|
More "Stale" Quotes from Famous Books
... that they were Radicals at all. It denounced the attempt of any man to interfere by violence with slaves or Slavery where protected by the supreme law of the land. It repudiated as stale and ridiculous the charge of Abolitionism against them. And declared that such an accusation is without a shadow ... — The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon
... that his scent lay best near the ground, and was strongest when he was warm. So if he could get off the ground, and be left in peace for half an hour to cool off, and for the trail to stale, he knew he would be safe. When, therefore, he tired of the chase, he made for the Creekside brier-patch, where he 'wound'—that is, zig-zagged—till he left a course so crooked that the dog was sure to be greatly delayed in working it out. He then went straight to D in the woods, passing ... — Wild Animals I Have Known • Ernest Thompson Seton
... eternity, and within its folds lie the grandeur and sublimity of the great unknown future. It never gets out-of-date. Other books have their run of popularity and are forgotten, but the Bible never grows old; no matter how familiar we become with it, it is ever new. To the Christian it never grows stale, but is always fresh and always satisfying. It ever reveals new depths that we fail to fathom, new heights that we can not scale, and new beauties ... — Heart Talks • Charles Wesley Naylor
... medium size, and in colour a dark purple. The rind is very thin, and when broken the pulp dissolves in the mouth immediately. Although Dr. M. has just commenced his vineyard, he has made several casks of wine this year, which is now in a stale of fermentation. I tasted here, for the first time, aguardiente, or brandy distilled from the Californian grape. Its flavour is not unpleasant, and age, I do not doubt, would render it equal to the brandies of France. Large quantities of wine and aguardiente are made from the extensive ... — What I Saw in California • Edwin Bryant
... fellows closing in behind, followed quickly. Poor Noorunglely floundered into the net, up rushed a black fellow and, seizing her, wrung her neck. Having secured her, they would next secure her eggs; that they might be a trifle stale was a ... — The Euahlayi Tribe - A Study of Aboriginal Life in Australia • K. Langloh Parker
... wooden trough of three hundred feet long, fifty broad, and eight deep; which, being well pitched, to prevent leaking, was placed on the floor along the wall in an outer room of the palace. It had a cock near the bottom to let out the water, when it began to grow stale; and two servants could easily fill it in half-an-hour. Here I often used to row for my own diversion, as well as that of the queen and her ladies, who thought themselves well entertained with my skill and agility. Sometimes I ... — Gulliver's Travels - Into Several Remote Regions of the World • Jonathan Swift
... he sat at supper the swineherd again sounded his horn, and Don Quixote was still firm in the belief that he was in some famous castle, where he was served with music, and that the stale haddock was fresh trout, the bread of the finest flour, the two women high-born damsels, and the innkeeper the constable of the castle. Thus he thought his career of knight-errant was well begun, but he was still greatly troubled by the thought ... — The Junior Classics, V4 • Willam Patten (Editor)
... few weeks before this black shadow of war had loomed up with its deadly menace a great party of German editors had returned our visit and once again I had listened to speeches about the blood- brotherhood of the two nations, a little bored by the stale phrases, but glad to sit between these friendly Germans whom I had met in their own country. We clinked glasses again, sang "God Save the King" and the "Wacht am Rhein," compared the character of German and English literature, of German and English women, clasped hands, and said, "Auf wiedersehen!" ... — The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... hands upon a large scale. The enemy's relinquishment of 30 miles of front line trench and his withdrawal to a depth, in places, of 40 kilometres, restored the principle of manoeuvre to armies which had fronted one another for two years in positions hitherto justifying the description of stale-mate. Strong moral and political effects accompanied. And this manoeuvre, though carried out upon a part only of the entire battle front, infused a sense of change and movement into the most static portions of the allied line. From theory open warfare had passed into ... — The Story of the 2/4th Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry • G. K. Rose
... longed-for life in Paris quite out of the question, she looked about her at the people with whom her life must be spent, and shuddered at her loneliness. There was not a single man who could inspire the madness to which women are prone when they despair of a life become stale and unprofitable in the present, and with no outlook for the future. She had nothing to look for, nothing to expect from chance, for there are lives in which chance plays no part. But when the Empire ... — Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... as the black cup, sullen and dark with fire, burns till beside it, noon's bright heat is withered, filled with dust— and into that noon-heat grown drab and stale, suddenly wind and thunder and swift rain, till the scarlet flower is wrecked in the ... — Hymen • Hilda Doolittle
... you! But to return to your wife—as I understand she shares the fate I endure. We poor women have nothing to expect from our husbands, but the stale leavings that remain after business has absorbed the rest! But your story—go ... — Uarda • Georg Ebers
... half-humorous, but unsuccessful attempt to entangle him in his talk. The meeting agreed with all that had been said regarding the antiquity of the earth and of its life. They had, indeed, known it all long ago, and they rallied the lecturer for coming amongst them with so stale a story. It was quite plain that this large body of clergymen, who were, I should say, to be ranked amongst the finest samples of their class, had entirely given up the ancient landmarks, and transported ... — Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... Christmas tree for a whole month. But it's a going tree. Its going is very sad. Just one little wee day of perfect splendor it has. And then it begins to die. Every day it dies more. It tarnishes. Its presents are all gathered. Its pop-corn gets stale. The cranberries smell. It looks scragglier and scragglier. It gets brittle. Its needles begin to fall. Pretty soon it's nothing but a clutter. It must be dreadful to start as a Christmas tree and end by being nothing ... — Fairy Prince and Other Stories • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... Such, too, was his maniacal, sordid avarice that he no longer spent a farthing on himself apart from the money which he paid for his bread—bread of the commonest kind, which he purchased every four days and ate when it was stale, in order that he might make it last the longer. This greatly puzzled the people who were acquainted with him, and never a week went by without the house-porter propounding the question: "When a gentleman of such quiet habits earns ... — Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... rear-ranks were bidden to close up, and the subalterns dashed into the stew—alone. For the rear-rank had heard the clamour in front, the yells and the howls of pain, and had seen the dark stale blood that makes afraid. They were not going to stay. It was the rushing of the camps over again. Let their officers go to Hell, if they chose; they would ... — Soldier Stories • Rudyard Kipling
... robust-looking girl, aged about ten or eleven years. From their dress and appearance I took them to be the children of a respectable artisan or small tradesman; but what chiefly attracted my attention was the very great pleasure the elder girl appeared to take in the birds. She had come well provided with stale bread to feed them, and after giving moderately of her store to the wood-pigeons and sparrows, she went on to the others, native and exotic, that were disporting themselves in the water, or sunning themselves on the green ... — Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... woods, they were always stopped by armed men. This was also the case when they approached particular parts of the town, but they were not molested as long as their rambles were confined to the beach. At the Datu's we were treated to chocolate and negus in gilt-edged tumblers, with small stale cakes, which had been brought ... — The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... I live when she lived, to marry her?" muttered Helwyse in a dream. "A woman whose infinite variety age could not alter nor custom stale! A true wife would have kept me from error. What man can comprehend the world, if he puts half the world away? Now it is too late; she might have helped me rise to greatness, but not to bear disgrace. Ah, Balder Helwyse, poor fool! you ... — Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... all description, for besides being densely crowded below and above, the wooden shutters were shut, on account of the wind and rain, the people's wet clothes were steaming, and there was a strong smell of stale fish. At first we felt as if it would be impossible to bear it, but after a little time we became used to the disagreeables, and had ... — From Death into Life - or, twenty years of my ministry • William Haslam
... must undoubtedly be an opening somewhere, because the air in the vault was comparatively pure and fresh; at least it had not the dead, stale, stuffy smell of air confined in a hermetically-sealed chamber. But Frobisher pointed out that the door by which they had entered, although an excellent fit, did not butt up against the jambs so closely as to exclude the air altogether; yet he acknowledged that the air in ... — A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood
... reappears whenever a man has reconciled himself 'to roll with pleasure in a sensual sty.' But life is not always, nor for most persons at any time, a thing of ease and soft enchantments, and the Cyrenaic philosophy must remain for the general work-a-day world a stale exotic. 'Every man for himself and the devil take the hindmost,' is a maxim which comes as a rule {128} only to the lips of the worldly successful, while they think themselves strong enough to stand alone. But this solitude of selfishness neither works nor lasts; every man ... — A Short History of Greek Philosophy • John Marshall
... saying a great deal, he reflected, one seldom enough, in our staid, our stale society, meets a person of whom one can say so ... — The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... It reeked of stale cigar-smoke, which would hang in the curtains for a week. It was very untidy. There were many indications that old Robinson had quitted in haste. On the table were ash-trays, old cigar-stumps, matches, ... — A Husband by Proxy • Jack Steele
... is old, lad, And all the trees are brown; And all the sport is stale, lad, And all the wheels run down,— Creep home, and take your place there, The spent and maimed among: God grant you find one face there You loved ... — Required Poems for Reading and Memorizing - Third and Fourth Grades, Prescribed by State Courses of Study • Anonymous
... the drawing-room, but it was stale and dreary. The dining-room, which she tried next, made her hungry. The arrival of a servant with a broom suggested to her that she had better get out of the way of the household work. She felt half sorry for getting up, and went out on the lawn ... — The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... went with him into an early public-house, haunted by unsavoury smells of musty hay and stale straw, where returning carts, farmers' men, gaunt dogs, fowls of a beery breed, and certain human nightbirds fluttering home to roost, were solacing themselves after their several manners; and where not one of the nightbirds hovering about the sloppy bar failed to ... — Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... of stale good beer, not porter. Three quarters of a pound fresh blue Aleppo galls, beaten. Four ounces of copperas. Four ounces of gum Arabic in powder. Two ounces of ... — The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 484 - Vol. 17, No. 484, Saturday, April 9, 1831 • Various
... divvle's in the luck, there's not a fresh egg to be had—no, nor a fresh chicken," continued I, "nor a stale one either; nor a tayspoonful of souchong, nor a thimbleful of bohay; nor the laste taste in life of butther, salt or fresh; nor ... — Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... there were some jobs that it only paid to do once in a long time, and among these was the cleaning out of the waste barrels. Every spring they did it; and in the barrels would be dirt and rust and old nails and stale water—and cartload after cartload of it would be taken up and dumped into the hoppers with fresh meat, and sent out to the public's breakfast. Some of it they would make into "smoked" sausage—but as the ... — The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... was his work, and this he loved with an increasing ardour. How devotedly he laboured he never knew until long afterwards, when what had once been a passion of delight and a necessity of nature degenerated into a stale drudgery practised for the sake of mere money. But, oh! the sweetness of brain-toil whilst the heart was fresh and whilst it still seemed worth while to preach some kind of gospel to mankind! To pace the streets and read ... — Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... little sublimity, and a little humor, and a little antiquarianism,—all very neatly associated in a very charming picture, but not working together for a definite end. Or if the aim be higher, as was the case with Barrett and Varley, we are generally put off with stale repetitions of eternal composition; a great tree, and some goats, and a bridge and a lake, and the Temple at Tivoli, etc. Now we should like to see our artists working out, with all exertion of their concentrated powers, such marked pieces of landscape ... — Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... it up, and went back to his stale question: Could Sybil suggest any other resource? and Sybil sadly confessed that she could not. So far as she could see, they must trust to luck, and she thought it was cruel tor Mr. Carrington to go away and leave her alone without help. He had ... — Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... flowers tenderly in the cup of her hands, and began to gaze at them with bent head. After a few moments' silence she raised her head again, and said to me: "You never look at these flowers; therefore they become stale to you. If you would only look into them, then your reading and writing ... — The Hungry Stones And Other Stories • Rabindranath Tagore
... death-side now as I saw the life-side then; and one has as little meaning as the other. As it has been, so it will be, now, henceforth, and for ever, in and out, in and out, without pause or stint, futile, trivial, silly, stale, tedious, monotonous, and vain!' The long pre-occupation of men with religion, philosophy, and art, seemed to me now as incomprehensible as it was ridiculous. There was nothing after all to be interested about! There was ... — The Meaning of Good—A Dialogue • G. Lowes Dickinson
... piece on the floor they pick it up and put it in a hole in the wall and keep it. It may be eaten, but may never be otherwise destroyed. I thought of Ruskin telling his readers in The Elements of Drawing that stale crumb of bread is better than india-rubber to rub out their mistakes, but "it crumbles about the room and makes a mess; and besides, you waste the good bread, which is wrong; and your drawing will not for a long while be worth the crumbs. So ... — Castellinaria - and Other Sicilian Diversions • Henry Festing Jones
... had pleased Providence to call them, they rode the Great North Road for some days in a northern express. Vine said that the Victoria Falls were all right, but that their surroundings were, many of them, perversely wrong. It was so very stale, the hotel business, with the moonlight river excursions and the Livingstone trips, far too much sleeked and smoothed by foresight, and tamed by taking of thought. If one had only traveled up with pack donkeys, provisioned with leathery meat and leathery ... — Cinderella in the South - Twenty-Five South African Tales • Arthur Shearly Cripps
... too; He shall be counted Ancient Without so much ado. What you do grant, I'm very free To use now at my pleasure: Another Month, or Year, d' ye see I'll bate, as I have leasure; So Hair by Hair, from the Mare's Tail I'll pull, as well I may. So what is good, is quickly stale, Though Writ ... — Magazine, or Animadversions on the English Spelling (1703) • G. W.
