so knew that I was aboard of that stinging little ...
— In the Sargasso Sea - A Novel • Thomas A. Janvier

... patroness of the Cathedral, Santa Reparata, made of wood and plaster, they began to get tired of relics. Or perhaps it would be truer to say that their aesthetic sense turned them away in disgust from dismembered corpses and mouldy clothes. Or perhaps their feeling was rather due to that sense of glory which thought Dante and Petrarch worthier of a splendid grave than all the twelve apostles put together. It is probable that ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt

... one or two dark and mouldy-smelling vaults, the party ascended a flight of steps, which brought them to the hall. As Jack conjectured, no one was there, and, though a lamp was burning on a stand, they decided upon proceeding without it. They then swiftly mounted the stairs, and stopped before the audience-chamber. ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth

... she had intended, now went on further, and entering the nave began to inspect the sallow monuments which lined the grizzled pile. She did not perceive amid the shadows an old gentleman who had crept into the mouldy place as stealthily as a worm into a skull, and was keeping himself carefully beyond her observation. She continued to regard feature after feature till the choristers had filed in from the south side, and ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy

... king,—curiosity, that vice which has led thousands to ruin, and avarice, which has brought destruction upon thousands more. "It is a treasure-house, not a talisman," he told himself. "Gold, silver, and jewels lie hidden in its mouldy depths. My treasury is empty, and I should be a fool to let a cluster of rusty locks keep me from filling it ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris

... been nothing remarkable in finding such clothes in a widow's house had they been clean; or moth-eaten, or creased, or mouldy from long lying by; but that they should be splashed with recent mud bothered Stockdale a good deal. When a young pastor is in the aspen stage of attachment, and open to agitation at the merest trifles, a really substantial incongruity ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy

... by his bow, chapeau bras in hand; the old room was dingy; the salmon-coloured paint had faded into a drab; great pieces of plaster had chipped off from the fine wreaths and festoons on its walls; but still a mouldy odour of aristocracy lingered about the place, and a dusty recollection of the days that were gone made Miss Matty and Mrs Forrester bridle up as they entered, and walk mincingly up the room, as if there were a number of genteel observers, ...
— Cranford • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... limping gait, and looks so dreamy-sad, He wanders onward, stopping to inspect Each window, stored with articles of food; He yearns but to enjoy one cheering meal. Oh! to his hungry palate, viands rude Would yield a zest the famish'd only feel! He now devours a crust of mouldy bread— With teeth and hands the precious boon is torn, Unmindful of the storm which round his head Impetuous sweeps. God help thee, child forlorn God help the poor! God help the poor! Another have I found A bow'd and venerable man is he; His slouched hat with ...
— Home-Life of the Lancashire Factory Folk during the Cotton Famine • Edwin Waugh

... Jean, scornfully. "If there's anything in the world I thoroughly despise, it's old, mouldy, dead men's shoes. If I were you, I'd write and tell Kit that she could come home at the Christmas vacation ...
— Kit of Greenacre Farm • Izola Forrester

... the scene of Sam's punishment by the Overseer, was a one-story shanty in the vicinity of the stables. Though fast falling to decay, it had more the appearance of a decent habitation than the other huts on the plantation. Its thick plank door was ornamented with a mouldy brass knocker, and its four windows contained sashes, to which here and there clung a broken pane, the surviving relic of its better days. It was built of large unhewn logs, notched at the ends and laid one upon the other, with the bark still on. The thick, rough coat which yet ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... handed over the instrument. The monitor looked at it, and then at me without comment. But there is an international language of facial expression, and his said, unmistakably, "You poor, simple prune! You choice sample of mouldy American cheese!" ...
— High Adventure - A Narrative of Air Fighting in France • James Norman Hall

... the mint of daffodils, In darkened rooms where colour comes to birth, The mouldy chamber where the rose distils A sweetness that is Summer for the earth ... And all the strange, alchemic, secret spell, I shall discover, ... but I shall ...
— Ships in Harbour • David Morton

... the jetty gradual she was hauled: Then one the tiller took, And chewed, and spat upon his hand, and bawled; And one the canvas shook Forth like a mouldy bat; and one, with nods And smiles, lay on the bowsprit end, and called And cursed the ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... weed and other plants is supposed to be the cause of hay fever. But we also have something far more important in the germs of certain classes of vegetation. The effects are familiar. If food is put away, it becomes mouldy. This mould is a peculiar kind of vegetation which is called a fungus, and the plants fungi. In order for this mould to develop a certain temperature and a certain degree of moisture are necessary. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 362, December 9, 1882 • Various



Words linked to "Mouldy" :   musty, stale, mould, moldy



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