Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Mud   /məd/   Listen
Mud

noun
1.
Water soaked soil; soft wet earth.  Synonym: clay.
2.
Slanderous remarks or charges.



Related searches:



WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |
Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar





"Mud" Quotes from Famous Books



... done fer now! An' it's high tide, too! We'll never git her off them mud flats! How in time did Eben hist that sail in sich a storm? Why, it was all that both of us could do when it ...
— Jess of the Rebel Trail • H. A. Cody

... their eyes; and because of his wickedness in forgetting the people, his feathers, once white, had turned black. Then Naganschitn, the Badger, was sent to see if the land was good, but just as soon as he had crawled through he sank in the black mud and could go no farther, so Little Whirlwind was despatched to succor him. To this day Badger's legs are black. Next Keldinshe{COMBINING BREVE}n, the Skunk, was sent, because he was light in weight; but even he sank in the mud and blackened ...
— The North American Indian • Edward S. Curtis

... followed the report; then a dip of oars was heard that fast grew fainter until it faded from hearing. On returning to the house they found the girl's room empty, and next morning her slipper was brought in from the mud at the landing. Nobody inside of the American lines ever learned what that shot had done, but if it failed to take a life it robbed Cortelyou of his mind. He spent the rest of his days in a single room, chained to ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner

... the speaker calculated to disappoint such expectations. Their startled eyes beheld indeed the most remarkable figure that had ever wheeled a bicycle down the platform of Torrydhulish Station. Hatless, in evening clothes with blue lapels upon the coat, splashed liberally with mud, his feet equipped only with embroidered socks and saturated pumps, his shirt-front bestarred with souvenirs of all the soils for thirty miles, Count Bunker made a picture that lived long in their memories. Yet no foolish consciousness of ...
— Count Bunker • J. Storer Clouston

... in the swamp of the pterodactyls. These were old volcanic vents, and for some reason excited the greatest interest in Lord John. What attracted Challenger, on the other hand, was a bubbling, gurgling mud geyser, where some strange gas formed great bursting bubbles upon the surface. He thrust a hollow reed into it and cried out with delight like a schoolboy then he was able, on touching it with a lighted match, to cause a sharp explosion and a blue ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle

... have been made in this way: first of all secure and massive foundations had to be laid, the ground being compressed to make it very solid. Then walls, or dykes, were reared of earth, sand, and mud, so tightly compressed as to be quite impervious to water. The whole was bound with twigs of willows interwoven with wonderful care, and the spaces filled with clay so as to make them almost as ...
— Little Folks (November 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various

... quit. Here's a lot o' rocks and mud and I got to 'tend to business. You tackle yer mother and chase her up and down the hills a while and let me ...
— A Man for the Ages - A Story of the Builders of Democracy • Irving Bacheller

... Father Conmee stepped into an outward bound tram for he disliked to traverse on foot the dingy way past Mud Island. ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... the night before at Clearwater Spring. Finding it but mud and alkali, he had merely rested his men and horses for a few hours, and then pushed on for Apache Spring, where he hoped to strike water. The troop rode through the early morning hours, full of grit, ...
— The Round-up - A Romance of Arizona novelized from Edmund Day's melodrama • John Murray and Marion Mills Miller

... the storm went down, and by mutual consent our mud-pilot left, taking passage in a passing river-craft, with his pay and our best advice, which was to ship in a dredging-machine, where ...
— Voyage of the Liberdade • Captain Joshua Slocum

... stand in one place all day," retorted the artichoke, "at least I don't swim around in stagnant water, and build my lodge in the mud." ...
— Myths and Legends of the Sioux • Marie L. McLaughlin

... Mud and water were not present and not any more of either. Silk and stockings were not present and not any more of either. A receptacle and a symbol and no monster were present and no more. This made a piece show and was ...
— Tender Buttons - Objects—Food—Rooms • Gertrude Stein

... coaches! Drag them out! Tear their finery from them! Stuff their mincing mouths with mud!" rose all ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... effected him as a mental blank, and, when a bright light shone out, it seemed to mark the opening of a second dream phase. From where the light came, he knew not, cared not, but it illuminated a perfectly bare room, with a floor of native mud bricks, a plastered wall, and wood-beamed ceiling. A tall sarcophagus stood upright against the wall before him; its lid leant close beside it ... and his black robed guide, her luminous eyes looking straightly over the yashmak, stood rigidly ...
— Brood of the Witch-Queen • Sax Rohmer

... mythology a serpent or dragon produced from the mud left on the earth after the deluge of Deucalion, a brood of sheer chaos and the dark, who lived in a cave of Parnassus, and was slain by Apollo, who founded the Pythian Games in commemoration of his victory, and ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... Bridgeboro. That's where the mill is. And there wasn't anybody there to open the bridge so it could get through. Oh, wasn't that old tug captain mad! He kept whistling and whistling and saying things about the river being an old mud hole, and how he'd never get down the bay again, unless he could get through and come down on the full tide. Oh, boy, ...
— Roy Blakeley's Adventures in Camp • Percy Keese Fitzhugh

... a nearing squash of furtive feet in the boggy earth, the rasp of constrained respiration, a muttered curse when someone slipped and narrowly escaped a fall, the edged hiss of an officer's whisper reprimanding the offender. Incontinently he who crawled dropped flat to the greasy mud ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph

... de Duras an ill turn the latter had served him. During one of the Court journeys, the carriage in which Rose was riding broke down. He took a horse; but, not being a good equestrian, was very soon pitched into a hole full of mud. While there M. de Duras passed, and Rose from the midst of the mire cried for help. But M. de Duras, instead of giving assistance, looked from his coach-window, burst out laughing, and cried out: "What a luxurious horse thus to roll upon Roses!"—and with ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon

... scene for anything. I might never see such a splendid one; when PONG went one shot. Every face went pale: R—R—R—R—R went the whole detachment [of troops], and the whole crowd of gentlemen and ladies turned and cut. Such a scene!—-ladies, gentlemen, and vagabonds went sprawling in the mud, not shot but tripped up, and those that went down could not rise—they were trampled over.... I ran a short time straight on and did not fall, then turned down a side street, ran fifty yards, and felt tolerably safe; ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro

... done, not with slips of stone driven in with a hammer, after the usual style, but with bits of mud pressed in with the fingers. The mud was used when about the consistency of modeling clay, and bears the imprints of the fingers that applied it; even the skin markings show clearly and distinctly. From this use of mud to its use as an exterior ...
— The Cliff Ruins of Canyon de Chelly, Arizona • Cosmos Mindeleff

... uncertain that I cannot be relied on for anything. The only place I am to be found is in camp, and I am so cross now that I am not worth seeing anywhere. Here you will have to take me with the three stools— the snow, the rain, and the mud. The storm of the last twenty-four hours has added to our stock of all, and we are now in a floating condition. But the sun and the wind will carry all off in time, and then we shall appreciate our relief. Our horses and mules suffer the ...
— Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee • Captain Robert E. Lee, His Son