... excellent gift of charity." Then, in one generous burst, she prayed for love divine, and there was many a sigh and many a tear, and at the close an "Amen!" such as, alas! we shall never, I fear, hear burst from a hundred bosoms where men repeat beautiful but stale words and call ... — A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... I. I have got over all nonsense by this time. He's absolutely nothing to me now." He took up the tradesman's book and played with it idly. On its crimson cover was stamped a grotesque sheep. How stale and ... — The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... of that strenuous day; and when at length I succeeded in doing so, and could get him to talk about himself, it appeared that, stirring though the events seemed to be which were nightly happening before Port Arthur, they were all flat, stale, and unprofitable, compared with such an event as the storming of the Nanshan Heights. And so, as a matter of fact, they were, as I soon discovered for myself; for the duty of our destroyer flotilla consisted simply ... — Under the Ensign of the Rising Sun - A Story of the Russo-Japanese War • Harry Collingwood
... senior, that your creditors have gone, and that there's no need for you to skulk away. But I've had some tender pheasant prepared; so please come, and have your evening meal; for if you delay any longer, it will get quite stale." ... — Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... as his blase indifference to all emotions, pleasant or unpleasant, could allow. He lingered—he hesitated—he repeated many times how glad he should be to see Beechwood again; how all the world was to him "flat, stale, ... — John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... Stale as it all was, unprofitable and a weariness to the flesh as it had all become, the strangeness of it still struck him at times. He wondered lazily what the people he knew at home would think if they were following him at that ... — No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... pictures, his garden, he had the hills and valley, the birds, the flowers, the clouds, the sun, he had the Rampio, he had Annunziata, he even had Annunziata's uncle; and with all this he had a sense of having stepped out of a world that he knew by heart, that he knew to satiety, a world that was stale and stuffy and threadbare, with its gilt rubbed off and its colours tarnished, into a world where everything was fresh and undiscovered and full of savour, a great cool blue and green world that from minute to minute opened up new ... — My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland
... to braid his hair down his back, I should have to let it go on unless I broke it up sarahuptishly by cuttin' it off when he wuz asleep, but thank fortin' he hain't got enough so that the braid would be bigger than a pipe stale anyway if he should let it grow out, and he is so dressy he wouldn't like that. But I've tried to break up his wearin' such gay neckties for years and years, and if he should go out and buy one to-day it would most likely be red ... — Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... all that great and terrible Land grow stale upon the soul of any, from birth until death; and by this you shall know the constant wonder of it, and that sense of enemies in the night about us, which ever filled the heart and spirit of all Beholders; so that never were the ... — The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson
... him soon; For he japed my wife, and made me cuckold, And yet the traitor was so bold, That he stale forty pound of ... — A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Volume I. • R. Dodsley
... and I laughed at the story at first, but when we came across it about every other week, it began to get rather stale. It was one of those canards that stick, and I shall be spoken of always as the man who forgot his wife within an hour after ... — Radio Boys Cronies • Wayne Whipple and S. F. Aaron
... the same way, when rumours reached him prejudicial to Lizzie in respect of the diamonds, he perceived that such prejudice might work weal for him. A gentleman once, on ordering a mackerel for dinner, was told that a fresh mackerel would come to a shilling. He could have a stale mackerel for sixpence. "Then bring me a stale mackerel," said the gentleman. Mr. Emilius coveted fish, but was aware that his position did not justify him in expecting the best fish on the market. The Lord Fawns and the Frank Greystocks ... — The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... came to supper; a writer and two painters, with their wives. A grim evening—never more so than when the conversation turned on that perennial theme—the freedom, spiritual, mental, physical, requisite for those who practise Art. All the stale arguments were brought forth, and had to be joined in with unmoved faces. And for all their talk of freedom, Lennan could see the volte-face his friends would be making, if they only knew. It was not 'the thing' to seduce young girls—as if, forsooth, there ... — Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... of trapping even among the great rocky mountains grew stale, so I decided that I would go back to upper Michigan locate Long Knife, and Shopnegon and trap on the Stergeon River. So Clark and I set out from North Platte in September and arrived in Gladstone after four days traveling. It so occurred that Chief Long Knife was in town and that ... — Black Beaver - The Trapper • James Campbell Lewis
... reached into a large bowl and absently picked up a piece of stale popcorn. She daintily placed it in her mouth and chewed ... — Texas Week • Albert Hernhuter
... Duomo is of black and white marble, of mixed architecture, and highly ornamented—all stinking to a degree that was perfectly intolerable, and the same thing whether empty or full; it is the smell of stale incense mixed with garlic and human odour, horrible combination of poisonous exhalations. I must say, as everybody has before remarked, that there is something highly edifying in the appearance of devotion which belongs to the Catholic religion; the churches ... — The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... detesting severe study, she abjured all paths that would lead her to teach the higher branches of learning, and bent her rather spare and somewhat stale energies to fitting herself for primary work. This, too, in the face of the fact that she naturally despised children, except sweet little girls in their best clothes, with long curls, freshly made up, and hanging like a golden flood over neck and shoulders; or ... — The Evolution of Dodd • William Hawley Smith
... the dinner-table stood; and portable curtains of insufficient number and enormous size ornamented a few favoured windows, waved in the erratic draughts, and tripped up incautious attendants, diffusing all the while the stale odour of tobacco smoke through the other varied smells. At one end of the room was a round table with a faded red cloth, strewn with newspapers, the corners of which had generally been abstracted ... — Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... gas-lighted, garish scenes of riot and senseless laughter, and later the fighting ground of all the vile vermin of the night with their uncanny noises—as when, the doors and windows having been at last opened, the light struggles in through stale tobacco-smoke, revealing dimly a discolored, reeking place, whose sights and odors are more in harmony with the sewer than the sweet April sunshine and the violets opening on southern slopes—so when reason ... — A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... of it was in certain events, political and even personal. They roughly resolve themselves into two: the marriages of Henry VIII. and the affair of the monasteries. The marriages of Henry VIII. have long been a popular and even a stale joke; and there is a truth of tradition in the joke, as there is in almost any joke if it is sufficiently popular, and indeed if it is sufficiently stale. A jocular thing never lives to be stale unless it is also serious. Henry was popular in his first days, and ... — A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... this trite assumption when there are iron facts like these to fall upon it? Again, it is objected that the freshness disappears in elaborate preparation, and an oft-repeated sermon becomes stale to its author. Shiel, we are told, "always prepared the language as well as the substance of his speeches. Two very high excellences he possessed to a most wonderful degree—the power of combining extreme preparation with ... — The Young Priest's Keepsake • Michael Phelan
... are as a rule cooked and cold before they are sauteed. Some prefer them to the French. To many minds they never get quite rid of the stale taste that clings to the cold potato. The same may be said of stewed cold, cooked potatoes. The least objectionable way of serving them as left-overs is to ... — Armour's Monthly Cook Book, Volume 2, No. 12, October 1913 - A Monthly Magazine of Household Interest • Various
... Guard and of the Main Body will depend on information received, and not only must information be gained by every available means, but it must also be communicated without delay to all concerned while it is fresh and before it becomes stale. It must also be remembered that negative information (e.g. that such and such a village has been thoroughly searched and no trace of the enemy found) is at least of equal value to positive information. The repetition or confirmation ... — Lectures on Land Warfare; A tactical Manual for the Use of Infantry Officers • Anonymous
... asked her not to smoke till he came again, because the child was sickly and his friend put it down to the tobacco. "It ought to be a criminal offence for a woman to smoke at all," said Borrow; "fancy kissing a woman's mouth that smelt of stale tobacco—pheugh!" {315} Whether this proves Borrow's susceptibility to female charm I cannot say, but it seems to me rather to prove a sort of connoisseurship, which is ... — George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... inform them of the power and effects of the English thunder-making arms, and a four-pounder loaded with grape was fired wide of them. The result was satisfactory, and the natives went peaceably away. The following day another fleet of canoes came alongside, and though they had only stale fish to sell, Captain Cook accepted it for the sake of encouraging traffic. The natives, however, showed every disposition to take advantage of the strangers, and one of them having agreed to exchange a black cloak for a piece of red cloth, on receiving the cloth, packed it in a basket ... — Captain Cook - His Life, Voyages, and Discoveries • W.H.G. Kingston
... five minutes failed to appear! Where was his common sense, his "gumption," as old Robert Williamson would have said? Naturally a man liked to look at a pretty face. But was that any reason why he should feel as if life were flat, stale, and unprofitable simply because he could not look at it? He called himself a fool and went home in a petulant mood. Arriving there, he plunged fiercely into solving algebraical equations and working out geometry exercises, determined to put out of his head forthwith all ... — Kilmeny of the Orchard • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... observed that dramatic representations which depend for their value on their interest lose by repetition, because they are no longer able to arouse curiosity as to their course, since it is already known. To see them often, makes them stale and tedious. On the other hand, works of which the value lies in their beauty gain by repetition, as they are then ... — The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; The Art of Controversy • Arthur Schopenhauer
... not woorth the saluting of such a royal companie, in which there was no maner of wealth in the world left, more then bare houses of stone, and standing walles, and might well haue serued rather as a stale, perchance, to haue entrapped, then as a meanes to haue enriched. And it had bin more then a suspicion of follie, for such an army as this, to haue sought to fight with the aire, and to haue laboured with great paine and charges, yea, and with some euident ... — The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, v. 7 - England's Naval Exploits Against Spain • Richard Hakluyt
... at last. Even the old princess, though she was ready for anything, as she expressed it, and no noise wearied her, felt tired at last, and longed for peace and quiet. At twelve o'clock at night, supper was served, consisting of a piece of stale dry cheese, and some cold turnovers of minced ham, which seemed to me more delicious than any pastry I had ever tasted; there was only one bottle of wine, and that was a strange one; a dark-coloured bottle with a wide neck, and the wine in it was of a pink hue; no ... — The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... needs of his privates, and he acted from habit. They crowded into the shop; one man shut the door, Fevrier lighted a match and disclosed by its light staved-in barrels, empty cannisters, broken boxes, fragments of lemonade bottles, but of food not so much as a stale biscuit. ... — Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... 6. Stale or Decayed Foods.—Food which has been allowed to stand until it is spoiled, or has become stale, musty, or mouldy, such as mouldy bread or fruit, or tainted meat, is unfit to be eaten, and is often a cause of very severe sickness. Canned fish or other meats spoil very quickly after ... — First Book in Physiology and Hygiene • J.H. Kellogg
... education does not always make an editor. Many of our editors grow discouraged over their failure to arouse a support to their journals, blaming the race for non-appreciation, when the fault lies with themselves. Do they give their readers news? If a local sheet, they deal in stale generalities. If a general sheet, they confine themselves to locals of no ... — Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... attach to one side or end; or they may be built as mere sheds, with no storage room over the cattle. The chief objection to stabling cattle in the body of the barn is, the continual decay of the most important timbers, such as sills, sleepers, &c., &c., by the leakage of the stale, and manure of the cattle on to them, and the loss of so much valuable storage as they would occupy, for hay and grain. By the plan described, the stables have no attachment to the sills, and other durable barn timbers below; and if the stable sills ... — Rural Architecture - Being a Complete Description of Farm Houses, Cottages, and Out Buildings • Lewis Falley Allen
... down the dusty road they came to the hotel, a dismal, unclean looking place that smelled of stale beer. Uncle John ... — Aunt Jane's Nieces at Millville • Edith Van Dyne
... perhaps too much studied at our universities. This seems a science to which the meanest intellects are equal. I forget who it is that says, "All men might understand mathematics if they would."' Goldsmith's Present Stale of Polite ... — Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... conceivable that cables of telephone wires could be laid underground, or suspended overhead, connecting by branch wires with private dwellings, shops, etc., and uniting them through the main cable with a central office." This remarkable prophecy has now become stale reading, as stale as Darwin's "Origin of Species," or Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations." But at the time that it was written it was a ... — The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... ass. His jokes strike you as funny at first; but there's nothing in him, he's a mere hawker of stale puns; there's nothing but selfishness under his jesting exterior. I have no belief in him. Yet he is an old school friend; the only one of my twenty-eight classmates whose acquaintance I have kept up. Four are dead, twenty-three others are scattered about in obscure country places; ... — The Ink-Stain, Complete • Rene Bazin
... you ever eat a piece of custard pie made out of stale eggs? Well, that is just about the same as the Carlsbad water, only the water is not baked with a raw crust on the bottom. But the doctor dad consulted was the peach. Dad asked him how much of the water he ought to drink, and the doctor held a counsel with himself, and said dad might drink all ... — Peck's Bad Boy With the Cowboys • Hon. Geo. W. Peck
... realized that the boy's life was to bring again and again a repetition of that sublime moment of realization—a moment of fulfillment unspoiled by surfeit or sophistication or a blunted capacity to marvel, which Caleb had seen grow old and stale even in the children he knew, he wondered and wished that he might have known it himself, once at least. Years of waiting, starved years of anticipation, he felt after all must have been a very little price to pay for that great, ... — Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... came in, but I wasn't sure," said the restaurant keeper. "The man who runs the hotel, Mr. Brown, had a lot of trouble with him because he wouldn't pay his bill—said it was too high. Then he came here once and said the meat wasn't fresh and the bread was stale and sour. I came close to pitching him out. Don't let him walk over you—if he does take ... — Dave Porter in the Far North - or, The Pluck of an American Schoolboy • Edward Stratemeyer
... as when the human animal eschews all cleanliness to wallow in filth. And matters were made worse by the smell from a small, improvised market—the emanations of the rotting fruit, cooked and sour vegetables, and stale fried fish which a few poor women had set out on the ground amidst a throng of famished, ... — The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... great secret of being interesting lies in being interested. The really enthralling preacher is he who is himself enthralled by his subject and who realises, also, a deep interest in the people before Him. Should it ever come to pass that the subject grow stale, worn and hackneyed to the man in the pulpit, it will not be a hopeful quest to look for much interest in the pew. Again should it ever come to pass that the preacher lose interest in those before whom he stands, and this has been known to occur, there will remain small reason to listen to him for ... — The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson
... the fragrant blood of the red, red rose. For the ruffianish pages of Jack London, the pungent, hospitable smell of a first-class bar-room—that indescribable mingling of Maryland rye, cigar smoke, stale malt liquor, radishes, potato salad and blutwurst. For the Dartmoor sagas of the interminable Phillpotts, the warm ammoniacal bouquet of cows, poultry and yokels. For the "Dodo" school, violets and Russian cigarettes. For the venerable Howells, lavender ... — Damn! - A Book of Calumny • Henry Louis Mencken
... small wooden compartment with seats sharp and narrow and a smell of cabbage, bad tobacco, and dirty clothes. The floor was littered with sunflower seeds and the paper wrappings of cheap sweets. The air came in hot stale gusts down the corridor, met the yet closer air of our carriage, battled with it and retired defeated. We flung open the windows and a cloud of dust rose gaily to meet us. The whole of the Russian army seemed to be surging upon ... — The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... what it is to start a piece of work, either intellectual or muscular, feeling stale—or oold, as an Adirondack guide once put it to me. And everybody knows what it is to "warm up" to his job. The process of warming up gets particularly striking in the phenomenon known as "second wind." On usual occasions we make a practice of stopping an occupation as soon as we ... — Memories and Studies • William James
... brought home with his body full of eels, said when she was asked what was to be done with him, "Take the eels out and set him again," so Harris and Douglas have shown a disposition to take the eels out of that stale fraud by which they gained Harris's election, and set the fraud again more than once. On the 9th of July, 1856, Douglas attempted a repetition of it upon Trumbull on the floor of the Senate of the United States, as will appear from the appendix of the Congressional ... — The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... least two hours for proper and thorough cooking. Prepare your fowl and rub dry with a clean towel; then mix a little pepper and salt and rub both inside and outside of the turkey before putting in the dressing. Grate stale bread, about three cups; then add a small teaspoon of pepper and the same amount of powdered sage or sweet marjoram, salt and a little salt fat pork chopped very fine or a piece of butter the size of an egg; use warm water to mix the whole to the consistency of ... — Favorite Dishes • Carrie V. Shuman
... the days!—the old, old theme, Never stale, but never new, Floating like a pleasant dream, Back to me and ... — The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall
... all them 'a b, abs,' jest like the old days. Dear! Dear! But the teacher in those days was ez old and grizzled ez I be—and some o' the scholars—no offense to you, Mr. Brooks—was older and bigger nor you. But times is changed: yet look, Almiry, if thar ain't a hunk o' stale gingerbread in that desk jest as it uster be! Lord! how it all comes back! Ez I was sayin' only t'other day, we can't be too grateful to our parents for givin' us an eddication in our youth;" and Mr. Hoover, with the air of recalling an alma ... — Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... hurt bad? Can I bind it up or wash it for you? I've got plenty of hot water here, and it's bad letting a wound get stale." ... — The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... But les delicats will look back on Stevenson as they now look back on Fielding, who, to my simple thinking, remains unsurpassed as a novelist; and as they turn to Lamb and Hazlitt as essayists. The poet is, of course, at his best immortal—time cannot stale Beowulf, or the nameless lyrists of the fourteenth century, or Chaucer, or Spenser, and so with the rest, la mort n'y mord. But it is as a writer of prose that Stevenson must be remembered. If he is not the master British essayist ... — The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... detraction and abuse, are capable of misleading those who are already far misled, and of further fanning passion already kindling into flame. Doubtless it served in its day, and in greater or less degree, the end designed by it. Having done that, it has sunk into the general mass of stale and loathed calumnies. It is the very cast-off slough of a polluted and shameless press. Incapable of further mischief, it lies in the sewer, lifeless and despised. It is not now, sir, in the power ... — Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... stranger! This thing happened to me at Bristol, some time ago, in the way I am about to relate. I slept at a Commercial Hotel, and early next morning was joined in the big empty coffee-room, smelling of stale tobacco, by an intensely respectable- looking old gentleman, whose hair was of silvery whiteness, and who wore gold-rimmed spectacles and a heavy gold watch-chain with many seals attached thereto; whose linen was of the finest, and whose outer garments, ... — A Traveller in Little Things • W. H. Hudson
... how Danes had come and burnt Harwich town. But the people told him to sing less stale news than that, for Harwich was close at hand. Now it was Halfden's ship which had done that, and the fires we saw before the fog came had been the beacons lit because of ... — Wulfric the Weapon Thane • Charles W. Whistler