... lived about seven miles off. Mr. Carter kindly lent me a horse, and I was accompanied by a young Dutch gentleman residing at Ampanam, who offered to be my guide. We first passed through the town and suburbs along a straight road bordered by mud walls and a fine avenue of lofty trees; then through rice-fields, irrigated in the same manner as I had seen them at Bileling; and afterwards over sandy pastures near the sea, and occasionally along the beach itself. Mr. S. received us kindly, and offered me a residence at his house should ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace

... Champdoce had filled her with alarm, but her imagination was not of that kind upon which unpleasant impressions remain for any long period; for after she had regained her room, and thrown aside her out-door attire, and removed all signs of mud-stains, she once more became herself, and even laughed a little rippling laugh at all her own past alarms. Overwhelmed with the shame of her repulse, she had threatened Norbert; but as she reasoned calmly, she felt that it was not he for whom she felt ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau

... came at his call and all looked at the hat, which had been lying in the mud at the side of the pool. Then a match was struck, and all gazed around and into the pool while this faint illumination lasted. No other trace of the missing man was to ...
— The Rover Boys on the Farm - or Last Days at Putnam Hall • Arthur M. Winfield (AKA Edward Stratemeyer)

... beating as never before. For we were on exhibition and we knew it. The roads were lined with soldiers and they cheered and cheered as we came marching in. We were tired, our loads were heavy and the mud was deep, but never a man in that column would have traded his place for the most luxurious comforts ...
— The Emma Gees • Herbert Wes McBride

... horse's head and the trees on our track. My high-crowned hat was now drenched, and battered out of shape; for whenever we came to a rather clear space, I seized the chance and gave it another knock down over my head. I was spattered and covered with mud and mire. ...
— The Story of John G. Paton - Or Thirty Years Among South Sea Cannibals • James Paton

... punishment as a valuable privilege. And whilst this discussion about the necessity of introducing an ideal system of obligatory education was being carried on, the street before the windows of the room was covered with a stratum of mud nearly two feet in depth! The other streets were in a similar condition; and a large number of the members always arrived late, because it was almost impossible to come on foot, and there was only one public conveyance ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace

... phenomenon and failing to do so, though it cannot be established in that sense, may nevertheless contain an essential part of the explanation. The Neptunian Hypothesis in Geology, was an attempt to explain the formation of the Earth's outer crust, as having been deposited from an universal ocean of mud. In the progress of the science other causes, seismic, fluvial and atmospheric, have been found necessary in order to complete the theory of the history of the Earth's crust; but it remains true that ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read

... has he perhaps been enjoying his "old age" somewhere over here for the last thirty years?—I wish you would say what has become of you, my dear Tag. I'm sure we should be chums again, if you're anything like the dear old stick-in-the-mud of former days! Don't you recollect that sketch of Rag's? I had nearly forgotten to mention it, the one with the three ropes of life. I am climbing ahead with fiendish energy. Rag follows, steadily ascending, weighted as he is with a treasure, ...
— In Bohemia with Du Maurier - The First Of A Series Of Reminiscences • Felix Moscheles

... nursery in the spring should be unpacked immediately on arrival, the roots dipped in thin mud, then heeled in until permanently planted, even if the delay is but a day ...
— Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 • Various

... rippling among the old piling was shallow, but the boat had little aboard and floated free, so that we worked it forward with little difficulty until we succeeded in rounding the slight promontory and held its bulging sides close against the mud wall. Leaving Burns to keep it in place, I ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish

... anything approaching speed been attempted, the entire demolition of the wheels in a few minutes must have been the necessary result. No sooner had we quitted this terrible pavement than we sank to our axle-trees in sand, mud, and water; for, to render the journey perfectly delectable, the rain fell in torrents and ceaselessly." {108b} The state of the road Borrow attributed to the ill-nature of the King of Denmark, for immediately on leaving his dominions it ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins

... glittering eyes the old squaw stooped swiftly and turned the body upon its back. The unseeing eyes stared upward, water ceased to gush from the open mouth, and the lolling tongue settled flabbily between the mud-smeared lips. ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx

... discovered in Wales; but some thirty years ago Mr. Colliver, a Cornish gentleman, told the writer that whilst engaged in mining operations near Llyn Llydaw he had occasion to lower the water level of that lake, when he discovered embedded in the mud a canoe formed out of the trunk of a single tree. He saw another in the lake, but this he did not disturb, and there it is at the present day. The late Professor Peter of Bala believed that he found traces of Lake-dwellings ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen

... immeasurable. The terms in which it could be stated have yet to be discovered. It is the whole length of the slope from Sta. Sophia to the Victoria Memorial pushed upright to stand on a base of a hundred years. We are on heights from which the mud-flats are invisible; resting here, one can hardly believe that the flats ever were, or, at any rate, that they will ever be again. Go to Ravenna, and you will see the masterpieces of Christian art, the ...
— Art • Clive Bell

... they are unacquainted with the insatiate wants of Europeans. The heat of the climate renders cloathing an incumberance, and occasions a carelessness with regard to their dwellings: for the former, they require only a stripe of linen, and their gris-gris; while a building of mud, covered with an interwoven and thatched roof, forms the latter, which is reared with little labour, and, when circumstances require it, is ...
— Observations Upon The Windward Coast Of Africa • Joseph Corry

... the quarries every year, yet the inhabitants say that no great change takes place in their appearance. The Avon has a prodigious rise of tide at Bristol, and at low water the bed of the river is a mere brook, with immense banks of mud. The country all around is exquisitely attractive, and affords us an idea of cultivation and adornment beyond what we are accustomed to at home. In these rocks are found fine crystals, which are known every where as Bristol diamonds. We obtained some specimens, which reminded us of the crystals ...
— Young Americans Abroad - Vacation in Europe: Travels in England, France, Holland, - Belgium, Prussia and Switzerland • Various

... autumnal mist, which lent an atmosphere of melancholy to the stretches of fallow land, to the harvested corn-fields, in which the stubble stood in rows, like a headless army, and to the long red-clay road winding, deep in mud, to ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow

... Currents of water rushing through the entrance to the grotto carry along the bones—entire, broken, or gnawed—that lie upon the ground. These remains are transported to the depths of the cave, and are often stopped along the walls, and lie buried in the chambers in argillaceous mud. Rounded flint stones are constantly associated with the bones, and the latter are always in great disorder. The species that I met with were as follows: the great cave bear, the little bear, the hyena, the great cat, the rhinoceros, the ox, the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 508, September 26, 1885 • Various

... was peculiarly susceptible to discomfort of the kind, felt more wretched than ever. She thought of the desolate grave with mud-splashed, bedraggled flowers upon it and of the golden head and beautiful calm face beneath; thought of him as we are apt to think of our dead at first, imagining them still sentient, aware of the horror of their position, crushed into ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand

... Weary, disgusted, bored, yes; but not unhappy. There is still something great in misery. That can be battled against. It is like thunder. But the rain, the eternal rain, incessantly falling, with its liquid mud, that—ah! that, ugh! that is crushing. And in my life it rains, it rains with ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie

... royal lady, a regnant queen: her hands held a golden sceptre, and her feet pressed a silver footstool. She was thrown down the castle wall, and drowned "in the dirty mud." ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee

... Lady Mayoress. There she was—Sally Scropps (her maiden name was Snob). 'There was my own Sally, with a plume of feathers that half filled the coach, and Jenny and Maria and young Sally, all with their backs to my horses, which were pawing with mud, and snorting and smoking like steam-engines, with nostrils like safety valves, and four of my footmen behind the coach, ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... can see no distinction. Much have the dead people made of their advantages. What does it matter now that they have lain in state beds and nourished portly bodies upon cakes and cream! Here they all lie, to be trodden in the mud; the large estate and the small, sounding virtue and adroit or powerful vice, in very much the same condition; and a bishop not to be distinguished from a lamplighter ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... this part of the city, but of all Paris, so far as I have traversed it to-day. My ways, since I came to Europe, have often lain through nastiness, but I never before saw a pavement so universally overspread with mud-padding as that of Paris. It is difficult to imagine where so much ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... the canoe had drifted near the shore. The girl at the bow shoved with her paddle. The boat would not move. It was stuck fast in the mud. ...
— Daniel Boone - Taming the Wilds • Katharine E. Wilkie

... he reached the house and went straight to the owner, a desperate figure, spattered with mud to the eyes, a three days' growth of whiskers blackening his face, and that face gaunt with the long, hard riding. He found the imperturbable Drew deep in a book in his office. While he was drawing breath, the rancher examined him with a ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand

... mounted on swift horses bidding his servants make ready to receive a guest. So it came about that when she entered his palace in Tyre, Miriam found it decked as though for a bride, and wandered in amazement—she who had known nothing better than the mud-houses of the Essenes—from hall to hall of the ancient building that in bygone generations had been the home of kings and governors. Benoni followed her steps, watching her with grave eyes, till at length all was visited save the gardens ...
— Pearl-Maiden • H. Rider Haggard

... At Mud Springs, a village a few miles from Placerville, they met a large delegation of the citizens of Placerville, who had come out to meet the celebrated editor, and escort him into town. There was a military company, a brass ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various

... there was an open sea. We had kept the lead going from the first, and I was surprised at the extreme shallowness of the lake in every part, as we never had six feet upon the line. Its bottom was one of black mud, and weeds of enormous length were floating on its surface, detached by the late gales, and which, from the shallowness of the lake, got constantly entangled ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt

... sketch Broadway at One Hundred and Fifty-ninth Street, where it is more of a country road than anything else, and his hands almost froze while he was getting down the black lines of the bare trees, and the deep, irregular ruts in the road, where the mud showed through the snow. He intended to put a yellow sky behind this, and a house with smoke coming out of the chimney, and with red light shining through the window, and ...
— Van Bibber and Others • Richard Harding Davis

... believe around this bluff will be a good place. Oh, Phil, I'm tired—dead tired! My very thoughts are tired. I can't even think anything funny about the ham. And yet we've got to set up the tent ourselves, and attend to the horses; and we'll have to scrape some of the mud off this ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... things that somehow I don't think I ought to repeat here. Round and round he went with the fox hanging to his hand, like hares do when they dance together, for he couldn't get it off anyhow. At last he tumbled down into a pool of mud and water, and when he got up again all wet through I saw that the fox was really dead. But it had died biting, and now I know that this pleased ...
— The Mahatma and the Hare • H. Rider Haggard

... of Versailles give a thought to their waists, but they leave their ankles to Providence, and any one having experience of Versailles winter streets can fully sympathise with their trust; for even in dry sunny weather mud seems a spontaneous production that renders goloshes a necessity. And when frost holds the high-standing city in its frigid grasp the extreme cold forbids any idea of coquetry, and thickly lined boots with cloth uppers—a species of foot-gear that in grace of outline ...
— A Versailles Christmas-Tide • Mary Stuart Boyd

... Tink, and quickly he unbarred to her. She flew in excitedly, her face flushed and her dress stained with mud. ...
— Peter and Wendy • James Matthew Barrie

... own work and life; and live it as well as they can, though they are always the sufferers. Here, for instance, is a rock-crystal of the purest race and finest temper, who was born, unhappily for him, in a bad neighbourhood, near Beaufort in Savoy; and he has had to fight with vile calcareous mud all his life. See here, when he was but a child, it came down on him, and nearly buried him; a weaker crystal would have died in despair; but he only gathered himself together, like Hercules against the serpents, and threw a layer of crystal over the clay; ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin

... Hon. Member had availed himself of the privilege accorded to Members of Parliament in debate to fire a shameful barbed arrow at Colonel CADDELL, in order that some of the mud might stick."—Colonel Saunderson in the ...
— Punch, Vol. 99., July 26, 1890. • Various

... determined the men, to ensure a lasting success against a determined foe there must be weight as well as depth in the attack. Now on the night of the 20th, owing to the movement among the troops, lack of reconnaissance and the mud, the troops in rear of the two leading battalions were deployed so far back, that though they moved forward in the morning simultaneously with the Jats and Highlanders, they suffered such losses on their way that none were able to reach the enemy trenches. ...
— With a Highland Regiment in Mesopotamia - 1916—1917 • Anonymous

... "I didn't know I was going to fall in, so I couldn't ask her. But I'm glad I did, 'cause it feels so nice, and he kicked around in the water. The bottom being of clean sand, there was no mud, and, as Laddie had ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Grandma Bell's • Laura Lee Hope

... and there and everywhere. First she filled both hands with dandelions. Then she saw a butterfly; down went the dandelions; off went her best hat to serve as a butterfly-net; and away she went. A pretty chase Master Butterfly led her, through last year's brambles and this year's mud, until at last he left her high and dry on the top of a fence, and flew off so fast that he was soon out of sight. There I left her too, for I wanted to see what the ...
— Five Mice in a Mouse-trap - by the Man in the Moon. • Laura E. Richards

... supposed that coal was formed out of dead leaves and trees, the refuse of the vegetation of the land, which had been carried down by rivers into the sea and deposited at their mouths, in the same way that sand and mud, as we have seen, are swept down and deposited. If this were so, the extent of the deposits would require a river with an enormous embouchure, and we should be scarcely warranted in believing that such peaceful conditions ...
— The Story of a Piece of Coal - What It Is, Whence It Comes, and Whither It Goes • Edward A. Martin

... British army reached the Alumbagh, the beautiful park and garden belonging to the king of Oude. Opposite 12,000 sepoys were drawn up, the right flank being protected by a swamp. In front of them was a ditch filled with water from the recent heavy rains, and the road itself was deep in mud, so that the passage of heavy guns was a difficult matter. But the soldiers came along with a gallop and got through the ditch somehow, following our cavalry, which were already on the other side. On they ...
— The Red Book of Heroes • Leonora Blanche Lang

... over the plough. And she attempted to obey the order. But the horse was self-willed, and she was light; and in truth the heaviness of the ground would have been nothing to him had he been fairly well ridden. But she allowed him to rush with her through the mud. As she had never yet had an accident she knew nothing of fear, and she was beyond measure excited. She had been near enough to see that a man fell at the brook, and then she saw also that the huntsman got over, ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope

... level; but of all the accidents afforded by such ground Wallenstein had taken advantage. Luetzen lay to his right a little in front. Between it and three windmills close to his right wing intervened some mud-walled gardens. These he made use of as forts, throwing into them little garrisons, and loopholing the walls. The mill hills he converted into batteries, and the dry ditches by the roadside ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various