... the Wrangle House, was awkward and not entirely agreeable. To be sure the landlord gave us the parlor, and most of the men came in, now and then, to speak to us; but they managed the principal matters all by themselves, in the bar-room, which was such a mess of smoke and stale liquor smells, that it turned my stomach when I ventured in for ... — Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... fifteen minutes to play. The hard pace was beginning to tell upon the big men, and the inevitable reaction following their unwise "celebrating" began to show itself in their stale and spiritless play. On the other hand, the Twentieth were as fresh as ever, and pressed the game with greater ... — Glengarry Schooldays • Ralph Connor
... odours from the warm roots of girl's hair; and Sunday. Sunday; stale odours of churches. You wrote out the sermon you had not listened to and had not heard. Somebody told you the text, and you amused yourself by seeing how near you could get to what you would have heard if you had listened. ... — Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair
... spittoon were allowed to each honourable member,—the latter article being deemed as necessary as the former. Whether smoking was suffered during the hours of business or not I cannot tell, but the room smelt horribly of stale tobacco. Between fifty and sixty members were present, and never certainly, either in the Old World or in the New, did I see an assemblage of worse-looking men. They seemed fitted for any deeds of robbery, blood, and death. Several distinguished duellists were pointed ... — American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies
... blamed the master for not seizing and detaining these emissaries of Satan. Alice was closely questioned as to the communication she had received; but she replied, evasively perhaps, that it was only one of the usual stale conceits appropriate ... — Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... have bethought me of paying a visit this summer to the land of the Czar; that I want companions; that I like young ones, who will follow my ways better than old ones, who won't; that I enjoy fresh ideas freshly expressed, and am tired of stale platitudes; in short, if you will entrust your youngsters to me, I will take charge of them, and point out what is mostly worth seeing and remembering at ... — Fred Markham in Russia - The Boy Travellers in the Land of the Czar • W. H. G. Kingston
... purge these villages of the rank odours which cling to them at the end of the fishing season; and when all has been done, the saltness of the sea air, the brackish water of the wells, and the faint stale smells emitted by the nets and fishing tackle still tell unmistakable tales of the one trade in which every member of these communities is more ... — In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... interesting; that is, for the first time, but afterwards, as the weather-cock found out, they repeated themselves and always told the same stories, and that's very tedious, and there was no one with whom one could associate, for one and all were stale ... — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... parlour, the principal features of which were fresh sand and stale tobacco smoke. Mr. Pickwick bowed to the three persons who were seated in it when he entered; and having despatched Sam for Perker, withdrew into an obscure corner, and looked thence with some curiosity ... — The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... alarmed at the evils of the reconstruction and were anxious to see the corrupt political leaders deprived of further influence over the race. To others the constantly recurring Southern problem was growing stale, and they desired to hear less of it. Within the Republican party in each Southern State, there were serious divisions over the spoils. First it was carpetbagger and Negro against the scalawag; later, when the black leaders insisted that those who furnished the votes must ... — The Sequel of Appomattox - A Chronicle of the Reunion of the States, Volume 32 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Walter Lynwood Fleming
... thought that he was late. He took three long steps, collided with a sodden old gentleman who was just arising from a bench—and then was standing very still, looking about him as in a daze, unconscious of the mutter of apology which, together with an odor of stale beer, was fermenting beneath his nose. The old gentleman, pursuing a ray of sun, slipped on to a farther bench. But Charles-Norton still stood there, gazing about him in a sort of mild astonishment, as if, while he was not looking, the scene about him had been transformed ... — The Trimming of Goosie • James Hopper
... this popularity may continue. But if it is born of immediate circumstance, like the hatred of slavery in "Uncle Tom's Cabin," or if it is still more transient, say, the novelty of a new invention, like the airplane or wireless, then the book grows stale with its theme. The like is true of a story that teaches a lesson a generation are willing to be taught—it lives as long as the lesson. What has become of Charles Kingsley's novels, of the apologues ... — Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... remembered how you dislike stale mustard. And butter—you can't leave butter shut up, you ... — In the Mist of the Mountains • Ethel Turner
... bird as much space as you can spare. Spread the ground with sharp sandy gravel; take care that they are not disturbed. In addition to their regular diet of good corn, make them a cake of ground oats or beans, brown sugar, milk, and mutton suet. Let the cake lie till it is stale, then crumble it, and give each bird a gill-measureful morning and evening. No entire grain should be given to fowls during the time they are fattening; indeed, the secret of success lies in supplying them with the most nutritious food without stint, ... — The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... utterly useless to a stomach not trained in Germany. Of this sort, for the most part, is the famous Lebkuchen, a sort of gingerbread manufactured in Nurnberg, and sent all over Germany: "age does not [seem to] impair, nor custom stale its infinite variety." It is very different from our simple cake of that name, although it is usually baked in flat cards. It may contain nuts or fruit, and is spoiled by a flavor of conflicting spices. I should think it might be sold by the cord, ... — Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... as before, the noise and glitter of the Toledo had been unbearable, so now I found it a relief and a distraction. Two maskers bedizened in violet and gold whizzed past me like a flash, one of them yelling a stale jest concerning la nnamorata—a jest I scarcely heard, and certainly had no heart or wit to reply to. A fair woman I knew leaned out of a gayly draped balcony and dropped a bunch of roses at my feet; out of courtesy I stooped to pick them up, and then raising my hat I saluted the dark-eyed ... — Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... a certain kingdom, in a certain empire, there lived a man and his wife, and they were very poor. They were so unfortunate that they had nothing to eat. They would go around begging, somebody would give them a crust of stale bread and that would keep them for awhile. And it came to pass that the wife begot a child—a child was born—it was necessary to christen it, but, being poor, they could not entertain the godparents and the guests, so nobody came ... — Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky
... while the reasons of her having passed for plain—the reasons for Lady Beldonald's fond calculation, which they quite justified—were written large in her face, so large that it was easy to understand them as the only ones she herself had ever read. What was it then that actually made the old stale sentence mean something so different?—into what new combinations, what extraordinary language, unknown but understood at a glance, had time and life translated it? The only thing to be said was that time and life ... — The Beldonald Holbein • Henry James
... angry, his poisoned sting is brought into play. That is the natural law which governs his being.... What then shall be said of those scholars of our time, blind to all great issues, and without any appreciation of relative values, who can only bark out their stale formulas about "virtue" and "civilization," condemning the use of military weapons? They will surely bring our country to impotence and dishonor and the loss of her rightful heritage; or, at the very least, they will bring about invasion and rebellion, sacrifice of territory and general enfeeblement. ... — The Art of War • Sun Tzu
... in drink, a young Jew, and myself completed the company, which was allowed to make itself free of a flagged and whitewashed hall, absolutely devoid of furniture, and smelling at once sour and stale. I am sorry and ashamed to remember that the Jew was the only person of my four fellows in misfortune who kept up any semblance of manners or proper reserve. He differed, indeed, markedly from the others, not only in his behaviour, which ... — The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... tried it. But it would be uphill work, a sort of Sisyphus affair: you may get the stone to the top, but the chances are against it. And which party is one to join, when he sees nothing in either but selfish greed and stale traditions? Viewed as a missionary field, Bob, it's just like the ministry: you are weighed down with a lot of dead conventions which you must pretend to believe have life and juice in them yet. Before you can do anything you must be a partisan, ... — A Pessimist - In Theory and Practice • Robert Timsol
... time the boy was howling, and holding one hand under his arm, while he danced a hornpipe and protested, that, if I'd save him this time, he'd "niver stale another cint's worth as long ... — The Young Trail Hunters • Samuel Woodworth Cozzens
... other dried fish, the common Norwegian diet, could, by no art, be concealed. The ceiling was so low, that I could hardly stand upright with my hat on; and the floor being strewed with juniper leaves, the smell of which, though not ungrateful in itself, aided by the villainous compound of stale tobacco smoke, in no way prepossessed me in favour of the cottager's nicety; and, finally, to consummate the discomfort, the small windows were closed as tightly as a coffin, while the evening teemed with all the sultriness ... — A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... her basket down to rest herself, summoning up a kindly smile with which to greet her sister-in-law, Mary Mitchell. The air of London was heavy and the sunshine pale to Mrs. Rowles's thinking, and the sky overhead was a very pale blue. There were odd smells about; stale fish and brick-fields seemed to combine, and that strange fusty odour which infects very old clothes. Mrs. Rowles preferred the scent of broad beans ... — Littlebourne Lock • F. Bayford Harrison
... read. The book he opened had been a famous novel, a best-seller, some five years ago. It had been thought "advanced." Advanced!—but now how inconceivably flat and stale! How on earth had anyone ever praised it, called it "epoch-marking," bought it by the thousand thousand? Why, the thing was dead—a dead book, than which there is nothing deader. This reflection gave him something to think of for a while. ... — The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... theatre of the lowest description. Smoking was, of course, permitted. When they arrived the performance was over. People were still sitting at many of the tables. Reeking as the auditorium was with the stench of stale beer, it left the impression of a ... — The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... women who are amused by the reveries of the stupid novelists, who, knowing little of human nature, work up stale tales, and describe meretricious scenes, all retailed in a sentimental jargon, which equally tend to corrupt the taste, and draw the heart aside from its daily duties. I do not mention the understanding, because never having been exercised, its slumbering energies ... — A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... a soup made with oil in which a stick of cabbage and some peas were swimming; it was not bad; but the bread made at La Trappe reminded him, when stale, of the bread in the siege of Paris, and made the ... — En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... had been a windfall for Jap—had been the means of adding many comforts to the cellar and several prisoners to the cages. It was now of the utmost importance to recapture her majesty. Stale meat-offal and other infallible lures were put out till Pussy, urged by the reestablished hunger-pinch, crept up to a large fish-head in a box-trap; the negro, in watching, pulled the string that dropped ... — Animal Heroes • Ernest Thompson Seton
... imprisoned; a few arms were secured; and in the house of Mr. Standish, at Standish-hall, they found the draft of a declaration to be published by king James at his landing. As this prosecution seemed calculated to revive the honour of a stale conspiracy, and the evidences were persons of abandoned characters, the friends of those who were persecuted found no great difficulty in rendering the scheme odious to the nation. They even employed the pen of Ferguson, who had been concerned in every plot that was hatched since the ... — The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... had held Buller back at the Tugela, were the same Boers who were rushed across the Free State to rescue Cronje from Roberts, and who were then sent to meet the relief column at Fourteen Streams, and were then ordered back again to harass Roberts at Sannahspost, and who, at last, worn out, stale, heartsick, and hopeless at the unequal odds and endless fighting, fell back ... — Notes of a War Correspondent • Richard Harding Davis
... with one another to live furthest from a station, to have no chimneys visible on the most distant horizon, to depend on tradesmen who only called once a week from cities so distant that fresh-baked loaves grew stale before delivery. "Rival ruralists would quarrel about which had the most completely inconvenient postal service; and there were many jealous heartburnings if one friend found out any uncomfortable situation which the other friend ... — Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... healthy and very clean, for the first thing they do is to plunge into the sea water. Besides this, they take baths in warm springs that abound everywhere, and which keep their skins in good order. As to their breakfast, I am afraid that often they have some very unpleasant things to eat—stale shark, for instance, and sour corn bread—so sour that you could not swallow it, and boiled fern root, or the pulp of ... — Holiday Stories for Young People • Various
... Drysdale had rigged up hanging gardens, which were kept full of flowers by the first nurseryman in Oxford, all the year round; so that even on this February morning, the scent of gardenia and violets pervaded the room, and strove for mastery with the smell of stale tobacco, which hung about the curtains and sofa. There was a large glass in an oak frame over the mantelpiece, which was loaded with choice pipes and cigar cases and quaint receptacles for tobacco; and by the side of the glass ... — Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... certainly the mere fact that Peter could eat sour apples without making faces did not cast any reflection on the honour or ability of the other competitors. But to Felix everything suddenly became flat, stale, and unprofitable, because Peter continued to hold the championship of bitter apples. It haunted his waking hours and obsessed his nights. I heard him talking in his sleep about it. If anything could ... — The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... thy conscience witness, Iachimo, Thou didst accuse him of incontinency, Thou then look'dst like a villain: now methinks, Thy favour's good enough. Some Jay of Italy, Whose mother was her painting, hath betray'd him: Poor I am stale, a garment out of fashion, And for I am richer than to hang by th' walls, I must be ript; to pieces with me. Oh, Men's vows are women's traitors. All good seeming By thy revolt, oh husband, shall be thought Put on for villainy: not born where't grows, But worn a ... — Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... rose and some faded out sunflowers when I heard the click of the door, and a waft of perfume touched the stale air, and made it like a garden. I looked up. There she stood in the doorway, ... — The Other Side of the Door • Lucia Chamberlain
... Anglo-Saxon flirt at her feet with amazement. Not having good enough under his skin to sympathize with that pious impulse, he first stagnated a little while; and then, not to be silent altogether, made his little, stale, commonplace comment on what she had told him. "Why, it ... — The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... have had sharp work with Sir Arthur; he tried some of his stale tricks, but soon found that I was Yorkshire too: it would not do—you understand me. We went to the work like good ones, head, heart and soul; and, in fact, since I came here, I have lost no time. I am rather fagged, but I am sure to be ... — The Purcell Papers - Volume II. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... troubadours richly deserve to be banished to the isles of the lizards. Though it is not they that are in fault, but the simpletons that extol them, and the fools that believe in them; and had I been the faithful duenna I should have been, his stale conceits would have never moved me, nor should I have been taken in by such phrases as 'in death I live,' 'in ice I burn,' 'in flames I shiver,' 'hopeless I hope,' 'I go and stay,' and paradoxes of that sort which their writings are full of. And then when they promise the Phoenix of Arabia, the ... — Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... a distinctive smell, as of an arid dried-out swamp, with a faint taint of fish. But in the Flats the odor changes. Here is the smell of factories, warehouses, and trading marts; the smell of stale cooking drifting from the homes of the laborers and lower class ... — Monkey On His Back • Charles V. De Vet
... began to preach. He was a duly ordained priest in good standing—technically, at least—in the Catholic Church. He had all the confidence of a sophomore—age did not wither him, nor could custom stale his infinite variety. He questioned and contradicted everybody, young or old, regardless of position. But so cleanly was the man's mode of life, so intellectual, so personally unselfish and sincere was he, ... — Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... "merchants often lay it in bog-houses, that, becoming impregnated with the volatile salts of the excrements, it may be rendered brisker, stronger, and more f[oe]tid." It is said to be a fact, that in manufacturing tobacco, it is frequently sprinkled with stale urine. ... — A Disquisition on the Evils of Using Tobacco - and the Necessity of Immediate and Entire Reformation • Orin Fowler
... down to the tradewinds and to the business of her voyage. Later in the day another droger hove in sight, rolling as badly as her predecessor. I threw out no flag to this one, but got the worst of it for passing under her lee. She was, indeed, a stale one! And the poor cattle, how they bellowed! The time was when ships passing one another at sea backed their topsails and had a "gam," and on parting fired guns; but those good old days have gone. People have hardly time ... — Sailing Alone Around The World • Joshua Slocum
... glamour of the plains is before my eyes; the tingle of courage, danger-born, is in my pulse-beat; the soft hand of love is touching my hand. I live again the drama of life wherein there are no idle actors, no stale, unmeaning lines. And beyond the action, this way up the years, there runs also the forward-gazing vision toward a ... — Vanguards of the Plains • Margaret McCarter
... detailed. The voluntary ration allows one-half pound of bread a day for sedentary and unoccupied women and larger allowances up to a little over a pound for men doing heavy labor. Waste of any kind is very heavily punished—one woman was fined $500 for throwing away stale bread. ... — Food Guide for War Service at Home • Katharine Blunt, Frances L. Swain, and Florence Powdermaker
... in law. And here the devil, who is himself a kind of lawyer, for he devours his best friends, the devil I say chose these opportunities to vent his choicest malice. He did not set a lawyer to confound a lawyer: that were but a stale device. He humbled him out of the mouths of men who had occasionally read law-books, it is true: but who had read them without a lawyers' obliquity; and had enquired what was the simple unadulterated intention of their authors. Now law, which in all its stages has a quibble in either eye, that ... — The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... go on with this kind of thing? You might become a sort of interpreter of the two nations to each other. An original idea. The everyday thing is to exasperate Briton against Russ, and Russ against Briton, with every sort of cheap joke and stale falsehood. All the same Mr. Otway, I'm bound to confess to you ... — The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... from its shadowy corner to a place beside the single window, and propped up so that her hair, so slickly banding her head in two plaits, sprang out against the coarsely white pillows, Mrs. Rosa Sopinsky Pelz, on an evening when the air rose sultry, stale, and even garbage-laden from a cat-and-can-infested courtyard, flashed her quick smile toward that opening door, her week-old infant ... — Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... had ever before come whooping out of the inexhaustible store where they were kept for the public entertainment. Austria, and then Germany, made a not bad attempt on public attention by raking up some forgotten sensation over a stale excitement at a place called Sarajevo; but on the twenty-sixth, Ireland magnificently filled the bill again by the far more serious affair of Nationalist Volunteers landing three thousand rifles and marching with them into Dublin. Troops fired on the mob, and the House of Commons gave itself ... — If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... for sale. Corn was husked, and everything was clean and inviting. Any one found guilty of selling, or exhibiting for sale, vegetables of a previous day was fined, at once, by the market master. This rule was carried out to the letter. Nothing stale could be sold, or even come into market. The rules required that all poultry be dressed before being brought to market. The entrails were cleaned and strung and sold separately—usually for about ten ... — Thirty Years a Slave • Louis Hughes
... "never looked at both sides of a crown-piece," to use his own language, when he wanted to "do up" his rooms; he had gone with his purse open and his eyes shut to Grindot, who by this time was quite forgotten. It is impossible to guess how long an extinct reputation may survive, supported by such stale admiration. ... — Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... business or professional man who allows no time for rest or recreation, who can confer no responsibility upon his subordinates, who cultivates no fad, and is impatient of every moment spent away from his occupation, is in danger of eventually "going stale," and having to spend a longer and less profitable vacation in a sanitarium than would have sufficed to avert the disaster. Nor will he find it easy to change his sleep-habit with the change of residence. It behooves ... — Why Worry? • George Lincoln Walton, M.D.