... made a very decent rectangle of glass. When they had hoisted up, and fixed in place, the logs on each side, and the big fellow that went all across on top; when they had filled the inconsiderable cracks between the bottles with some of the mud-mortar with which the logs were to be chinked, behold a double glass ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)

... philosopher, and who investigated all the systems of philosophy from Aristotle down to Descartes and Kant, who went to the lowest depths of philosophy, dived deep for pearls, sometimes bringing up also mud and clams, declared after all his survey of the various schools of philosophy, that the great regulating power of the human mind was common sense; that of all the faculties, that which controlled all others was common sense. That was the basis of his system of philosophy. Now it is just as appropriate ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... behind their wretched troops and scourged them on to the fight with whips! Poor wretches, they were driven on to be slaughtered, pierced with the Greek spears, hurled into the sea, or trampled into the mud of the morass; but their inexhaustible numbers told at length. The spears of the Greeks broke under hard service, and their swords alone remained; they began to fall, and Leonidas himself was among the first of the slain. Hotter than ever was the fight over his body, and two Persian princes, ...
— The Junior Classics • Various

... And he rode a great white mare, whose bases and other housings were black, but all besprent with fair lilys of silver sheen. Whereas Sir Percivale bestrode a red horse, with a tawny mane and tail; whose trappings were all to-smirched with mud and mire; and his armour was wondrous rosty to behold, ne could he by any art furbish it again; so that as the sun in his going down shone twixt the bare trunks of the trees, full upon the knights twain, the one did seem all shining with light, and the other all to glow ...
— Phantastes - A Faerie Romance for Men and Women • George MacDonald

... Dorsetshire and Devonshire, is mixed with water, and in this state is passed through fine sieves to separate the grosser particles. The flint and clay are now mixed by measure, and the mud or cream is passed through a sieve in order to render the mixture ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 550, June 2, 1832 • Various

... Navaho is akin to the Apache and the Tinneh of Alaska; indeed, he calls himself Tinne. In winter he lives in a rude shelter of logs and mud called a hogan. In summer this is changed for a simple brush stack, which affords shade from the sun, and yet allows free course of the cooling air. He is a polygamist, and lives with his one or more ...
— The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It, • George Wharton James

... aloes-wood and yet others of ebony or silver or gold; and each had his own idol, after the measure of his competence; whilst the idols of the common soldiers and of the people were some of granite, some of wood, some of pottery and some of mud; and all were of various hues yellow and red; green, black and white. Then said the Personage to my sire, 'Pray your idol and these idols to be wroth with me.' So they aligned the idols in a Divan,[FN522] setting my father's idol on a chair of gold at the upper end, with mine by its side, and ranking ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton

... Thereafter, as the Khalifa showed no intention of inviting fresh disaster by sending down another army to attack, the Sirdar despatched his troops into summer rest-camps. Dry and shady spots were selected by the banks of the Nile between Berber and Dakhala. One or another of the numberless deserted mud villages was usually chosen for headquarters and offices. With these for a nucleus, the battalion or brigade encampment was pitched in front and the quarters were fenced about with cut mimosa thorn-bush, forming a zereba. All along ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh

... surrounded beyond hope of escape. On that day he and Grant with their staffs met in a neighbouring farmhouse. Those present recalled afterwards the contrast of the stately Lee and the plain, ill-dressed Grant arriving mud-splashed in his haste. Lee greeted Meade as an old acquaintance and remarked how grey he had grown with years. Meade gracefully replied that Lee and not age was responsible for that. Grant had started "quite jubilant" on the news that Lee was ready to surrender, but in presence of "the downfall of ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood

... of the women's share in the progress we made. A good big one it was. We should have been floundering yet in the educational mud-puddle we were in, had it not been for the women of New York who went to Albany and literally held up the Legislature, compelling it to pass our reform bill. And not once but a dozen times, during Mayor Strong's administration, when they had wearied of me at the City Hall—I was not always ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis

... Phil's eyes as he wrote that postscript, she would have been unspeakably happy. She had so many mortifying remembrances of times when he had caught her looking her very worst, when he had come upon her just emerging from some accident that had left her drenched or smoked or bedraggled, mud-spattered, ink-stained or dust-covered. Holland's recent reminiscences had deepened her impression that she must have been in a wrecked condition half her time, for he had kept the family laughing all one evening, recalling various plights he had ...
— Mary Ware's Promised Land • Annie Fellows Johnston

... of high rank with a drawn sword, strutting about on the ramparts and occasionally shouting, at the top of his voice, "What, warder, ho!" or words to that effect. But, to my utter amazement and disgust, when we steamed up opposite Fort Henry I saw only a little squatty, insignificant looking mud affair, without the slightest feature of any of the "pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war." It had been built on the low bottom ground near the bank of the Tennessee river, the stream was now high, and the adjacent land was largely covered with water, while the inside ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell

... in a wooden box, under a low and heavy ceiling, all covered with cobwebs and permeated with fine soot. Night pressed us between the two walls, spattered with spots of mud and all mouldy. We got up at five in the morning and, stupid and indifferent, began work at six o'clock. We made bread out of the dough which our comrades had prepared while we slept. The whole day, from dawn till ten at night, some of us sat at the table rolling out the dough, ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky

... the barracks, midway between the long embankment to their left and the tall white picket fence surmounted by the olive-green foliage of magnolias and orange-trees on the other hand, they had come upon a series of deep mud-holes in the way, where the seepage-water from the rapidly-rising flood was turning the road-way into a pond. Stuck helplessly in the mud, an old-fashioned cabriolet was halted. Its driver was out and up to his knees thrashing vainly at his straining, staggering horse. The tortuous road-way ...
— Waring's Peril • Charles King

... life was an easy one, especially the winter, when there was little for anyone to do except to eat, to sleep, and now and then to fish for the roots of the yellow water-lily in the soft mud at the bottom of the pond. During that season he probably accomplished more than his parents did, for if he could not toil he could at least grow. Of course they may have been growing, too, but it was less ...
— Forest Neighbors - Life Stories of Wild Animals • William Davenport Hulbert

... heaven had been opened and the rain was descending in cataracts. The few pedestrians I encountered were enveloped in mackintoshes, and carried huge umbrellas, through which the rain was soaking, and pouring off from every point. Everything was wet—everywhere was mud. The water, splashing upwards, saturated the tops of my boots and converted my trousers into sodden sacks. Some weather isn't fit for dogs, but this weather wasn't good enough for tadpoles—even fish would have kicked at it ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell

... and the finely organized nations. In came cities of unprecedented bulk, but held together so closely by a web-work of steel rails and copper wires that they have become more alert and cooperative than any tiny hamlet of mud huts on ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson

... who arrived on the boat. If any recollections of a cool, white farmhouse amongst barren New England hills disturbed his thoughts, this is not recorded. He gained the mouth of a street between the low houses which crowded on the broad river front. The black mud was thick under his feet from an overnight shower, and already steaming in the sun. The brick pavement was lumpy from much travel and near as dirty as the street. Here, too, were drays blocking the way, and sweaty negro teamsters swinging ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... then washed away; and while the old forests on one side are undermined and swept off, a young growth springs up from the new soil upon the other. With all these changes, the water is so charged with mud and sand that it is perfectly opaque, and in a few minutes deposits a sediment an inch thick in the bottom of a tumbler. The river was now high; but when we descended in the autumn it was fallen very low, and all the secrets of its treacherous shallows were exposed to view. It was frightful to ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.

... the dab of mud close to my elbow and read it again. In part it was plain enough. That Maclachlan was madly in love with Margaret had become almost a matter of common gossip. My Lord George Murray had hinted at it more than once, as he had at my displacing the young ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough

... seemed to himself in the depths of an abyss described by Dante. The unfortunate man had never dreamed that the possibility might arise of becoming Clementine's husband, and now he had drowned himself in a ditch of mud. His face was convulsed, when he reached the kiosk, with an agony of grief; his ...
— Paz - (La Fausse Maitresse) • Honore de Balzac

... done by direct statement. Cast iron, when subject to a bending strain, acts like a stiff spring, but when subject to compression it dents like a plastic substance. What I mean is this: If some plastic substance, say a thick coating of mud in the street, be leveled off true, and a board be laid upon it, it will fit, but if two heavy weights be placed on the ends, the center will be thrown up in the air far away from the mud; so, too, will the same thing occur if a perfectly straight bar of cast iron be placed on a perfectly straight ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 643, April 28, 1888 • Various

... One bleak day of mud and rain, when we were driven by the weather out of the courtyard into the lower rooms of the barracks, and were sitting in doleful dumps, at a loss how to pass the time, Joe Punchard cried out of ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang

... rows of stone That notch the quiet sky; Under the asphalt's transient seal The same old mud-flats lie; And I have felt them surge and lift At night ...
— Carolina Chansons - Legends of the Low Country • DuBose Heyward and Hervey Allen

... come to a swamp," cried Fritz. "Halt! my shoes are full of water. Now one of them has come off, and is sticking in the mud." ...
— Pixy's Holiday Journey • George Lang

... passion for mud," he explained to her, when she remarked upon his lack of interest in the chase, even when the music of the hounds was ringing through wood and valley, now close beside them, anon diminishing in the distance, thin in the thin air. "If he comes not home at dark plastered with mire from boots ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon

... then devoid of greatness, Thou wast neither great nor little, When thou in the mud wast resting, Sunk below the sparkling water, 290 Overspreading all the marshland, At the base of rocky mountains, And in loose earth thou wast altered, And ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous

... could not stop up the blow-off pipe if they were swept off, and got up steam as usual, and after three months' hard steaming I blew out the water and steam, took off the manhole cover, and there were the things as I had left them thirteen weeks previously; of course they were all coated with fine mud, but no signs of ...
— The Stoker's Catechism • W. J. Connor

... the peasant poets of Scotland, was born in a little mud-walled cottage on the banks of Doon, near "Alloway's auld haunted kirk," in the shire of Ayr, on the 25th day of January, 1759. As a natural mark of the event, a sudden storm at the same moment swept the land: the gabel-wall of the frail dwelling gave way, and the babe-bard ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham

... hand, the black competitor had a different, though somewhat similar, purpose in view. His thoughts extended towards the south. There lay the emporium of his commerce,—the great mud-built town of Timbuctoo. Little as a white man was esteemed among the Arab merchants when considered as a mere slave, the sable sheik knew that in the south of the Saaera he would command a price, if only as a curiosity to figure among the ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid

... to say concerning the first forty miles of the journey. It rained; and the roads were, as usual, slippery with mud, and full of holes. The old paves are beginning to give way, however, and we actually got a bit of terre within six posts of Paris. This may be considered a triumph of modern civilisation; for, whatever may be said and sung in favour of Appian ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper

... covered with sacks. It was wet, muddy, and unpleasant, and the river looked cold and sullen. Ivan Ivanich and Bourkin felt wet and uncomfortable through and through; their feet were tired with walking in the mud, and they walked past the dam to the barn in silence as though they ...
— The House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories • Anton Tchekoff

... quarters of a pound, and your Cord to a strong Pole, and in muddy Waters, you may Fish, and find the Eels tug lustily, and when you think they have swallowed them, draw up your Line, and ashore with them. Lastly the Eel-spear made with four teeth, jagged on both sides, stricken into the Mud, on the bottom of a River, and if you chance to strike where ...
— The School of Recreation (1696 edition) • Robert Howlett

... soldiers in rout, with torn and dusty clothes, got into our carriage; they looked repulsive, bespattered with mud and clay; they were in absolute despair, and you could hear from their conversation how disorganised discipline was, for they abused their officers right and left, called them incapable and treacherous, yet themselves gave one the impression of being very indifferent soldiers. The young sergeant ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes

... lower level than where I stood in the sand what appeared a plot of vivid green grass, and without any precaution stupidly stepped with my full weight upon it, and instantly found myself floundering in four feet of mud and water. I had fallen, and getting back on the solid ground I found myself wet to the shoulders, my legs covered with mud and my pistols, bread, etc., soaking with salt water. At once I ran across the beach and sat down in the warm water of the sea, washing off the mud ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell

... glade a few minutes later, he was just getting up, covered with mud, his coat torn, and his hands bloody, while the brute was lying stretched out at full length, with the baron's hunting knife driven into its ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant

... the outposts of the enemy, and on the 31st fought the important engagement by which the Austrian attempt to retake Palestro was repelled, and great damage caused to Zobel's corps, which was obliged to leave eight guns sticking in the mud. The French Zouaves of the 3rd regiment fought with the Piedmontese, and made the battle famous by the reckless valour of their bayonet charges. Victor Emmanuel, deaf to all remonstrances, placed himself at their head, in consequence of ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco

... of multiplying is carried on so prosperously as in my native island. Mr. Tim had married the girls' waiting-maid, who had been a kind friend of mine in the early times; and I had to go salute poor Molly next day, and found her a slatternly wench in a mud hut, surrounded by a brood of children almost as ragged as those of ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray

... often adorn the luckless Peter. For though tidy and careful enough when appearing before his guardians, Mr. and Mrs. Verplanck, it must be confessed that going to and from school Peter was prone to lay down both books and hat, oftentimes in the mud, and square himself pugnaciously if he chanced to meet one of the boys of the "Vly Market," who were wont to scoff and tease the Broadway boys unmercifully; and fierce battles were the frequent outcome of the feeling between the two sections, and ...
— An Unwilling Maid • Jeanie Gould Lincoln

... half asserts that she is at times nearly unintelligible. Neither of these statements necessarily contradicting the other, they might both be easily true. The fact is, however, that she speaks English like a foreigner. Mud itself—or a Sun editorial—could not be plainer than this definition of her exact proficiency ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 33, November 12, 1870 • Various

... the figure slipped and sprawled forward in the miry yard. It got up, painfully swaying on its feet. It was Mr. Trimm, looking for food. He moved slowly toward the house, tottering with weakness and because of the slick mud underfoot; peering near-sightedly this way and that through the murk; starting at every sound ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb

... her commiseration had by this time entered the dining-parlour, where his appearance gave great surprise. He was mud up to the' shoulders, and the natural paleness of his hue was twice as cadaverous as usual, through terror, fatigue, and perturbation of mind. "What on earth is the meaning of this, Mr. Sampson?" said Mannering, who observed Miss Bertram looking ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott

... seen Harry dirty—very dirty,—but from the mud on his boots to the marks on his face where he had pushed the hair out of his eyes with earthy fingers, I never saw him quite so grubby before. And if there had been a clean place left in any part of his clothes well away from the ground, that spot must have been soiled by ...
— Last Words - A Final Collection of Stories • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... the Nueces, feverish in anger, he drank sparingly, kneeling against the soft river's bank, cutting it with his horns, and matting his forehead with red mud. It was a momentous day in his life. He distinctly remembered the physical pain he had suffered once in a branding-pen, but that was nothing compared to this. Surely his years had been few and full of trouble. He hardly knew which way to turn. Finally he ...
— Cattle Brands - A Collection of Western Camp-fire Stories • Andy Adams

... splash as they did make! They upset old Grandfather Frog so that he fell off his lily pad. They frightened Mr. and Mrs. Trout so that they jumped right out of the water. Tiny Tadpole had such a scare that he hid way, way down in the mud with only the tip of his ...
— Old Mother West Wind • Thornton W. Burgess

... this tireless plodding to build us up into beautiful character. Even the loveliest flowers must have their roots in common earth; so, many of the sweetest things in human lives grow out of the soil of drudgery. "Be thou, O man, like unto the rose. Its root is indeed in dirt and mud, but its flowers still ...
— Making the Most of Life • J. R. Miller

... Inhabitant of this lower World, I remember I lov'd the Country well enough in the Summer Season; but I cou'd not bear to spend much Time in it, as I never cou'd Walk or ride in a single Field; that did not put me in a Passion, either to see it as wild as ever Nature left it after the Mud of the Deluge; or at least not so much improv'd as it might be, if the Owner had common Sense or common Industry. What ever enrag'd me most was, that tho' such Fellows I knew by Experience, wou'd venture their Limbs or their Necks for a Guinea, yet they had not the Skill to make Five Pounds more ...
— A Dialogue Between Dean Swift and Tho. Prior, Esq. • Anonymous

... on a small rivulet, all we could do was to hold our wagon in the rear, and await the return of our men out on scout for a ford. Priest was the first to return, with word that he had ridden the creek out for twenty-five miles and had found no crossing that would be safe for a mud turtle. On hearing this, we left two men with the herd, and the rest of the outfit took the wagon, went on to Boggy, and made camp. It was a deceptive-looking stream, not over fifty or sixty feet wide. In places the current barely moved, shallowing and deepening, from ...
— The Log of a Cowboy - A Narrative of the Old Trail Days • Andy Adams

... overthrow the Empire: in order to do that, it is not enough to have on my side the educated men, I must have the canaille—the canaille of Paris and of the manufacturing towns. But I use the canaille for my purpose—I don't mean to enthrone it. You comprehend?—the canaille quiescent is simply mud at the bottom of a stream; the canaille agitated is mud at the surface. But no man capable of three ideas builds the palaces and senates of civilised society out of mud, be it at the top or the bottom of an ocean. Can either you or I desire that the destinies of France shall be swayed by coxcombical ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... the morning if a bird rustled past. This performance he called a mortification of his frame; but when this sly churchman slipped up and put on his capote again, his thin visage bore the same gratified lines which may be seen on the face of a child making mud pies. ...
— Old Kaskaskia • Mary Hartwell Catherwood

... seemed adverse to our progress. No sooner had we escaped from the sand than we fell into the mud, which was ...
— Three Months in the Southern States, April-June 1863 • Arthur J. L. (Lieut.-Col.) Fremantle

... no jug, only an empty meat can; and the water—well, the water was almost as thick, with mud, before the coffee was put in as afterward, and the men would scarcely have had patience to wait for the patent process. Poor beggars! Some of them had not had a drop past their lips for twenty-four hours—and been ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice

... ease makes them willing too often to discharge their burden of attendance on these officious gentlemen. It is true, that the nauseousness of such company is enough to disgust a reasonable man; when he sees, he can hardly approach greatness, but as a moated castle; he must first pass through the mud and filth with which it is encompassed. These are they, who, wanting wit, affect gravity, and go by the name of solid men; and a solid man is, in plain English, a solid, solemn fool. Another disguise they have, (for fools, as well as knaves, take other names, and pass by an alias) and that is, ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden

... waiting upon a siding located amidst a wide debris of tin cans, scattered sheet-iron, stark mud-and-stone chimneys, and barren spots, resembling the ruins from ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin

... the noble dog Ossian came to me again and laid the double-footed key upon my lap, as he had done at Beauseincourt—staining my white dress with blood, not mud, this time, and that Colonel La Vigne struck it furiously to the floor, and handed me instead the wooden one I had carved, with the words ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield

... dug out of the desert sand and underlying rock by a process of erosion centuries long. Once the Nile filled all the space between the hills that line its sides. Now it flows through a thick layer of alluvial mud deposited by the ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER

... iv luxury at Newport is thryin' f'r a mile a minyit in his autymobill an' th' on'y leisure class left in th' wurruld is th' judicyary. Mind ye, Hinnissy, I'm not sayin' annything again' thim. I won't dhrag th' joodicyal ermine in th' mud though I haven't noticed that manny iv thim lift it immodestly whin they takes th' pollytical crossing. I have th' high rayspict f'r th' job that's th' alternative iv sixty days in jail. Besides, ...
— Observations by Mr. Dooley • Finley Peter Dunne

... and fired; but the result showed that this small amount of powder, even, would have been sufficient to destroy any ship, by lifting her out of the water and breaking her back, even if her bottom was not knocked out altogether. Mud and water were thrown up together, and the concussion was felt far up in the Navy Yard, the ground being shaken by the shock of the powder against the bed of the river. The concussion felt on board the torpedo-boat was ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various

... can hardly be so much alive—or so irritable—as the muscle cells; nor these as intensely alive as the nerve and brain cells. Does not a bird possess a higher degree of life than a mollusk, or a turtle? Is not a brook trout more alive than a mud-sucker? You can freeze the latter as stiff as an icicle and resuscitate it, but not the former. There is a scale of degrees in life as clearly as there is a scale of degrees in temperature. There is an endless gradation ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs

... Already, on his order, duck-boards were being laid through the mud, and the whole physical setup was in process of reorganization. The men, grown listless from weeks of mistreatment, paid no heed. "Get on your feet! I'm your general. I respect you but I want your respect," were his words. They restored the situation. The first impact of this ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense

... layer of sand at the top. The sand arrests any solid matter in the water as it percolates to the gravel and drains below. Even the microbes,[36] of microscopic size, are arrested as soon as the film of mud has formed on the top of the sand. Until this film is formed the filter is not in its most efficient condition. Every now and then the bed is drained, the surface mud and sand carefully drained off, and fresh sand put in ...
— How it Works • Archibald Williams