... now appeared to be in the last extremity. He drank the water from the sheet as we caught it (we holding it above him as he lay so as to let it run into his mouth), for we had now nothing left capable of holding water, unless we had chosen to empty out our wine from the carboy, or the stale water from the jug. Either of these expedients would have been resorted to had the ... — The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... fountains, flowing in these wild mythic wastes of the Past, and have drunk inspiration thence. Percy, Scott, and Carlyle, by so doing, have infused new sap from the old life-tree of their race into our modern English literature, which had grown effete and stale from having had its veins injected with too much cold, thin, watery Gallic fluid. Yes, Walter Scott heard the innumerous leafy sigh of Yggdrasil's branches, and modulated his harp thereby. Carlyle, too, has bathed ... — Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... your assistance, my friend, I might easily prove who I am, still, as you know I might find the detention inconvenient, I shall therefore sail early in the speronara. Your letters may be addressed to me as before, but bear in mind that your information is generally too stale. Now I will get a little rest, if you will show me ... — The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... There's poetry talk for a girl you'd see itching and scratching, and she with a stale stink of poteen on her from ... — The Playboy of the Western World • J. M. Synge
... him this afternoon. Perhaps since moods are contagious, his was caught from the girl, Ygerne. With a sort of jeering laughter in his heart he surrendered to his inclination. The world had gone stale in his mouth; a black depression beat at him with its stiffling [Transcriber's note: stifling?] wings; an hour with the girl might offer other amusement than the mere angering of Lemarc and Sefton. He wanted only one thing in the world; to be whole of ... — Wolf Breed • Jackson Gregory
... reflection of the hearth. A cat lay asleep on a chair, a dog under the table. One perceived an odor of milk, apples, smoke, that indescribable smell peculiar to old farmhouses; the odor of the earth, of the walls, of furniture, the odor of spilled stale soup, of former wash-days and of former inhabitants, the smell of animals and of human beings combined, of things and of persons, the odor of time, and of things that have ... — Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... there. Everything was new and good to them (though so old and stale to many of us), and after their adventures in the East they found it splendid to be in a civilized country, with water in the sky and in the fields, with green trees about them, and flowers in the grass, and white people who ... — Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... our heads we put together; Our first enquiry is of course "the weather." With buoyant hearts the star-lit heaven we view; Then our next point is "What are we to 'do'?" My pipe I pocket, and with head up-tossed My listening followers I thus accost:— "Mont Blanc, we know, is stupid, stale, and slow, A tiresome tramp o'er lumps of lifeless snow. The Col du Geant is a trifle worse; The Jardin's fit for babies with their nurse: The Aiguille Verte is more the sort of thing, But time has robbed it of its former sting; Alone the Dent ... — Sagittulae, Random Verses • E. W. Bowling
... choosing fish is their freshness, and this is determined as follows: if the gills are red, the eyes prominent and full, and the whole fish stiff, they are good; but if the eyes are sunken, the gills pale, and the fish flabby, they are stale and unwholesome, and, though often eaten in this condition, lack all the fine flavor of ... — The Easiest Way in Housekeeping and Cooking - Adapted to Domestic Use or Study in Classes • Helen Campbell
... was mounted on the top step of the stairs which led down to her door, and was employed in setting out her goods—that is, on one side of her door she placed a tin milk-can, and on the other some bunches of stale vegetables, flanked with yellowed cabbages. At the bottom of the steps, in the shadowy depths of the cellar, one could see the light of the burning charcoal in a little stove. This shop situated at the side of the passage, served as a ... — The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... eight or ten-pound turkey cut the brown crust from slices of stale bread until you have as much as the inside of a pound loaf. Put into a suitable dish and pour tepid water over it; take up a handful at the time and squeeze it hard and dry with both hands, placing it as you go along in another dish; now when all is pressed dry, toss it all up lightly ... — Stevenson Memorial Cook Book • Various
... that John Kollander was opening a can of something, gathering the boys around him and as they ate, recounting the hardships of army life to add spice to an otherwise stale and unprofitable meal. Afterward probably he would go to some gathering of his comrades and there fight, bleed and die for his country. For he was an incorrigible patriot. The old flag, his country's honor, and the preservation ... — In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... penitentiary. Yes, of course, you are right. But, tell me, is it true, according to a rumor which has reached us in our seclusion, that these good Christians pro tem, are considering the advisability of having rat poison served to us in place of the delicious stale bread and flat water which now comprise ... — Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 2, April 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... or woman. On the contrary, most of them exhibit the peculiar and unmistakable signs of physical exhaustion, chief of which is cerebral anaemia. They are overtrained and overworked. In the language of training they are "stale." ... — Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... causes as well as of men it is true that there is a tide in their affairs which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune, but which, once missed, ebbs to defeat. Every generation has a different interest; to every era the ideals of that immediately preceding become stale and old-fashioned. The writings of every age are a polemic against those of their fathers; every dogma has its day, and after every wave of enthusiam [Transcriber's note: enthusiasm?] a reaction sets in. Thus it was that the Reformation {231} missed, though it narrowly missed, the propitious ... — The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... of breath, still confused, I tried to look, but could see nothing. I could only smell the pungent odor of tarred rope and stale tobacco smoke. Having finished speaking, I could hear my father still moving about deliberately and moderately, seemingly well pleased at the place where ... — The Unspeakable Gentleman • John P. Marquand
... like a gay southern meadow in June, variegated and brilliant, sweet and pensive and rather luxuriant, and here and there even a little rank. Yet they are swept by the air and the light and the rain of Nature, and so their seduction never grew stale. During sixteen centuries, while the world was spiritually revolutionised again and yet again, the influence of Ovid never failed; it entered even the unlikeliest places. Homer might be an obscure forgotten bard and Virgil become a fantastic magician, ... — Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis
... of the lives and operations of some of us, who have made names in this country during the last few years," he said, "would make the modern romance seem stale. Even odd scraps of news or surmises are fought for by the Press. The journalists know well enough where to come for their sensation. Our guests at last, I believe. Don't forget what I have been saying ... — The Governors • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... seemed to be in a comic piece, which, however oft repeated, appeared never to grow stale. It was somewhat after ... — Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
... But there was a fresh assortment in an unopened packing box in the back room, a box which had just come from the wholesale confectioner's in Boston. Her Uncle Zoeth had expressed a fear that those beneath the counter were rather stale. ... — Mary-'Gusta • Joseph C. Lincoln
... or stale beer, put to it one ounce of isinglass, beat well and cut or pull'd to small pieces; put it to the perry or beer, and let it steep three or four days. Keep whisking it together, or else the glass will stick to the bottom, ... — The Cyder-Maker's Instructor, Sweet-Maker's Assistant, and Victualler's and Housekeeper's Director - In Three Parts • Thomas Chapman
... other darker madnesses; had I not been seen spreading upon trees with a whitewash brush a mixture of brown sugar, stale ... — Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... "these are good quarters entirely. I should wish for nothing better if it wasn't for the master lying there. Lashings to eat and drink, and a room fit for a king. Nothing to do but to wait upon his honor. I suppose after to-day I shall be able to stale out for a few minutes sometimes for a draw of me pipe. It would never do to be smoking here. The master wouldn't mind it; but I expect them doctors would be for sending me back to my regiment if they were to come ... — One of the 28th • G. A. Henty
... Wagner's Ring, all of them reachings-forward to the new Vitalist art, with the dreary pseudo-sacred oratorios and cantatas which were produced for no better reason than that Handel had formerly made splendid thunder in that way, and with the stale confectionery, mostly too would-be pious to be even cheerfully toothsome, of Spohr and Mendelssohn, Stainer and Parry, which spread indigestion at our musical festivals until I publicly told Parry ... — Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... prevented games for three days, and the players were getting a bit "stale" with nothing to do. Then the sun came out, the grounds dried up and the series was resumed. But the ... — Baseball Joe in the Big League - or, A Young Pitcher's Hardest Struggles • Lester Chadwick
... abandon all ale And beer that is stale Rosa-solis and damnable hum, But we will rack In the praise of sack 'Gainst Omne ... — The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... he was rather fat: the excitement of his talk with the little lady had made his forehead shine; when he smiled his drooping moustache could not hide a row of blackened, broken teeth. He smelt of stale tobacco, as though he carried old pipes in every pocket. He ate quickly and noisily, his eyes on ... — Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... the explanation of the magic of Lycidas. From the standpoint of the formal understanding it was an affected lament over some wholly uninteresting and unimportant Mr. King; it was full of nonsense about "shepherds" and "flocks" and "muses" and such stale stock of poetry; the introduction of St Peter on a stage thronged with nymphs and river gods was blasphemous, absurd, and, in the worst taste; there were touches of greasy Puritanism, the twang of the conventicle was only too ... — The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... picturesque, and he is down the long slope on one side and up the gigantic hump on the other before he has time to feel hot. But the second is greeted with that tempered empressement with which you bow in the street to an acquaintance with whom you have met half an hour before; the third is a stale repetition; the fourth is decidedly one too many, and the fifth is sensibly exasperating. The fonds, in a word, are very tiresome. It was, if I remember rightly, in the bottom of the last and widest of the series that I discovered ... — The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... as it is, the special characteristic of age. As for the muscular powers, they pass their maximum long before the time when the true decline of life begins, if we may judge by the experience of the ring. A man is "stale," I think, in their language, soon after thirty,—often, no doubt, much earlier, as gentlemen of the pugilistic profession are exceedingly apt to keep their vital fire ... — The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... to decorum, who, in proportion to his demureness, is apt to be worse than others, with owlish visage quote, "frailty, thy name is woman," or, "e'er those shoes were old," or whatever musty apothegms besides, as stale and senseless. The name of Frailty is no more woman than man, and old shoes have no business at weddings. Stand aside O censorious reader, (I desire not thy acquaintance,) while I whisper to both maid and widow, what, probably, they have often pondered—that life is short, and that in Heaven they ... — The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... appearance of energy which momentarily satisfies a public demand that something shall be done. It also afforded Canning the peg on which to hang a grievance, and dexterously to prolong discussion until the matter became stale in public interest. By the irrelevancy of the punishment to the crime, and by the intrusion of secondary matters into the complaint, the "Chesapeake" issue, essentially clear, sharp, and impressive, became hopelessly confused with other considerations. Upon ... — Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... through her time. Hugging this melody of Marcia. Through the knife-edged nervous evenings in the theater. Bawlings. Purple lips with loose muscles crawling under the rouge. Fetidness of scent on stale bodies. Round faces that could hook into the look of vultures when the smell of success became as the smell of red meat. All the petty soiled vanities, like the disordered boudoir of a cocotte. The perpetual stink of perfume. Powder on the air and caking ... — The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... two or three men to pass on all fours, it ran level, roughly cut, through earth wet with seepage from the river, but packed into a smooth floor by many hands and bare knees. It widened suddenly before him. In the small chamber of the mine, choked with the smell of stale betel, he ... — Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... and went back to his stale question: Could Sybil suggest any other resource? and Sybil sadly confessed that she could not. So far as she could see, they must trust to luck, and she thought it was cruel tor Mr. Carrington to go away and leave ... — Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... stage, the writer pointed out how dramatic writing has of late years come to be practised entirely by men who have failed in all other branches of literature. Then he drew attention to the fact that signs of weariness and dissatisfaction with the old stale stories, the familiar tricks in bringing about 'striking situations,' were noticeable, not only in the newspaper criticisms of new plays, but also among the better portion of the audience. He admitted, however, that hitherto the attempts made by younger ... — Vain Fortune • George Moore
... room with no difficulty. A faint cough from within, and a querulous protest, answered his knock. Mr. Hamlin entered without further ceremony. A sickening smell of drugs, a palpable flavor of stale dissipation, and the wasted figure of Jack Folinsbee, half-dressed, extended upon the bed, greeted him. Mr. Hamlin was for an instant startled. There were hollow circles round the sick man's eyes; there was palsy in his trembling limbs; there was ... — The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... new in this class of literature was through the Sunday-school and religious tract society books, professedly adapted to the young. While some of these had enough of interest to be fairly readable, if one had no other resource, the mass were irredeemably stale and poor. The mawkishness of the sentiment was only surpassed by the feebleness of the style. At last, weary of the goody-goody and artificial school of juvenile books, which had been produced for ... — A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... frequently attempts to stale, and passes a little urine at each time; he still walks and stands with his back bound. Syr. papav. et rhamni, with tinct. ferr. mur., a large spoonful being given morning ... — The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... Six letters in blue envelopes, pair of paste hair combs (in pocket), duster, tea-things, grotesquely big brown earthenware tea-pot, milk, sugar, cups and saucers, stale quartern loaf, knife ... — Oh! Susannah! - A Farcical Comedy in Three Acts • Mark Ambient
... agonised. Yet at the same time she had the desperate calm of the captain of a ship about to founder with all hands. And she saw glimpses, beautiful and compensatory, of the romantic quality of common life. She was in a little office of a perfectly ordinary boarding-house—(she could even detect the stale odours of cooking)—with a realistic man of business, and they were about to discuss a perfectly ordinary piece of scandal; and surely they might be called two common-sense people! And withal, the ordinariness and the midland gumption of the scene were shot through with the bright exotic ... — Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... said the old Goat, "I'll send the fox off, and come back in a few minutes to bring you some stale ... — Soap-Bubble Stories - For Children • Fanny Barry
... neighbouring farmyard near the river, and had carried it—not slung over his shoulders, as fanciful writers declare, but with its tail almost touching the soil—into the thicket beyond the wood. Rabbits had wandered in the undergrowth; and, near a large warren, the stale, peculiar odour of a stoat that had evidently prowled at dusk lingered on the dewy soil. The signs of blackbirds and pigeons among the loose leaf-mould were also faint; as soon as night had fallen, the birds had ... — Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... bush-ranger over yonder? He'd stale the milk out of your tea, he would, be the same token. Well, last night he got vicious and took a crack at my lines. I had rayson to suspect he'd be afther tryin' somethin' on, so I laid for him. I planted a certain ... — Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Nov. 14, 1917 • Various
... the attraction and amusement of possibilities so projected were worth more to you, in nineteen moods out of twenty, than the sufficiency, the serenity, the felicity, whatever it might be, of your stale personal certitudes. You were intellectually, you were "artistically" rather abject, in fine, if your curiosity (in the grand sense of the term) wasn't worth more to you than your dignity. What was your dignity, "anyway," ... — The Finer Grain • Henry James
... proprietor of the solitary hotel, if we want to gather the interesting details that characterize the village. They are the same "yesterday, and to-day and forever." Nothing new happens, and the old traditions never grow stale. ... — Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... won't say to go the way of all flesh, that is too revolting—I say if Ogreham is a widower, do you aver, on your conscience and honor, that mothers will not be found to offer their young girls to supply the lamented lady's place? How stale this misanthropy is! Something must have disagreed with this cynic. Yes, my good woman. I dare say you would like to call another subject. Yes, my fine fellow; ogre at home, supple as a dancing-master abroad, and ... — Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... grown too wise to be agitated by these dull scare-crow Things which their Fore-Fathers were tickled with; Satan has been obliged to lay by his Puppet-shews and his Tumblers, those things are grown stale; his morrice-dancing Devils, his mountebanking and quacking won't do now; those Things, as they may be supposed to be very troublesome to him, (and but that he has Servants enough would be chargeable too) are now of no ... — The History of the Devil - As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts • Daniel Defoe
... Peter was conscious of faces watching them. "Bucket Lane" was the street's title to fame. Windows showed dim candles, in the distance a sharp cry broke the silence and then fell away again. The street was very narrow and from the running gutters there stole into the air the odour of stale cabbage. ... — Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... laid up in heaven, and what he is partially here, have no tendency to grow old. Men never weary of God, never find Him failing, never exhaust truth, never drink the love of God to the dregs, never find purity palling upon the taste, 'Age cannot wither, nor custom stale, "their" infinite variety.' ... — Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... went into the dormitory from the fresh, pure, night air he thought at first that he would choke in the atmosphere laden with stale tobacco-smoke and foul odours; but in the end he slept splendidly, despite ... — 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... through the evil forest—the place of mystery and fear, of death swift and silent and horrible, of brutish appetite and degraded instinct, of human life that still wallowed in the primeval slime, of savagery degenerate and abysmal. No slightest breezes blew in the gloomy silence, and the air was stale and humid and suffocating. The sweat poured unceasingly from their bodies, and in their nostrils was the heavy smell of rotting vegetation and of black earth that was a-crawl ... — Adventure • Jack London
... scolded you! But to return to your wife—as I understand she shares the fate I endure. We poor women have nothing to expect from our husbands, but the stale leavings that remain after business has absorbed the rest! But your ... — Uarda • Georg Ebers
... offering both his hands, and saying that he hoped I would fulfill the expectations of General Grant in the new command I was about to undertake, adding that thus far the cavalry of the Army of the Potomac had not done all it might have done, and wound up our short conversation by quoting that stale interrogation so prevalent during the early years of the war, "Who ever saw a dead cavalryman?" His manner did not impress me, however, that in asking the question he had meant anything beyond a jest, and I parted from the President convinced that he ... — The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. I., Part 3 • P. H. Sheridan
... Family a Pattern of Sobriety, good Sense, and Breeding, and would kindly endeavour to influence the Education and growing Prospects of the younger Gentry about him, I am apt to believe it would save him a great deal of stale Beer on a publick Occasion, and render him the Leader of his Country from their Gratitude to him, instead of being a Slave to their Riots and Tumults in order to be made their Representative. The same thing might be recommended to all who have made any Progress in any Parts of Knowledge, ... — The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... creep in through every chink and cranny of the rambling, ill-jointed structure, until it at last obliterated even the faint embers on the hearth. The cool fragrance of the woodland depths crept in with it until the steep of human warmth, the reek of human clothing, and the lingering odors of stale human victual were swept away in that incorruptible and omnipotent breath. An hour later—and the wilderness ... — In a Hollow of the Hills • Bret Harte
... even the most innocent is not stale; on the contrary, to the disgrace of every one, so far it's a novelty," the girl-student answered instantly, darting forward on her chair. "Besides, there are no innocent conventions," she added ... — The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... nearly an hour. An opera is far more real than real life to me. It seems as if stage illusion, and particularly this hardest to swallow and most conventional illusion of them all—an opera—would never stale upon me. I wish that life was an opera. I should like to live in one; but I don't know in what quarter of the globe I shall find a society so constituted. Besides, it would soon pall: imagine asking for three-kreuzer ... — The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... one reaches Munich, the land is flat, stale, and apparently very unprofitable, and there is little to interest the looker-out. He sits straining his eyes towards the horizon, eagerly longing for some sign of the city to come ... — Diary of a Pilgrimage • Jerome K. Jerome
... it in that dawn to be alive, But to be young was very heaven. Oh times In which the meager, stale, forbidding ways Of custom, law, and statute took at once The attraction of a country ... — Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... restaurant or club, served by a foreign "chef," a Yorkshire pudding, as hard as a stale loaf of bread, is handed round in slabs with the so-called "roast" beef. It is not roasted: it is baked beef, and the pudding is an ill-tasting baked mess, also. Nowhere in London in public or private house do I ever see the properly cooked article. True Yorkshire ... — More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... see no more of my neighbour, but in he came as I was sitting at breakfast, smelling like a bar-parlour, with stale whisky oozing at ... — The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... was not exactly a success. We invited all the foreigners in Hiroshima, twelve in number, and everybody talked a great deal and laughed at everybody's stale jokes, and pretended to be terribly hilarious. But there was a pathetic droop to every mouth, and not a soul referred to home. Each one seemed to realize that the mere mention of the word would break ... — Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... with me as my own team swings. Then I changed P.O. Evans for Lashly. We seemed to get on better, but at the moment the surface changed and we came up over a rise with hard sastrugi. At the top we camped for lunch. What was the difficulty? One theory was that some members of the second party were stale. Another that all was due to the bad stepping and want of swing; another that the sledge pulled heavy. In the afternoon we exchanged sledges, and at first went off well, but getting into soft snow, we found a terrible drag, the second party coming ... — Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... Not but it was new to his hearing, but it did not seem to come new from you. It did not hitch in. It was like picking up at a village ale-house a two days old newspaper. You have not seen it before, but you resent the stale thing as an affront. This sort of merchandise above all requires a quick return. A pun, and its recognitory laugh, must be co-instantaneous. The one is the brisk lightning, the other the fierce thunder. A moment's interval, and the link is snapped. A pun ... — The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... to his amazement, none came. As a man may walk unhurt amid a shower of bullets, he had walked unseen under twenty policemen's eyes. From Castlereagh Street came a murmur of voices. The theatres were out, and a huge crowd, fresh from the painted scenes and stale odours of the stalls and gallery, watched with hilarious interest the harlequinade on the roofs. In half an hour a procession was formed, two deep, guarded by the police, and followed by a crowd stumbling over one another to keep pace with it, shouting words of encouragement ... — Jonah • Louis Stone
... obtain them? Could a young man with no great fortune offer her the luxury that was necessary to her? and even so, what changes come with time! He had a full realization of what the boredom of family life can be, when passion has grown stale. ... — Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... a little medical inspection among Father's poor people, though. That whiles away a few hours every day, and of course, every time I go to the hospital the doctors there tell me about any interesting new cases, so I'm not 'going stale' entirely." ... — Ethel Morton at Rose House • Mabell S. C. Smith
... believe that even African barbarities had charms for the odd Englishman; but he was chiefly won by the dolce far niente of the natives, and the Oriental license of polygamy. In a word, Joseph had the same taste for a full-blooded cuffee, that an epicure has for the haut gout of a stale partridge, and was in ecstasies at my extrication. He neglected his siestas and his accounts; he wandered from house to house with the rapture of an impatient bridegroom; and, till every thing ... — Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... and stale bread, at discretion, are provided; and many a stripling, lean and hungry as a greyhound, with a large appetite and a small purse, calls for a small plate, without vegetables, and fills up the craving crannies ... — The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... of Love, that simple theme with variations ad libitum, ad infinitum, is never old, never stale, never out-of-date. And as we sometimes seek rest from the brilliant audacities and complex passions of Wagner or Tschaikowsky in the tender simplicity of some ancient English air, so we occasionally turn with relief from the wit and insight and subtlety of our modern ... — Aucassin and Nicolette - translated from the Old French • Anonymous
... expression was full of reproach. "The very thought of that place, with its smell of stale beer and those awful creatures behind the bar, makes me shiver," he confessed. "I shall walk for an hour before lunch in Kensington Gardens. If I have a moment to spare I shall run into the Museum and spend a little time ... — The Double Life Of Mr. Alfred Burton • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... entered was meagre and stale-smelling, with bare floor and stained and sagging wall-paper; unfurnished save for a battered deal table and ... — The Secret House • Edgar Wallace
... but pleasant; and then it seemed to change into a mist drawn largely from a stagnant pool in a malarial country, floating through which were great quantities of finely chopped sea-weed, wet hair, and an indescribable atmosphere of something the chief quality of which was a sort of stale clamminess that was awful in ... — The Water Ghost and Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... "That's all stale news!" cried Miss Prunty, jumping up. "And Gon'ril (since I'll have to call her so) must be tired of waiting in ... — Stories By English Authors: Italy • Various
... kind of cake, made of rye and corn together, something like Scotch oatcake, with a hole in the middle, so that it may be strung up in rows like onions on a stick in the kitchen. When thin and fresh it is excellent, but when thick and stale a dog biscuit would ... — Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... little uneasily and glanced round the dirty room. The place looked as though it hadn't been cleaned for a month. There was a hideous accumulation of unwashed utensils scattered everywhere. The floor was unswept, let alone unwashed. And the smell of stale food and general mustiness helped to add to the keenness of the visitor's nervous edge as he waited for the ... — The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... difficulties. Follow the example, and you'll soon conquer those young limbs. Now, good morning to you, Price, good morning!' and Philip was hastily bowed out of the stuffy little sanctum, with its piles of MSS. and its odours of stale tobacco. ... — The Captain's Bunk - A Story for Boys • M. B. Manwell
... and that the theatre has no right to have me impersonated on the Stage; they term it "Thought Transference," "The Brain-Wave," or something outlandish; and to think that HACKING, who reviews HORNBLOWER's effusions, once spoke of me as stale! They had better not try my patience too ... — Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, April 11, 1891 • Various
... business to discharge, except to run away from myself, and therefore every little peculiarity, every minute feature of men, women, or things, that suggested themselves to my aimless scrutiny were carefully reviewed and criticized. I went placidly on now casting a passing glance on exhibitions of stale confectionery, now on a display of attractive millinery, again it was a "ten cent" establishment, offering such bargains as might puzzle the most economical house-wife, and finally my attention was caught by a succession of dazzling windows, with their bewildering panorama of Japanese figures ... — The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... then, a rich man; no more crusades, no more stale bread and cheap tobacco, no more turning my cuffs and collars and clipping the frayed edges of my trousers. I am fortunate. There is a joke, too. Picard and his friends advanced me five thousand francs ... — A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
... wise administration, because they have a permanent interest in the welfare of the nation. The delusions of which I speak seldom last long; an enlightened people perceives the cheat; but it is lamentable that the tricks of these political puritans should never grow stale by practice, and that as often as a pseudo-reformer starts up with pretensions to great honesty and great wisdom, England should forget how often she has been deceived, and allow him to excite a tumult which wiser heads ... — The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... when the man had gone. "It's scant favour I shall get from him. Heigho! my troubles seem never-ending, but there—upon my word, I am getting used to them now. Bread, eh?" he went on, picking up the hunk of stale, black, husky-looking stuff before him. "I could make better bread ... — Under the Rebel's Reign • Charles Neufeld
... which is unparalleled in the previous history of literature in this or perhaps any other country. When we see two post octavos of travels newly done up by the binder, we are prepared for a series of useless remarks, weak attempts at jokes, disquisitions on dishes, complaints of inns, stale anecdotes and vain flourishes, which almost make us blush for our country, and the cause of intelligence over the world. The Russian Emperor, who unquestionably has the power of licensing or prohibiting ... — Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... with you and our children, to enjoy the actual society of such a son-in-law! For the present our one remaining hope is in the new tribunes, and that, too, in the first days of their office; if the matter is allowed to get stale, it is all over with us. It is for that reason that I have sent Aristocritus back to you at once, in order that you may be able to write to me on the spot as to the first official steps taken, and the progress of the whole business; although I have also given Dexippus orders to hurry back here ... — The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... gray light of a winter dawn mingled with the dull flare of the hanging-lamp increasing the ghastliness of his appearance, sat Michael Gregoriev, in the stale bitterness of a night-old rage and mortification. On the floor, in an unceremonious heap, lay his heavily embroidered coat, with its medals still upon it. In its stead the Prince had wrapped himself in a worn robe of old brocade, fur-lined. Heavy felt slippers shod his feet. His hair was tumbled ... — The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... birdcatchers simply stand by the ditch with their hands in their pockets sucking a stale pipe. They would rather lounge there in the bitterest north-east wind that ever blew than do a single hour's honest work. Blackguard is written in their faces. The poacher needs some courage, at least; he knows a penalty awaits detection. These fellows have no idea of sport, ... — Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... let the world see that an author is like other people? Would he not create a deeper personal interest if he showed that even in person alone he was unlike the herd? He ought to be seen seldom—not to stale his presence—and to resort to the arts that belong to the royalty of intellect as well as the ... — Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... how much it had been cut. He issued them slips, which they added as part of the contributions. "Good work—you, too, Gordon. Best week in the territory for a couple of months. I guess the citizens like you, the way they treat you." He laughed at his stale joke, and Gordon was willing to laugh with him. The credit on the dope had paid for most of the contributions. For once, he had money to show for ... — Police Your Planet • Lester del Rey
... Finding the atmosphere heavy, stale, and oppressive, Maitland moved over to the windows and threw them open. A gush of warm air, humid and redolent of the streets, invaded the room, together with the roar of traffic from its near-by arteries. Maitland ... — The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... the breath, clothes, hair, and indeed the whole body, are most offensive. What is more overpowering than the stale smell remaining in a room where several persons have been smoking? When the practice is carried to excess, it causes the gums to become lax and flabby, and to recede from the discoloured teeth, which appear long, unsightly, and at length drop out. Dr. Rush, in his "Account of the life ... — The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... bad as that!" returned Clytie. "It was only dull and stale and stupid; the same old sort of knockabouts and serio-comics you can see everywhere down town, only not a quarter so good—just cheap imitations. And all those poor fellows sat moping over their beer-mugs waiting, waiting, waiting for something ... — Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... campaign during the Mexican War had made serious inroads upon his health, from which he never entirely recovered. It was hoped that his life in the East would be beneficial, but it proved otherwise. Meanwhile, the Civil War was raging in the United States, but the news concerning it was very stale long before it reached us. We did not receive the particulars of the battle of Bull Run, for example, until three months after its occurrence. In view of the turbulent state of affairs at home, the government thought it important that Mr. Gouverneur ... — As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... I followed him down the glittering vestibule, and into a palatial dining-hall. The hour was something between one and two o'clock, and a minute before I had been thoughtfully weighing the relative merits of an immediate allowance of sausages and mashed potatoes for fivepence, or a couple of stale buns for one penny, to be followed at nightfall by a real banquet—seven-pennyworth of honest beef and vegetables. Now, with a trifle over four shillings in my pocket, I was, to outward seeming, carelessly scanning ... — The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... Bullock of Beef rather too much boiled & the beer rather stale. Mem: to talk to the Cook about the first fault & to mend the second myself by tapping ... — The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope v. I. • A. M. W. Stirling (compiler)
... persuaded. But that's a different thing. 'Influence' makes me think of canting clergymen, and stout pompous women, who don't know what they're talking about, and can't argue—who think they've settled everything by a stale quotation—or an appeal to 'your better self'—or St. Paul. If Mr. Winnington tries it on with ... — Delia Blanchflower • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... but his practice varied somewhat from that of his master. Like him he gave his patients blue pill at night but omitted the black draught in the morning. He thought an emetic better, and secured it by tartarized antimony. Between the puke and the purge his patients were fed on stale bread, skim milk, and water-gruel. And this heroic practice he pursued day after day, for weeks and months together, in spinal caries, hip caries, tuberculosis, urethral stricture ... — Pioneer Surgery in Kentucky - A Sketch • David W. Yandell
... Exercise. At the same time, the system must be kept well supplied through the stomach with the raw material both for doing this work and for building up this new muscle. When anyone, in training for an event, gets "stale," or overtrained, and loses his appetite and his sleep, he had better stop at once, for that is a sign that he is using more energy than his food is able to give him through his stomach; and the stomach has consequently "gone ... — A Handbook of Health • Woods Hutchinson
... quite insensible of her presence. For the first time she was conscious of a distressful faintness, which, as she had come suddenly out of the stinging frost into the little overheated room, which reeked with tobacco smoke and a stale smell of cooking, was not astonishing. She mastered it, however, and presently, seeing that Hawtrey did not move; glanced about her with some curiosity, for this was the first time she had entered ... — Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... spirit he yearned once more to see their plumes and gleaming equipment come dancing down the sunny wind, and to hear the grand thunder of their charge, which but the other day he had been half-inclined to call stale and unprofitable. In this solitary hour, when the night-lamps flickered on the massive walls and the sense of loneliness grew upon him till he sickened at the unceasing cry of the pitiless wind, he realised that the Guard was the sole bulwark now ... — A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard
... their own habitations. Some, however, were taken and imprisoned; a few arms were secured; and in the house of Mr. Standish, at Standish-hall, they found the draft of a declaration to be published by king James at his landing. As this prosecution seemed calculated to revive the honour of a stale conspiracy, and the evidences were persons of abandoned characters, the friends of those who were persecuted found no great difficulty in rendering the scheme odious to the nation. They even employed the pen of Ferguson, who had been concerned in every plot that was hatched since ... — The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... solemnly, "burned incense upon any and all occasions—red letter days, labor days, celebrating Columbus Day and the morning after, I presume. But we moderns burn gasoline. And, phew! I believe I should prefer the stale smoke of incense in the unventilated pyramids of Egypt to this odor of gas. O-o-o-o, Tommy, do let us ... — Ruth Fielding Down East - Or, The Hermit of Beach Plum Point • Alice B. Emerson
... he exclaimed. "It may be stale news, and it may be something for the future, but it's worth trying. I wonder I ... — Tom Swift and his Great Searchlight • Victor Appleton
... to himself, as he walked, "wouldn't get any fun at all out of a case like this, but I do. That's the way to keep young. It's why I don't grow stale in this town. It is a small puddle for a toad of my size, but I hop around and keep things ... — Kilo - Being the Love Story of Eliph' Hewlitt Book Agent • Ellis Parker Butler
... appetite dictated—now, sensibly enough, on a la mode beef or a saveloy; then, less sensibly, on pudding; and anon not dining at all, the wherewithal having been expended on some morning treat of cheap stale pastry. But are not all these things, the lad's shifts and expedients, his sorrows and despair, his visits to the public-house, where the kindly publican's wife stoops down to kiss the pathetic little face—are they not all written in "David ... — Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... way here that it had clouded up," remarked Jack. "Let's hope we don't get a storm that will compel us to postpone that game. Our boys are in the pink of condition, with so much practice, and might go stale by ... — Jack Winters' Baseball Team - Or, The Rivals of the Diamond • Mark Overton
... this view even though it reached him in a fragmentary and subliminal way. Day after day he told himself that he would have all his faculties at the ready before the train swung into the curve. But morning after morning he was still emerging from the stale fumes of the preceding night's beer, or he allowed himself to be hypnotized by the sound of the wheels or fascinated by the jiggling of another passenger's earlobe at that critical moment. The train had always entered ... — In the Control Tower • Will Mohler
... vastly agreeable. But, alas! I was doomed to discover that this could not last for ever. Though I was still curious, there were no longer curiosities; for the world is limited, and new countries, and new people, like every thing else, wax stale on acquaintance; even ghosts and hurricanes become at last familiar; and books grow old, ... — Lectures on Art • Washington Allston
... and at last they solved the problem. At first Tom backed up to the jug and held it, though clumsily, for Sam to drink, and then the youngest Rover did the same for his brother. The water was warm and somewhat stale, yet both could remember nothing which had ever tasted sweeter to them. They drank about half of what the jug contained, then set the rest ... — The Rover Boys on the Great Lakes • Arthur M. Winfield