... of the reeds and brushwood on the river's bank would be followed by a tapir, the western elephant, coming down to drink and to roll himself in the mud; and the manati or river-cow would lift its black head and small piercing eye above the water to graze on the leaves of the coridore tree. They are shot from a stage fixed in the water, with branches of their favourite ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 578 - Vol. XX, No. 578. Saturday, December 1, 1832 • Various

... got off with difficulty, on one occasion parting a hawser which killed two men and injured five others; but on the 7th of April, the powerful steamers of the mortar flotilla succeeded in dragging her and the Mississippi through a foot of mud fairly into the river. These two were the heaviest vessels that had ever entered. The Navy Department at Washington had hopes that the 40-gun frigate Colorado, Captain Theodorus Bailey, then lying off the Pass, might be lightened sufficiently to join in the attack. This was to the flag-officer ...
— The Gulf and Inland Waters - The Navy in the Civil War. Volume 3. • A. T. Mahan

... judge me, I have right on my side. Go and tell the envoys from Tver, that I will not receive them: I spoke a word of mercy to them—they mocked at it. What do they take me for?... A bundle of rags, which to-day they may trample in the mud, and to-morrow stick up for a scarecrow in their gardens! Or a puppet—to bow down to it to-day, and to-morrow to cast it into the mire, with Vuiduibai, father vuiduibai![3] No! they have chosen the wrong man. They may spin their ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various

... state in which you have all the pleasure of existence with none of the labour of living. The monsoon threshes across these seas for four months in the year, and keeps them fresh, and free from the dingy mangrove clumps, and hideous banks of mud, which breed fever and mosquitoes in the Straits of Malacca. In the interior, too, patches of open country abound, such as are but rarely met with on the West Coast, but here, as elsewhere in the Peninsula, the jungles, which shut down around them, are impenetrable to anything ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford

... narrow lane, sandy and barren, with a pine-tree rising here and there. Rude cabins, windowless and with mud chimneys, faced each other across the lane. Half way down was an open space, or small square, in the centre of which stood a dead tree with a board nailed across its trunk at about a man's height from the ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston

... queer kind of sewer," he went on. "This streamlet is as much mud as water, is almost stagnant. Evidently this underground sewer way is no ...
— Messengers of Evil - Being a Further Account of the Lures and Devices of Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre

... for his eloquence, he slid off into the catalogue of women's finery given by the prophet Isaiah, at the close of which he naturally found the oratorical impulse gone, and had to sit down in the mud of an anticlimax. Presently, however, he recovered himself, and, spreading his wings, once more swung himself aloft into the empyrean of an eloquence, which, whatever else it might or might not be, was ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald

... river, which was often flooded, but she passed with dry feet; the waters flowing away from her on either side: howbeit no one else dared to attempt the passage. Whenever the signal sounded for the Ave Marie, wherever she might be in conducting her sheep, even if in a ditch, or in mud or mire, she kneeled down and offered her devotions to the Queen of Heaven, nor were her garments wet or soiled. The little children whom she met in the fields she instructed in the truths of religion. For the poor she felt the tenderest ...
— Life in the Grey Nunnery at Montreal • Sarah J Richardson

... to-day. The authorities at Quebec and Montreal were not wanting in endeavors to keep these cities clean, to judge, at least, by the published 'regulations for the police.' Every householder was obliged to put the Scotch proverbs in force, and keep clean and 'free from filth, mud, dirt, rubbish straw or hay' one-half of the street opposite his own house The 'cleanings' were to be deposited on the beach, as they still are in portions of Montreal and Quebec which border on the river. Treasure-trove in the shape of stray ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine

... miles we saw from fifteen to twenty, and from their tracks they must be very numerous indeed. The walking was difficult, for owing to the softness of the ground, we often sank in up to our thighs, and generally to our knees: and a short distance in this sort of wading in stiff mud serves to knock a man up. I was fortunate enough to kill one of the deer, and have no doubt that with more favorable light a man might get many. The night's repose in the hut was broken and uncomfortable, and our people were busy for several hours curing the flesh of the animal, which is done as ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel

... cliff is rapidly overthrown, soon becoming masked by its own ruins. In a season or two the slabs break into small fragments, which are tossed up by the waves across the neck of the bay into the form of narrow ridgelike beaches, from twenty to thirty feet high. Mud and vegetable matter gradually fill up the pieces of water thus secluded; a willow swamp is formed; and when the ground is somewhat consolidated, the willows are replaced ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various

... was! The gusts of wind were incessant, especially in those out-of-the-way suburbs. I turned up my trousers to the knee, for how could I come into your drawing-room covered with mud? I wanted to carry the basket on one arm, and the open umbrella in the other hand, but it was impossible. After a few steps, I came back and left the umbrella with Jacoba. What a walk! Holy heaven, what a business! The wind kept blowing down the collar of my ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds

... that you give it to me of your own free will. I propose that this shall be your view of the matter. Each of you will have a pen given you, and without uttering a syllable, without making the slightest movement, without quitting your present attitude" (belly on ground, and face in the mud) "you will put out your arms, and you will all sign this paper. If any one of you moves or speaks, here is the muzzle of my pistol. Otherwise, you are ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo

... such a muddy day," sighed Ethel Blue. "The mud squeezed around so that his toe marks were ...
— Ethel Morton's Enterprise • Mabell S.C. Smith

... to reach our camp, out on the other side of the island, that evening, but that dodging the shoals and sticking in the mud had considerably delayed us. Besides, though Charlie and the captain both hated to admit it, we had lost our way. We had been looking all afternoon for Little Wood Cay, but as I said before, one cay was ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne

... anchored off the town. As the place was not prepared for resistance, the governor, after a few shots had been fired from the principal battery, which was quickly silenced by one of the ships, directed the inhabitants to retire into the recesses of the jungle. The city, with its mud houses, was abandoned to the invaders, and everything that could serve for provision was removed far beyond their reach. It had been imagined that the capture of Rangoon, or any part of the enemy's maritime possessions, would induce the king to accept the terms of government. ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... and slipped his net under a group, while each one was busy trying to get the best mouthful of mud. He drew up three quite large fish, but just as he was about to lift them from the water, one of the cords which bound the net to the poles broke and he saw his catch fall back into the creek and dart away in the deepest water. But Robinson was not to be discouraged. He soon mended his net and at ...
— An American Robinson Crusoe - for American Boys and Girls • Samuel. B. Allison

... occasion, the horses were weak and travelled slowly, so the party went forty-eight hours without drinking. "February 19th—Pulled on twenty-one miles—trail bad—freezing night, no water, and wolves after our fresh meat. 20—Made nineteen miles over prairie; again only mud, no water, freezing hard—frightful thirst. 21st—Thirty miles to Clear Fork, fresh water." These entries were hurriedly jotted down at the time, by a boy who deemed it unmanly to make any especial note of hardship or suffering; but every plainsman will understand the ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt

... despairing shrug the manager rose and went out, and Helen, turning an amused face to Douglass, asked, humorously: "Isn't he the typical manager?—in the clouds to-day, stuck in the mud to-morrow. Sometimes he is excruciatingly funny, and then he disgusts me. They're almost all alike. If business should be unexpectedly good to-night he would be a man transformed. His face would shine, he would grasp every actor by the hand, he would ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland

... bricks made were there not several men engaged in their manufacture, as well as horses? There is no analogy in your premises; you beg the question entirely; you take the whole foundation for granted; your argument is "as clear as mud." ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume I, No. 12, December, 1880 • Various

... stars. And the new day once more brings the blazing sun further to parch the land and plants. Day after day and night after night the drought gets worse. The rivers sink low; brooks run dry; the edges of the lakes become marshes. The marshes dry out to hardened mud. The dry leaves of the trees rustle and crumble. All the animals and wood creatures gather around the muddy pools that once were lakes or rivers. People begin saving water and buying it and selling it as the most precious ...
— Common Science • Carleton W. Washburne

... (somewhat minor) bard in almost every case survives, and is the spice of life to his possessor. Justice is not done to the versatility and the unplumbed childishness of man's imagination. His life from without may seem but a rude mound of mud: there will be some golden chamber at the heart of it, in which he dwells delighted; and for as dark as his pathway seems to the observer, he will have some kind of bull's-eye ...
— Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals • William James

... ball appeared to be lying, a huge blurred sphere, upon the muddy grass; and the Elevens were stupidly staring at it. The Saints be praised! Some fellow can move. Who is it? The players, big and little, are so daubed with mud from head to foot as to be unrecognizable. Ah-h-h! ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell

... to call him Champignon) was walking along his levee front, calculating how soon the water would come over, and drown him out, as the Louisianians say. It was before a seven-o'clock breakfast, cold, wet, rainy, and discouraging. The road was knee-deep in mud, and so broken up with hauling, that it was like walking upon waves to get over it. A shower poured down. Old Champigny was hurrying in when he saw a figure approaching. He had to stop to look at it, for it was worth while. The head was hidden by a green barege veil, ...
— Balcony Stories • Grace E. King

... mother said smiling; "and I shouldn't be surprised if you wanted to throw sticks into the water for her to fetch them out, and to be taking her out for a night's fishing, and be constantly bringing her home splashed with that nasty red mud from head to foot. You would be a nice playmate for a little girl, Jim. Perhaps it is that special advantage that the sergeant had in his mind's eye, when he was so anxious to ...
— With Wolfe in Canada - The Winning of a Continent • G. A. Henty

... is simply based upon physical grounds. The river Acheloues, running between Acarnania and AEtolia, and flowing into the Ionian Sea, carried with it a great quantity of sand and mud, which probably formed the islands at its mouth, called the Echinades. The same solution probably applies to the narrative of the ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso

... deck beneath them. The low receding hills lay close on either hand, and ran back so sharply from the narrow waterway that they seemed to shut in the boat from the world beyond. The moonlight showed a little mud fort or a thatched cottage on the bank fantastically, as through a mist, and from time to time as they sped forward they saw the camp-fire of a sentry, and his shadow as he passed between it and them, or stopped to cover it with wood. The night was so still that they could hear the waves ...
— The Princess Aline • Richard Harding Davis

... consisted of one row of miserable huts, sunk beneath the side of the road, the mud walls crooked in every direction; some of them opening in wide cracks, or zigzag fissures, from top to bottom, as if there had just been an earthquake—all the roofs sunk in various places—thatch off, or overgrown with grass—no chimneys, the ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth

... have done, on showing it to Mr. Allston, with the expectation of praise, and not only of praise but a score of 'excellents,' 'well dones,' and 'admirables'; I say it is mortifying to hear him after a long silence say: 'Very bad, sir; that is not flesh, it is mud, sir; it is painted with brick ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse

... was a little bully and was afraid of his daughter. She, he realized, knew the story of his brutal treatment of the girl's mother and hated him for it. One day she went home at noon and carried a handful of soft mud, taken from the road, into the house. With the mud she smeared the face of the boards used for the pressing of trousers and then went back to her work feeling relieved ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... perfect charnel-house for those poor Natives and Chinese who are unfortunately compelled to remain in it. I have seen it entirely flooded with water, to the depth of four or five feet in some parts. The malaria occasioned by the deposit of slimy mud left all over the town by the water, on its retiring, causes sad havoc among the poorer Chinese and Malays, who reside in the lowest parts of the town, and inhabit wretched hovels. These floods seldom annoy the inhabitants of the suburbs; yet ...
— Trade and Travel in the Far East - or Recollections of twenty-one years passed in Java, - Singapore, Australia and China. • G. F. Davidson

... vast warty tail trailing over the ground and raising a heavy column of dust, while its mud smeared sides bore out Hero Giles' statement that here was one of those semi-aquatic titans from ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various

... in amazement. All that the schoolmaster and Paul had told was true, and more. Acres and acres of the marsh lands were fairly littered with bones, and from the mud beneath other and far greater bones had been pulled up and left lying on the ground. Henry stood some of these bones on end, and they were much taller than he. ...
— The Young Trailers - A Story of Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler

... sacred island the last great Prince of the Saxon race, Edward, son of Ethelred the Unready, found Dunstan's little brotherhood of Benedictine monks, who were living in mud huts round a small stone chapel. Out of this insignificant beginning grew a mighty monastery, the West Minster, dowered with royal gifts and ruled over by mitred Abbots, who owned no ecclesiastical authority save ...
— Westminster - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant

... the most sensible of the perfection of the turn-out; Agatha chiefly felt that her more decorated skirt and mantle had their inconveniences in walking through the red mud of the lanes, impeded by books and umbrella, which left no leisure to admire the primroses that studded the deep banks and which delighted Thekla in the freedom ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... pounds. One of these strong creatures is harnessed to a street-cleaning machine, which consists of brushes turning over a cylinder and sweeping the dust of the streets into a kind of box. Whether it be wet or dry dust, or mud, the work is thoroughly performed; it is all drawn into the receptacle provided for it, and the huge horse stalks backward and forward along the street until it is almost as clean ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant

... was a man who toiled terribly; sometimes employing and exhausting four secretaries at a time. He spared no one, not even himself. His influence inspired other men, and put a new life into them. "I made my generals out of mud," he said. ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden

... Billy exclaimed, his raucous voice taking to itself a touch of scorn. "What do you call this? Are you going to take this up as a selection and grow pumpkins? Do you think there's any gold in this mud-pan? Did you ever see nuggets in a swamp of reeds? There's not an ounce of sand or gravel to the acre. How are you going to work it? Mine? Sink a shaft and drive tunnels? Not through, you call it, and never more than a colour to the dish after fourteen days and more of graft. ...
— Colonial Born - A tale of the Queensland bush • G. Firth Scott

... R—— and P—— returned, unexpectedly, from Trolhaettan, and, when they entered the cabin, they were so powdered with dust, and smeared with mud, that I hardly recognized them. They would not, at first, tell me the cause of their dirty plight, but I contrived to hear the whole account from King, who had accompanied them in the capacity of ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross



Words linked to "Mud" :   slop, plaster, grime, mud-wrestle, soil, bemire, dirt, daub, slander, colly, dirty, begrime, bleaching earth, masonry, bleaching clay



Copyright © 2024 Dictionary One.com