... the usual, worshiped the strange. Adventure and travel I know were your theme: Well, how did the real compare with the dream? You have compassed the earth since we parted at Yale, Has life grown the richer, or only grown stale? ... — Three Women • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... such a reputation since so many of the best people from town have taken villas here; is his Majesty to make the journey in one of these third-class carriages, with the chance of travelling in company with tradesman stinking of stale cheese?—with folk who, moreover—well, perhaps in common decency I ought not to go on, as ladies are present. (Laughter.) "Economy," I hear some one suggest. That word is in great favour nowadays. But I should like to know what economy there is getting your clothes soiled? (Laughter.) Does a first-class ... — Three Dramas - The Editor—The Bankrupt—The King • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... insistently new, had acquired a respectable mellowness, with ivy, Virginia creepers, lichens, damp patches, and even constitutional infirmities of its own like its elder fellows. Its architecture, once so very improved and modern, had already become stale in style, without having reached the dignity of being old-fashioned. Trees about the harbour-road had increased in circumference or disappeared under the saw; while the church had had such a tremendous practical joke played upon it by some facetious restorer or ... — Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... and the marketplace was filled with an excited population. There were ruffling men-at-arms, stolid rustics, frightened women and children, overturned stalls, shouts and screams; unsavoury missiles, such as rotten eggs and stale vegetables, were flying about; and in the midst of the open space the figure of a Jew, who had excited the indignation of the multitude, was the object of violent aggression which seemed likely to endanger ... — The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake
... wealth. But, alas for the sad reality! the cool breath of those glittering water-meadows too often floats laden with poisonous miasma. Those picturesque villages are generally the perennial hotbeds of fever and ague, of squalid penury, sottish profligacy, dull discontent too stale for words. There is luxury in the park, wealth in the huge farm-steadings, knowledge in the parsonage: but the poor? those by whose dull labour all that luxury and wealth, ay, even that knowledge, is made possible—what are they? We shall ... — Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... great, in order to secure provisions. Memories of the famine of the siege of '70 tormented the imagination. Since war had broken out with the same enemy, it seemed but logical to everybody to expect a repetition of the same happenings. The storehouses were besieged by women who were securing stale food at exorbitant prices in order to store it in their homes. Future hunger was producing more terror ... — The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... with Grant, by appointment, to see the queen. As usual, she kept us waiting some time, then appeared sitting by an open gate, and invited us, together with many Wakungu and Wasumbua to approach. Very lavish with stale sour pombe, she gave us all some, saving the Wasumbua, whom she addressed very angrily, asking what they wanted, as they have been months in the country. These poor creatures, in a desponding mood, defended themselves by saying, ... — The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... required; or perhaps it took three nights, like the making of Heracles. What has come over him, that he babbles such puerilities? memorable things indeed, a child in bed, and a very ancient, worn-out dream! what stale frigid stuff! does he take us for interpreters of dreams?' Sir, I do not. When Xenophon related that vision of his which you all know, of his father's house on fire and the rest, was it just by way of a riddle? was it in deliberate ineptitude that he reproduced it? a likely thing ... — Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... solemn bathos; knows how to meet important committees on microscopic reforms as well as self-appointed theological inquisitors and all the insistent cranks that waylay a busy pastor. Life cannot grow stale; and by letting the boys lead him forth by the streams of living water and into the whispering woods he catches again the wild charm of that all-possible past: the smell of the campfire, the joyous freedom and good health of God's great out-of-doors. Genius and success ... — The Minister and the Boy • Allan Hoben
... oppressed, without exactly knowing why. She looked at the black clay walls, the rafters that were blackened with smoke, from which spiders' webs were hanging, amid pickled herrings and strings of onions, and then she sat down, rather overcome by the stale emanations which the floor, onto which so many things had been continually spilt, gave out. With this, there was mingled the pungent smell of the pans of milk, which were set out to raise the ... — The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... my pleasures, every one, I find are stale, and dull, and slow; And yesterday, when work was done, I felt myself so sad and low, I could have seized a sentry's gun My wearied brains out out to blow. What is it makes my blood to run? What makes my heart to ... — Ballads • William Makepeace Thackeray
... somewhat slackned, and the Soldiers that are to watch them grow remiss in their Duty; so that now the Ambassadours walk about the Streets, and any body goes to their houses and talks with them: that is, after they have been so long in the Countrey, that all their news is stale and grown out of date. But this liberty is only winked at, not allowed. When they have been there a great while, the King usually gives them Slaves, both men and women, the more to alienate their minds from their own Country, ... — An Historical Relation Of The Island Ceylon In The East Indies • Robert Knox
... Malayan Caviare. It needs all the violence of the fresh, strong, monsoon winds to even partially purge these villages of the rank odours which cling to them at the end of the fishing season; and when all has been done, the saltness of the sea air, the brackish water of the wells, and the faint stale smells emitted by the nets and fishing tackle still tell unmistakable tales of the one trade in which every member of these communities ... — In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... enterprise can one endure their fellowship. Comrades in arms are not fastidious. If one confines one's self, on the other hand, to a cultivation of one's rarity, or to a company of choice spirits, not only do these values themselves grow stale and vanish away, but the remainder of mankind becomes a crowd, and civilization a tumult. The collective life of {169} mankind ceases to be jarring and repugnant only at the moment when one enters into it and becomes infused ... — The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry
... world should do everything once and once only," he averred, with his frank and disarming smile. "If we stuck to that rule life would never go stale on us." ... — Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... the man desires his wife to moisten some stale bread she has set before him for supper, and she refuses. After an altercation it is agreed that the one who speaks first shall get up and moisten the bread. A neighbour comes in, and, to his surprise, finds the couple dumb; he kisses the wife, but the man says ... — The Book of Noodles - Stories Of Simpletons; Or, Fools And Their Follies • W. A. Clouston
... which is in close proximity to its unusually little window. A little library with a scanty supply of books hangs near the stove-pipe, as if the owners thereof thought the contents had become somewhat stale, and required warming up to make them more palatable. A locker runs along two sides of the apartment, on the coverings of which stand several lanterns, an oil-can, and a stone jar, besides sundry articles with an extremely seafaring aspect, among which are ... — The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne
... no complaint at the bit of bacon and stale bread with which each plate had been served. There were excitement and hilarious good-humor, as though the flood had come for their especial benefit to give them an experience new and unusual. A bit of bacon and stale bread! One could get along very well for a few hours on that. ... — Hester's Counterpart - A Story of Boarding School Life • Jean K. Baird
... had only the candy factory as a basis of comparison, as far as working experience went. But I have been through factories and factories of all sorts and descriptions, and nothing had I ever seen like the brassworks. First was the smell—the stale smell of gas and metal. (Perhaps there is no such smell as stale metal, but you go down to the brassworks and describe it better!) Second, the darkness—a single green-shaded electric light directly over where any girl was working, but there were areas where there ... — Working With the Working Woman • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... say—for I live in a very honest neighborhood. The only two thieves that were in it—Charley Folliott and George Austin—were hanged not long ago, and I don't know anybody else in the country side that would stale it." ... — The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... dwelling and soon exhausted every hole and corner of it in a vain hunt for some token of the clerk. The kennels at the back were empty and forlorn; and some bread which they found in the hermit's tiny larder was mouldy and very stale. ... — Robin Hood • Paul Creswick
... the mountaine Ida groues, Where Paris kept his Heard, Before the other Ladies all He would haue thee prefer'd. Pallas, for all her painting, than Her face would seeme but pale, Then Iuno would haue blush't for shame And Venus looked stale. Eurymine, thy selfe alone Shouldst beare the golden ball; So far would thy most heauenly forme Excell the others all; O happie Phoebus! happie then, Most happie should I bee If faire Eurymine would please To ... — Old English Plays, Vol. I - A Collection of Old English Plays • Various
... you and me was up to de president's plantation, his cook was makin' plum pudden, he was. Now how in natur does you rimagine he did it? why, Missus, he actilly made it wid flour, de stupid tick-headed fool, instead ob de crumbs ob a six cent stale loaf, he did; and he nebber 'pared de gredients de day afore, as he had aughten to do. It was nuffin' but stick jaw—jist fit to feed turkeys and little niggeroons wid. Did you ebber hear de likes ob dat in all your bawn days, Missus; but ... — Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... had expected an affirmative reply to this question, she was doomed to disappointment. Disgusted with such paltry meanness, Clemence, who had pushed her plate away, unable to partake of the stale food, replied quietly, "I should ... — Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... sadness and knowing wisdom, I inspected the scenes of past foolishness. Would that it might please God to fill with His clear and strong wine this vessel, in which at that time the champagne of twenty-two-year-old youth sparkled uselessly away, leaving stale dregs behind. Where and how may Isabella Loraine and Miss Russel be living now? How many of those with whom I then flirted, tippled, and played dice are now dead and buried! How many transformations has my view of the ... — The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... just what I say, Mr. Grinder," went on Dick, when he could be heard. "You are master here, and we are bound to obey you, in certain things. But you shan't keep my brother in an icy room all night, and on a supper of stale bread and cold water. Such treatment would ... — The Rover Boys In The Mountains • Arthur M. Winfield
... having heard that his physician and friend was imprisoned by the Inquisition, under the stale pretext of Judaism, addressed a letter to one of them to request his freedom, assuring the inquisitor that his friend was as orthodox a Christian as himself. The physician, notwithstanding this high recommendation, was put to the torture; and, as was usually ... — Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... congratulate you on your health and your good sense alike. You were left almost alone in your charming country, and I have no doubt that on mornings when the rest of us, half asleep, were sitting out stale farces, you were reading ... — The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... serenely beautiful, how eloquent of peace and benediction, the scene that met him as he crossed the threshold of the great quadrangle! Some thousands of times his eyes had rested on it, yet how could it ever stale? ... — Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... table smelt strongly of stale tobacco, and Burkin could not sleep for a long while, and kept wondering where the oppressive ... — The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... rubies in the world's deep heart Could fetch no price beside it. Yet apart She brooded on the man who held her chained, Minister to his pleasure, and disdained Him more the more herself she must disparage, Reflecting on him all her hateful carriage, So old, incredible, so flat, so stale, No more to be recalled than old wife's tale; And scorned him, saw him neither high nor low, Not villain and not hero, who would go Midway 'twixt baseness and nobility, And not be fierce, if fierceness hurt a flea Before his eyes. The man loved one thing more Than all the world, and ... — Helen Redeemed and Other Poems • Maurice Hewlett
... and Grace were sitting on the stoop of the boarding-house. On the upper steps, in their shirt-sleeves, were the other boarders; so the bride and bridegroom spoke in whispers. The air of the cross street was stale and stagnant; from it rose exhalations of rotting fruit, the gases of an open subway, the smoke of passing taxicabs. But between the street and the hall bedroom, with its odors of a gas-stove and a kitchen, the choice ... — The Boy Scout and Other Stories for Boys • Richard Harding Davis
... great deal of work to do together. In the end, how well we do that work will depend on the spirit in which we approach it. We must seek fresh answers, unhindered by the stale prescriptions ... — Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... was not fond of him. She was; and grateful to him, as well. For, pretty as she was, no man had ever before asked Terry to be his wife. They had made love to her. They had paid court to her. They had sent her large boxes of stale drugstore chocolates, and called her endearing names as they made cautious ... — One Basket • Edna Ferber
... material was to be seen. The older boys were playing craps in Dennahan's lot and the smaller boys were watching them. One lonely sentinel was perched on the fence scanning the horizon for cops. For this he received the regular union pay of a stale apple-core. ... — Pee-Wee Harris Adrift • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... Hollister had made arrangement, brought up daily from his place fresh meat, milk, and vegetables, and twice a week pot cheese and buttermilk; so the "Ohio Camp Fires" were in clover. Nothing they ate was stale and ... — How Ethel Hollister Became a Campfire Girl • Irene Elliott Benson
... spitting dust and profanity through long, hot hours. There was a lure, of course; a picturesque, intangible attraction that calls to the wild blood of youth. But not as calls this other life which he had tasted. There was no gainsaying the fact—ranch life had grown too tame, too stale for Johnny Jewel. And there was no gainsaying that other fact—that Mary V would have to reconcile herself to being an aviator's wife, if she ... — The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower
... happened," said Mellish. "I won't say that Cashel Byron is getting stale; but I will say that his luck is too good to last; and I know for a fact that he's gone ... — Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... Emir, not so fast, I pray you! Better a double mouthful of stale porpoise fat, with a fin bone in it, than so ... — The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... field. You think him a good dog, looking at him here: but I wisht you seen him on the side ov Sleeve-an-Eirin! Be my soul, you'd say the hill was running away from undher him. O, I wisht you had been wid me," says he, never letting on to see the dog stale, "one day, last Lent, that I was coming from mass. Spring was near a quarther ov a mile behind me, for the childher was delaying him wid bread and butther at the chapel door; when a lump ov a hare jumped ... — Stories of Comedy • Various
... money. It was a baker's shop near where they lived, and it was rather a grand shop—only they kept this little girl to go messages, not to the grand people that came there, you know, but to the people that bought the bread when it wasn't so new—and currant cakes that were rather stale—like that, you know. And on Sunday mornings she had the most to do, because they used to send a great lot of bread very early to a room where a kind lady had breakfast for a great many poor people—for a treat ... — Hoodie • Mary Louisa Stewart Molesworth
... of The Crags, the light of dawn stole in through the windows and turned the brilliant light of the lamps into a pale glow. The odor of stale flowers was all about. Mrs. Wellington, with a headache, stood in the doorway. Her husband sat in an armchair with legs outstretched, smoking about his fortieth cigar. Sara Van Valkenberg stood in the middle ... — Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry
... the miserable Fitzroy was in her power; and she resumed a sway over his house, to shake off which had been the object of his life, and the result of many battles. And for a mere freak—(for, on going into Fubsby's a week afterwards he found the Peris drinking tea out of blue cups, and eating stale bread and butter, when his absurd passion instantly vanished)—I say, for a mere freak, the most intolerable burden of his life was put ... — A Little Dinner at Timmins's • William Makepeace Thackeray
... their beloved companion, Hector and Louis no longer took interest in what was going on; they hardly troubled themselves to weed the Indian corn, in which they had taken such great delight; all now seemed to them flat, stale, and unprofitable; they wandered listlessly to and fro, silent and sad; the sunshine had departed from their little dwelling; they ate little, and talked less, each seeming absorbed in ... — Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill
... giving up the writing of tales in verse was that Byron beat him. But there must have been something besides this: it is plain that the pattern of rhyming romance was growing stale. The Lay needs no apology; Marmion includes the great tragedy of Scotland ... — Sir Walter Scott - A Lecture at the Sorbonne • William Paton Ker
... Newcastle, if I did not tell the King, that it was you who had carried the Hanover troops." That, too, disproves the accusation of Sir Robert's being no friend to the Queen of Hungary. That is now too stale and old. However, I will speak to my lord and Mr. Pelham-would I had no more cause to tremble for you, than from little cabals! But, my dear child, when we hear every day of the 'Toulon fleet sailing, can I be easy for ... — The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... world is old, lad, And all the trees are brown; And all the sport is stale, lad, And all the wheels run down; Creep home, and take your place there, The spent and maimed among; God grant you find one face there, You loved when ... — Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... perpetually by the tender and passionate, can never become stale and vulgar; they will always recur in certain situations to persons of delicate sensibility, for they at once express all that can be said, and justify all that can be felt. My amiable Gabrielle, adieu. Pardon me if to-day I have no soul even ... — Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... composer of "Don Giovanni" and "Le Nozze di Figaro." A story is told to the effect that Meyerbeer was once dining with some friends, when a discussion arose respecting Mozart's position in the musical hierarchy. Suddenly one of the guests suggested that "certain beauties of Mozart's music had become stale with age. I defy you," he continued, "to listen to 'Don Giovanni' after the fourth act of the 'Huguenots.'" "So much the worse, then, for the fourth act of the 'Huguenots,'" said Meyerbeer, furious at ... — Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... uncle Pyotr Demyanitch, a lean, bilious collegiate councillor, exceedingly like a stale smoked fish with a stick through it, was getting ready to go to the high school, where he taught Latin, he noticed that the corner of his ... — The Cook's Wedding and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... is old, lad, And all the trees are brown, And all the sports are stale, lad, And ... — The Singing Mouse Stories • Emerson Hough
... people—hard-working, much-suffering, poor, patient, and almost absolutely indifferent to changes in governments and the humors and struggles of parties. "These wrangling jars of Whig and Tory," says Dean Swift, "are stale and old as Troy-town story." But if the principles were old, the titles of the parties were new. Steele, in 1710, published in the Tatler a letter from Pasquin of Rome to Isaac Bickerstaff, asking for "an account of those two religious orders which have lately sprung up amongst you, ... — A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... He is there to explain himself, voluble, with a glossary for his own artless slang. But his colonialism is only provincialism very articulate. The new air does but make old decadences seem more stale; the young soil does but set into fresh conditions the ready-made, the uncostly, the refuse feeling of a race decivilising. American fancy played long this pattering part of youth. The New-Englander hastened to assure you with so self-denying a face he did not wear war-paint ... — The Rhythm of Life • Alice Meynell
... beside me sent up its dank breath of stale powder fumes, and the acrid odor was as the fragrance of a fertile field ripe for the sickle. In this reeking pit at my elbow, gold, the subtle, the potent, the arbiter of all destinies, stood ready to fight for me. The liberty ... — Branded • Francis Lynde
... folks are witty and well dress'd, And blooming beauty is caress'd In ev'ry form art can devise— } With soothing flattery solemn lies, } And all that nymphs deluded prize } Here fashions reign, and modes prevail, And in twelve moons again grow stale, Thus ever vary, ever change, Yet ever please—a thing most strange! And here each thing is told that's new } What Loundoun or what Richlieu do, } Each secret expedition too— } And then great FREDERICK'S noble feats, When he th' imperial forces beats. Such themes ... — Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis
... seems stale and old, Often she sits and sighs; Life to me is a tale untold, Each day is a glad surprise. Dell will marry, of course, some day, After her belleship is run; She will cavil the matter in worldly way And wed Dame Fortune's son But, ah, well! sweet to tell, I shall not dally and choose like ... — The Kingdom of Love - and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... objections to woman's enfranchisement usually made by our legislators. We found on comparing notes that the arguments usually made were the same in the House of Commons as in the halls of Congress. If the honorable gentlemen could only have heard their stale platitudes with good imitations in voice and manner, I doubt whether they would ever again air their absurdities. I regretted that our Caroline Gilkey Rogers had not been there to have given her admirable impersonation of ... — History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... perpetually falling fragments, and worn away by listless standing of idle feet. There is always mason's work doing, always some fresh patching and whitening; a dull smell of mortar, mixed with that of stale foulness of every kind, rises with the dust, and defiles every current of air; the corners are filled with accumulations of stones, partly broken, with crusts of cement sticking to them, and blotches of nitre oozing out of their pores. The lichenous ... — Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... the modern stage, the writer pointed out how dramatic writing has of late years come to be practised entirely by men who have failed in all other branches of literature. Then he drew attention to the fact that signs of weariness and dissatisfaction with the old stale stories, the familiar tricks in bringing about 'striking situations,' were noticeable, not only in the newspaper criticisms of new plays, but also among the better portion of the audience. He admitted, ... — Vain Fortune • George Moore
... them still searching for some pocket of stale rain-water; but once only did they discover the slightest trace of moisture—a crust of slime in a rocky basin, and from it a blind lizard was slowly creeping—a heavy, lustreless, crippled thing that toiled aimlessly and painfully up the rock, only to slide back into ... — In Secret • Robert W. Chambers
... fast in their respective schools. Agneta [Footnote: Agneta, afterwards Lady Agneta Bevan.] by this time must be a very fine little girl; does she ever talk of me? I really have no news to tell you worth mention, but the service is very stale for want of war, every day the same ... — Charles Philip Yorke, Fourth Earl of Hardwicke, Vice-Admiral R.N. - A Memoir • Lady Biddulph of Ledbury
... Richard assigned tents for him and his to lodge in, and appointed certeine knights and other men of warre to haue the custodie of him. But the same day after dinner vpon repentance of that which he had doone, he deceiued his keepers and stale awaie, sending knowledge backe to the king that he would not stand to the couenants, which were concluded ... — Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland (2 of 6): England (6 of 12) - Richard the First • Raphael Holinshed
... absent myself from the town for a while, without feeling at a loss the moment I am left by myself. Instead of a friend in a postchaise or in a Tilbury, to exchange good things with, and vary the same stale topics over again, for once let me have a truce with impertinence. Give me the clear blue sky over my head, and the green turf beneath my feet, a winding road before me, and a three hours' march to dinner—and then to thinking! ... — English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... believe me, journalism is the dragon that demands the annual sacrifice of youth. It will have only youth. Why am I here? Why are you here? Because we are young, have a fresh, a new point of view. As soon as we get a little older, we shall be stale and, though still young in years, we must step aside for young fellows with new ideas and a new ... — The Great God Success • John Graham (David Graham Phillips)
... they must have had in common many pleasant memories of people and places dear to both, so that his ideal of matrimony described in Virginibus Puerisque was realised, and he and his wife had 'many an old joke between them which time cannot wither nor custom stale.' ... — Robert Louis Stevenson • Margaret Moyes Black
... to suppress disorders, to maintain, as far as now practicable, the public peace, and to give security and protection to the persons and property of loyal citizens, I do hereby extend and declare established martial law throughout the Stale of Missouri. The lines of the army of occupation in this State are, for the present, declared to extend from Leavenworth, by way of the posts of Jefferson City, Rolla, and Ironton, to Cape Girardeau, on ... — History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... memory, however great, are stale compared with those of hope; for hope is the parent of all effort and endeavor; and "every gift of noble origin is breathed upon by Hope's perpetual breath." It may be said to be the moral engine that ... — How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon
... founder with all hands. And she saw glimpses, beautiful and compensatory, of the romantic quality of common life. She was in a little office of a perfectly ordinary boarding-house—(she could even detect the stale odours of cooking)—with a realistic man of business, and they were about to discuss a perfectly ordinary piece of scandal; and surely they might be called two common-sense people! And withal, the ... — Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... Cut stale bread into slices one quarter of an inch thick; put on the toaster or fork, move gently over the heat until dry, then brown by placing near the heat, turning constantly. Bread may be dried in the oven before toasting. Hot milk may be ... — Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Household Science in Rural Schools • Ministry of Education Ontario
... proclamation, your honour. Didn't he say, himself, that his soldiers were not to stale anything, and that they would be severely punished if they did? And didn't he guarantee that we should be paid for everything? He could not blame us for what we have done, and he ought to hang the rest of those thieving villains, when ... — Orange and Green - A Tale of the Boyne and Limerick • G. A. Henty
... feet The first of all, and, drawing near thy lady, Remove her chair and offer her thy hand, And lead her to the other room, nor suffer longer That the stale reek of viands shall offend Her delicate sense. Thee with the rest invites The grateful odor of the coffee, where It smokes upon a smaller table hid And graced with Indian webs. The redolent gums That meanwhile ... — All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... to-night? His youth was fast going—nay, had it not indeed gone from him for ever? had not youth left him all at once when he began his commercial career?—and the pleasures that had been fresh enough within the last few years were rapidly growing stale. He knew the German spas, the pine-groves where the hand played, the gambling-saloons and their company, by heart, though he had never stayed more than a fortnight at any one of them. He had exhausted Brittany and the South of France in these rapid scampers; skimmed the cream of their novelty, ... — Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... French artists appear to me to have been very much injured by a wrong use of classic antiquity. Nothing could be more glorious and beautiful than the Grecian development; nothing more unlike it that the stale, wearisome, repetitious imitations of it in modern times. The Greek productions themselves have a living power to this day; but all imitations of them are cold and tiresome. These old Greeks made such ... — Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... moment he came with his saddle to where the men stood talking by his pony, slung it on, and tightened the cinches; but the chain was now in the saddle-bag of Specimen Jones, mixed up with some tobacco, stale bread, a box of matches, and a hunk of fat bacon. The men at Twenty Mile said good-day to the tenderfoot, with monosyllables and indifference, and watched him depart into the heated desert. Wishing for ... — Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... had been within five miles of the open Atlantic, though he had not seen it. Along the endless flat potato-fields, broken by pine-groves under whose sultry shadow negro cabins sweltered, the heat clung persistently. The show-tent was always filled with a stale scent ... — The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... things new. Through eternity, new joys, new knowledge, new progress, new likeness, new service will be ours— and not one leaf shall ever wither in the amaranthine crown, nor 'the cup of blessing' ever become empty or flat and stale. Eternity will be but a continual renewal and a progressive increase of ever fresh and ever familiar treasures. The new and ... — Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... most easily made from stale bread, which should be cut in one-third to one-half inch slices. A single slice of toast may be made by holding it over the fire on a fork. In camp a forked stick answers every purpose. The easiest way to make several slices is to put them ... — Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... merry, What wine from the chill of his cellar emerges— 'Tis a drop at the best—has the flavour of verjuice; While from a huge cruet his own sparing hand On his coleworts drops oil which no mortal can stand, So utterly loathsome and rancid in smell, it Defies his stale ... — Horace • Theodore Martin
... this too too solid flesh would melt, Thaw and resolve itself into a dew! Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd His canon 'gainst self-slaughter! O God! God! How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable Seem to me all the uses ... — Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... wax flowers, and indescribable mantel-piece atrocities, that there is not a simple or restful corner anywhere. Yet I find myself touched by its very hideousness, when I think that it probably looked even so, smelt even so stale and sweet, in the days of my dear father's boyhood. There is a picture in the large drawing-room that gives me infinite pleasure. It is a portrait of my own grandmother with papa in a white frock on her knees, and my poor Aunt Fanny beside her, a ... — The Wings of Icarus - Being the Life of one Emilia Fletcher • Laurence Alma Tadema
... that is filled with negative, discordant or inharmonious thoughts, I am separating myself from the full expression of the Divine within me. I am the bucket of water going stale on a human island; but, when I make my spirit at one with the Father by harmonious thinking, by love, kindness, good will, fellowship and co-operation, I am not only maintaining all of my original properties, but I am in correspondence ... — The Silence • David V. Bush
... throw bread away, and if they find a piece on the floor they pick it up and put it in a hole in the wall and keep it. It may be eaten, but may never be otherwise destroyed. I thought of Ruskin telling his readers in The Elements of Drawing that stale crumb of bread is better than india-rubber to rub out their mistakes, but "it crumbles about the room and makes a mess; and besides, you waste the good bread, which is wrong; and your drawing will not for a long while be worth the crumbs. ... — Castellinaria - and Other Sicilian Diversions • Henry Festing Jones
... eagerly up to the railing that divided the spectators from the dancers, and drew a deep breath of satisfaction. Here, at last, was something different from the everlasting hospital barracks: glowing lights, holiday decorations, the scent of flowers instead of the stale fumes of ether and disinfectants; soul-stirring music in place of the wheezy old phonograph grinding out the same old tunes; and, above all, girls, hundreds of them, circling in a bewildering rainbow of loveliness ... — Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... the fair reader too long, enter into a wholesome dissertation here on the manner of friendship established in those institutions, and the noble feeling of selfishness which they are likely to encourage in the male race? I put out of the question the stale topics of complaint, such as leaving home, encouraging gormandising and luxurious habits, etc.; but look also at the dealings of club-men with one another. Look at the rush for the evening paper! See how Shiverton orders ... — Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... for you!" had been the formulated threat of Wessex mothers for many generations. He was successfully supplanted for a while, at the beginning of the present century, by Buonaparte; but as process of time rendered the latter personage stale and ineffective the older phrase resumed its early prominence. And now the reddleman has in his turn followed Buonaparte to the land of worn-out bogeys, and his place is filled ... — The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... Ascham's lips his host looked slowly about the library, and every object in it stared back at him with a stale unescapable familiarity. How sick he was of looking at that room! It was as dull as the face of a wife one has wearied of. He cleared his throat slowly; then he turned his head to the lawyer and said: "I could explain the ... — The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 1 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... the entire novel is just that close and enervating. Every page is like the next morning taste of a champagne supper, and is heavy with the smell of stale cigarettes. There is no fresh air in the book and no sunlight, only the "blinding light shed by the electric globes." If the life of New York newspaper men is as unwholesome and sordid as this, Mr. Crane, who has experienced it, ought to be sadly ashamed to tell it. Next morning when ... — A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... every pillar is a bush to hide them. It is the other expense of the day, after plays and taverns; and men have still some oaths to swear here. The visitants are all men without exceptions; but the principal inhabitants are stale knights and captains out of service, men of long rapiers and short purses, who after all turn merchants here, and traffic for news. Some make it a preface to their dinner, and travel for an appetite; ... — Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... condescend to turn and look. Meanwhile, I had not the courage to go near my club, and the Temple was a place where I was accosted in every court, effusively congratulated on the marvellous preservation of my stale spoilt life, and invited right and left to spin my yarn over a quiet pipe! Well, perhaps such invitations were not so common as they have grown in my memory; nor must you confuse my then feelings on all ... — Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... it would be better for such a child to put her down to hard work, and to keep her constantly under the eye of her guardians. This threat was more efficient than all the other means which had been used to keep the child within the bounds of common decency; but even this had grown stale upon her. ... — Hope and Have - or, Fanny Grant Among the Indians, A Story for Young People • Oliver Optic
... out. And immediately he was aware of a pleasant feeling of relief, as one who, after battling against a delicious and shameful habit, yields and is glad. The beauty of the notes was eternal; no use could stale it. Their intoxicating effect on him was just as powerful now as before supper. And now, as then, the mere sight of them filled him with a passionate conviction that without them he would be ruined. His tricks to destroy the suspicions of Horrocleave could not possibly be successful. Within twenty-four ... — The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... that frigate. Then he immediately commenced passing from vessel to vessel, in order to ascertain the actual condition of his command. The Achilles detained him some time, and he was near her, or to leeward, when the wind shifted; which was bringing him to windward in the present stale of things. Of this advantage he availed himself, by urging the different ships off as fast as possible; and long before the sun was in the meridian, all the English vessels were making the best of their way towards the land, ... — The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... boys were sitting on the cross-beams of the roof. The heat in the place was stifling beyond all description, for besides being densely crowded below and above, the wooden shutters were shut, on account of the wind and rain, the people's wet clothes were steaming, and there was a strong smell of stale fish. At first we felt as if it would be impossible to bear it, but after a little time we became used to the disagreeables, and had other ... — From Death into Life - or, twenty years of my ministry • William Haslam
... our wood-cutters, who go into the mountains far from any habitations to fell wood.— Their provisions for a week, (the time they commonly remain in the mountains,) consist of a large loaf of rye bread (which, as it does not so soon grow dry and stale as wheaten bread, is always preferred to it); a linen bag containing a small quantity of roasted meal;—another small bag of salt;—and a small wooden box containing some pounded black pepper;—with a small frying-pan ... — ESSAYS, Political, Economical and Philosophical. Volume 1. • Benjamin Rumford
... met by chance at a coffee-stand one beautiful summer dawn in one of the markets,—the Treine, most likely,—where, perched on high stools at a zinc-covered counter, with the smell of fresh blood on the right and of stale fish on the left, they had finished half their cup of cafe au lait before they awoke to the exhilarating knowledge of ... — Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... underlings; not freely but as a schoolmaster with his scholars, ever to teach, never to learn.... You should know many of these tales you tell to be but ordinary, & many other things, which you repeat, & serve in for novelties to be but stale.... Your too much love of the world is too much seen, when having the living" [income] "of L10,000, you relieve few or none: the hand that hath taken so much, can it give so little? Herein you show no bowels of compassion.... We desire you to amend this & let your poor Tenants in Norfolk find ... — The Curious Case of Lady Purbeck - A Scandal of the XVIIth Century • Thomas Longueville
... wist how to deal with traitors. But now, with so slack an hand did the King rule, that not only Sir Roger gat free of the Tower by bribing one of his keepers and drugging the rest, but twenty good days at the least were lost while he stale down to the coast and so won away. There was indeed a hue and cry, but it wrought nothing, and even that was not for a week. There was more diligence used to seize his lands than to seize him. And at the end of all, just afore the Queen's journey, if my Lady Mortimer his wife, that had gone down ... — In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt
... display it Through all our cloudy parts, it doth convey it Forth at the eye, as the most pregnant place, And that reflects it round about the face. 250 And this event, uncourtly Hero thought, Her inward guilt would in her looks have wrought; For yet the world's stale cunning she resisted, To bear foul thoughts, yet forge what looks she listed, And held it for a very silly sleight, To make a perfect metal counterfeit, Glad to disclaim herself, proud of an art That makes the face a ... — The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... up instantly. "A hundred dollars couldn't buy that piece of stale mud off his back," he asserted, looking off into ... — The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... not expect it; but those great thick walls were no way taken by surprise: they had not been confidants of this kind of thing off and on for four or five hundred years to be taken by surprise now. Whether after such long familiarity with the old story they felt it any way stale, you will readily believe ... — Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... thin slices from a stale cake, cut them in shapes, dip them in milk, then fry them in butter; spread jam or marmalade on the top of each, ... — The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 354, October 9, 1886 • Various
... humor, he included all the Jewish institutions on the list, and they wrote to the paper and rather objected to being represented as decorating Christmas trees, or in any way celebrating that particular day. But of all stale, flat, and unprofitable stories, this releasing of prisoners from Moyamensing was the worst. It seemed to Bronson that they were always releasing prisoners; he wondered how they possibly left themselves enough to make a county prison worth ... — Van Bibber and Others • Richard Harding Davis
... solid night. They yawned and damned the darkness, which smelt like stale india-rubber, so Quell said. They cursed life and the bitter taste in their mouths. Quell spoke of his thirst in words that startled the easy-going Arved, who confessed that if he could rid himself of the wool in his throat, he would be comparatively happy. Then they stumbled ... — Visionaries • James Huneker
... here commence, But you might think it stale; So we'll suppose that we have reached The tail ... — English as She is Wrote - Showing Curious Ways in which the English Language may be - made to Convey Ideas or obscure them. • Anonymous
... for he's a good boy, is Dodger. Did I tell you how he served the rapscallion that tried to stale my apples the ... — Adrift in New York - Tom and Florence Braving the World • Horatio Alger
... but he is not little, he is of medium growth. A hair is very thin. The night is so dark that we can see nothing even before our nose. This stale bread is hard as stone. Naughty children love to torment animals. He felt (himself) so miserable that he cursed the day on which he was born. We greatly despise this base man. The window was long unclosed; I closed it, but my brother immediately ... — The Esperanto Teacher - A Simple Course for Non-Grammarians • Helen Fryer
... most excellent gift of charity." Then, in one generous burst, she prayed for love divine, and there was many a sigh and many a tear, and at the close an "Amen!" such as, alas! we shall never, I fear, hear burst from a hundred bosoms where men repeat beautiful but stale words and ... — A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... she thinks till he return again, And yet the duteous vassal scarce is gone. The weary time she cannot entertain, For now 'tis stale to sigh, to weep, to groan: So woe hath wearied woe, moan tired moan, That she her plaints a little while doth stay, Pausing for means to ... — The Rape of Lucrece • William Shakespeare [Clark edition]
... one of the shadowy sidling presences in the background of that awful house in Chelsea, one of the dumb appendages of the shrieking unescapable Mrs. Murrett, into whose talons he had fallen in the course of his head-long pursuit of Lady Ulrica Crispin. Oh, the taste of stale follies! How insipid it was, yet ... — The Reef • Edith Wharton
... stewed, steamed or plain bread pudding. 20. Bread soup with apples, rice pudding with dried fruit. 21. Bran or bread soup, apple salad with grated cheese, lettuce. 22. Milk or huckleberry soup, unleavened apple pancakes. 23. Clabber milk with cream and grapenuts or stale bread, nuts. 24. Corn bread with apple salad and lettuce, nuts. 25. Plain milk rice with currants, nuts or cheese. 26. Bread dumplings with stewed prunes or pears, celery, nuts. 27. Buttermilk soup with dried fruit, ... — Food for the Traveler - What to Eat and Why • Dora Cathrine Cristine Liebel Roper
... who of my contemporaries—that is, men between thirty and forty-five—have given the world one single drop of alcohol?... Science and technical knowledge are passing through a great period now, but for our sort it is a flabby, stale, dull time.... The causes of this are not to be found in our stupidity, our lack of talent, or our insolence, but in a disease which for the artist is worse than syphilis or sexual exhaustion. We lack "something," that is true, and that means that, lift the robe of our muse, and you will find within ... — Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry
... so horribly stale in London without Barty that I became a quite exemplary young man when I woke up from that long nap on the floor of my laboratory in Barge Yard, Bucklersbury; a reformed character: from sheer grief, I ... — The Martian • George Du Maurier
... stale. Talk of the hatchet, and the faces pale, Wampum and calumets and forests dreary, Once so attractive, now begins to weary. Uncas and Magawisca please us still, Unreal, yet idealized with skill; But every poetaster, scribbling witling, From the majestic oak his stylus whittling, ... — At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... was not in town, as the cattleman learned at Monte Joe's dance-hall, piled high with tables and chairs and reeking with the stench, left over from the previous night, of whiskey fumes and stale tobacco smoke. Monte Joe professed not to know where the puncher had gone, but as Trowbridge pressed him for information the voice of a woman, as shrill as the squawk of a parrot, floated down from the ... — Hidden Gold • Wilder Anthony
... gentle dismissions, that we debate not and examine the matter thoroughly with liberal and frequent audience; if not for their sakes, yet for our own? seeing no man who hath tasted learning, but will confess the many ways of profiting by those who, not contented with stale receipts, are able to manage and set forth new positions to the world. And were they but as the dust and cinders of our feet, so long as in that notion they may yet serve to polish and brighten the armoury ... — Areopagitica - A Speech For The Liberty Of Unlicensed Printing To The - Parliament Of England • John Milton
... good sayings, were quoted; his excellent companionship on really poetical walks, and perfect sympathy, praised to his face. Challenged by her initiative to a kind of language that threw Redworth out, he declaimed: 'We pace with some who make young morning stale.' ... — The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... in among the houses of Paradise Street were fresh and green, though one of the hot, burning breaks of blue sky and glaring sunlight had baked the road into Indian-red dust once more, and the interior of Mhtoon Pah's curio shop was heavy with stale scents and dark shadows that crept out as the gloom of evening settled in upon it. Mhtoon Pah moved about looking at his goods, and touching them with careful hands. He hovered over an ivory lady carrying an umbrella, and looked long at a white marble Buddha, ... — The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie
... Gentleman of Figure in a County would make his Family a Pattern of Sobriety, good Sense, and Breeding, and would kindly endeavour to influence the Education and growing Prospects of the younger Gentry about him, I am apt to believe it would save him a great deal of stale Beer on a publick Occasion, and render him the Leader of his Country from their Gratitude to him, instead of being a Slave to their Riots and Tumults in order to be made their Representative. The same thing might be recommended to all who have made any Progress in any Parts of Knowledge, or arrived ... — The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... unfinished end of the telegraph. From that point he sent it over the wire to Washington. It was successfully received at the Washington end, and never were human beings more surprised than were the train passengers on alighting at the capital city to find that they brought stale news, and that Clay's nomination was already known throughout Washington. It was the first public proof in America of the powers of the telegraph, and certainly ... — Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... Prince," I said, "that with such ideas as these in your mind you could dream of winning Zara for a wife. Do you think she could have led a life like that of other women? A frivolous round of gaiety, a few fine dresses and jewels, small-talk, society scandal, stale compliments—you think such things would have suited HER? And would she have contented herself with a love like yours? Come! Come and see how well she has ... — A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... want your soul; it's somewhat of a stale sole, for aught I know; and there are plenty of fresh ones ... — Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... smelt powder in their lives, talking big about 'glorious war' and all that, I've said to myself, 'Aha, my fine fellows! if you had been where I have, marching for days and days over ankles in mud, with nothing to eat but stale black bread, so hard that you had to soak it before you could get it down; and if you'd had to drink water through which hundreds of horses had just been trampling; and to scramble up and down steep hills under a roasting sun, with your feet so swollen and sore that every step was like ... — St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, January 1878, No. 3 • Various
... neglect. Foul and filthy as the room is, foul and filthy as the air is, it is not easy to perceive what fumes those are which most oppress the senses in it; but through the general sickliness and faintness, and the odour of stale tobacco, there comes into the lawyer's mouth the ... — Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... been fitly named conversion, that to many among us neither heaven nor earth has any revelation till some personality touches theirs with a peculiar influence, subduing them into receptiveness. It had been Gwendolen's habit to think of the persons around her as stale books, too familiar to be interesting. Deronda had lit up her attention with a sense of novelty: not by words only, but by imagined facts, his influence had entered into the current of that self-suspicion and self-blame which awakens a ... — Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... "A pinch for stale news," says she, at last, with a frivolity most unworthy of the occasion, but in the softest, ... — Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... plaudits and the gratitude of the world was due to this short period of intensive training, "under men who were intelligent enough to know just what was needed and just how to go about to secure it"—men not hampered by any pedagogical nonsense or grown stale over a long attempt to discriminate between the "infinity of nothingness and the nothingness of infinity" (as one might summarize a rather common criticism), rather than to the former years of patient toil, and ... — On the Firing Line in Education • Adoniram Judson Ladd
... him, and he was often sent to dine in the infirmary, not being expected with his toothless jaws to munch the dry crusts set before the rest of the house. This, it seems, was a custom which had been learnt from St. Justina's at Padua, to put out the stale crusts first, before the new bread, to break appetite upon: just as in the old Quaker schools a hundred years ago, children were set down to suet-pudding, and then broth, before the joint appeared; the order being, 'No ball, no ... — The Age of Erasmus - Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London • P. S. Allen
... him in his talk. The meeting agreed with all that had been said regarding the antiquity of the earth and of its life. They had, indeed, known it all long ago, and they rallied the lecturer for coming amongst them with so stale a story. It was quite plain that this large body of clergymen, who were, I should say, to be ranked amongst the finest samples of their class, had entirely given up the ancient landmarks, and transported the conception ... — Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... the receptacle just named a dirty piece of folded paper, deeply impregnated with the perfume of stale and oft rechewed quids of coarse tobacco; and then, with the air of one conscious of having "rendered the state some service," hitched up his trowsers with one hand, while with the other ... — Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... broken away from it and mapped out their own territory. The whole metaphysical realm consisted in nothing more than creatures of fancy and heavenly things at the precise time when real beings and earthly things were beginning to concentrate all interest upon themselves. Metaphysics had become stale. Helvetius and Condillac were born in the same year that Malebranche and Arnauld, the last great French metaphysicians of the seventeenth ... — Selected Essays • Karl Marx
... attainers!"—forsooth! Why, the ideas which I have quoted, if they were carried to logical lengths, would make heaven a farcical kill-joy, a weary, stale, flat, unprofitable morgue of disappointed hopes, with Ennui for janitor. I admit that the old heaven of the Semitic poets was constructed somewhat along these lines. But that was no real heaven. The real heaven is a quiet, harpless, beautiful place where every one is a heaven-born creator ... — The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... fine bread crumbs, rub stale bread through a wire sieve. For this the hands should be ... — New Vegetarian Dishes • Mrs. Bowdich
... Salmasius was not dispersed with equal rapidity, or read with equal eagerness, is very credible. He taught only the stale doctrine of authority, and the unpleasing duty of submission; and he had been so long not only the monarch, but the tyrant, of literature, that almost all mankind were delighted to find him defied and insulted by a new name, not yet considered as any one's rival. If Christina, as is ... — Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... next time Elizabeth said au reservoir to her, she would work in an allusion to Elizabeth's own reservoir of corned beef, tongue, flour, bovril, dried apricots and condensed milk. She would have to frame some stinging rejoinder which would "escape her" when next Elizabeth used that stale old phrase: it would have to be short, swift and spontaneous, and therefore required careful thought. It would be good to bring "pop" into it also. "Your reservoir in the garden-room hasn't gone 'pop' again, I hope, darling?" ... — Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... Composition and nutritive value of vegetables Exclusive diet of vegetables not desirable To select vegetables Poison in potato sprouts Stale vegetables a cause of illness Keeping vegetables To freshen withered vegetables Storing winter vegetables Preparation and cooking To clean vegetables for cooking Methods of cooking Time required for cooking various ... — Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... sound like a bell. The instant the blades touched, each felt them tingle to their very points with a personal vitality, as if they were two naked nerves of steel. Evan had worn throughout an air of apathy, which might have been the stale apathy of one who wants nothing. But it was indeed the more dreadful apathy of one who wants something and will care for nothing else. And this was seen suddenly; for the instant Evan engaged he disengaged and lunged with an infernal violence. His opponent ... — The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... adventure. Nearly all the Utopias paint the life of the future as a kind of giant Chautauqua, in which every man and woman is at work, all are well fed, satisfied, and cultivated. But as man is now constituted he would probably find such a life flat, stale, and unprofitable. ... — Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... will he come back again? Will his proud spirit brook an uncertainty? But, after all, is it well worth, the while? Those are uncertain questions—I dismiss them. There is no immediate danger. My humor changes; I am no longer despondent. Away with Doubtful Uncertainty and all of his stale retinue, tricked out in danger-signals—each a false one. Sleep on, sweet Conscience, sleep on! To-night the wedding-reception—given to a woman married for her money! Another glorious ... — The Inner Sisterhood - A Social Study in High Colors • Douglass Sherley et al.
... decidedly an ass. His jokes strike you as funny at first; but there's nothing in him, he's a mere hawker of stale puns; there's nothing but selfishness under his jesting exterior. I have no belief in him. Yet he is an old school friend; the only one of my twenty-eight classmates whose acquaintance I have kept up. Four are ... — The Ink-Stain, Complete • Rene Bazin
... Church of England, Sir; and no Presbyterian, nor Ana—Anabaptist, Sir; however you may be disposed to make honest people believe to the contrary, Sir. Your bams are found out, Sir. The town will be your stale puts no longer, Sir; and you must not send us jolly fellows, Sir,—we that are comedians, Sir,—you must not send us into groves and Charn—Charnwoods a-moping, Sir. Neither Charns, nor charnel-houses, Sir. It is not our constitutions, ... — Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... but I am right glad in that wee are fallen into communication of the matter, least by our silence, like contention might arise betweene us, as fortuned betweene Eteocles and his Brother. When they had reasoned together in this sort, they swore both earnestly, that neither of them stale or tooke away any jote of the meate, wherefore they concluded to search out the Theefe by all kind of meanes. For they could not imagin or thinke, the Asse who stood alone there, would eate any such meates, neither could they thinke that ... — The Golden Asse • Lucius Apuleius
... brother and Grace were sitting on the stoop of the boarding-house. On the upper steps, in their shirt-sleeves, were the other boarders; so the bride and bridegroom spoke in whispers. The air of the cross street was stale and stagnant; from it rose exhalations of rotting fruit, the gases of an open subway, the smoke of passing taxicabs. But between the street and the hall bedroom, with its odors of a gas-stove and a ... — The Boy Scout and Other Stories for Boys • Richard Harding Davis
... exclusively dog biscuits, and the other a diet of milk in the morning, and at night a feed composed of a liberal amount of spinach—they had to use the canned article as it was in winter—boiled with meat scraps and thickened with sound stale bread. ... — The Boston Terrier and All About It - A Practical, Scientific, and Up to Date Guide to the Breeding of the American Dog • Edward Axtell
... perfect love, Jo, on them terms may cast out fear and a lot else, but it don't get you no forwarder—quite the contrary. Love don't keep for ever, more than a leg of mutton will, and sometimes it comes across me it may go a bit stale, if not actually bad. I fear nought myself, of course, because Milly's a woman of her word and knows no changing; but that cuts both ways and, while she's so firm as a rock about my wages and in a manner of ... — The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts
... time to spare. The ship sailed from Southampton in forty eight hours and I had only just arranged to accompany Lord Mountmorres on a tour in the Congo Free Stale. He was going out for the purpose of discovering the true condition of affairs in that country and of writing articles thereupon for the Globe but incidentally hoped to have some big game shooting. After one has read much about a country it is always interesting ... — A Journal of a Tour in the Congo Free State • Marcus Dorman
... differentiate between carnivorous species and those fit for human food, whilst the salt in their most fortunate supply of hams rendered their meals almost epicurean. Think of it, ye dwellers in cities, content with stale buns and leathery sandwiches when ye venture into the wilds of a railway refreshment-room, these two castaways, marooned by queer chance on a desert island, could sit down daily to a banquet of ... — The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... stair of the house in the BRANDVORWERKSTRASSE where Furst lived with his mother. It was so dark on this stair that, in dull weather, ill-trimmed lamps burnt all day long on the different landings. To its convolutions, in its unaired corners, clung what seemed to be the stale, accumulated smells of years; and these were continually reinforced; since every day at dinnertime, the various kitchen-windows, all of which gave on the stair, were opened to let the piercing odours of ... — Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... those days was ez old and grizzled ez I be—and some o' the scholars—no offense to you, Mr. Brooks—was older and bigger nor you. But times is changed: yet look, Almiry, if thar ain't a hunk o' stale gingerbread in that desk jest as it uster be! Lord! how it all comes back! Ez I was sayin' only t'other day, we can't be too grateful to our parents for givin' us an eddication in our youth;" and Mr. Hoover, with the air of recalling ... — Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... games for three days, and the players were getting a bit "stale" with nothing to do. Then the sun came out, the grounds dried up and the series was resumed. But the Cardinals were ... — Baseball Joe in the Big League - or, A Young Pitcher's Hardest Struggles • Lester Chadwick
... and soon exhausted every hole and corner of it in a vain hunt for some token of the clerk. The kennels at the back were empty and forlorn; and some bread which they found in the hermit's tiny larder was mouldy and very stale. ... — Robin Hood • Paul Creswick
... manifestation, they academized it. They set their faces against any sort of development and drove into revolt or artistic suicide every student with an ounce of vitality in him. Before the inspiration of Cezanne had time to grow stale, it was caught up by such men as Matisse and Picasso; by them it was moulded into forms that suited their different temperaments, and already it shows signs of taking fresh shape to express the sensibility of ... — Art • Clive Bell
... let the dogs loose, and drove the rams to pasture on the margin of the river. After breakfast, which was but a sorry meal, we determined to make our first attempt at baking. Simon, a man of dauntless resolution, undertook the task, using a piece of stale bread as leaven. It was a serious business, and we all helped or looked on; but the result, notwithstanding the multitude of councillors, was a lamentable failure. Better success, fortunately, attended ... — The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... alarmed at the child's crying. "Heidi, Heidi," she said imploringly, "pray do not cry so! listen to me; don't be so unhappy; look now, I promise you that you shall have just as many rolls, or more, all fresh and new to take to grandmother when you go home; yours would have been hard and stale by then. Come, Heidi, do ... — Heidi • Johanna Spyri
... lacking in religious knowledge and a sense of humor, he included all the Jewish institutions on the list, and they wrote to the paper and rather objected to being represented as decorating Christmas trees, or in any way celebrating that particular day. But of all stale, flat, and unprofitable stories, this releasing of prisoners from Moyamensing was the worst. It seemed to Bronson that they were always releasing prisoners; he wondered how they possibly left themselves enough to make a county prison worth ... — Van Bibber and Others • Richard Harding Davis
... compared with Mr. Young's for adherence either to the bard's own meaning or music. In pouring out the Frenchman's champagne, the latter somehow suffers the sparkle and bead to escape, while the former cheats us by making his stale liquor foam with London soda. We shall be impatient for Mr. Young's book, which will be published by Putnam, in ... — International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 5, July 29, 1850 • Various
... since, Skift, changed, Slade, valley, Slake, glen, Soil (to go to), hunting term for taking the water, Sonds, messages, Sort, company, Sperd, bolted, Spere, ask, inquire, Spered, asked, Sperhawk, sparrowhawk, Sprent, sprinkled, Stale, station, Stark, thoroughly, Stead, place, Stert, started, rose quickly, Steven, appointment,; steven ser. appointment made, Steven, voice, Stigh, path, Stilly, silently, Stint, fixed revenue, ... — Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume II (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory
... too too solid Flesh, would melt, [Sidenote: sallied flesh[3]] Thaw, and resolue it selfe into a Dew: [Sidenote: 125,247,260] Or that the Euerlasting had not fixt [Sidenote: 121 bis] His Cannon 'gainst Selfe-slaughter. O God, O God! [Sidenote: seale slaughter, o God, God,] How weary, stale, flat, and vnprofitable [Sidenote: wary] Seemes to me all the vses of this world? [Sidenote: seeme] Fie on't? Oh fie, fie, 'tis an vnweeded Garden [Sidenote: ah fie,] That growes to Seed: Things rank, and grosse in Nature Possesse ... — The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald
... had left on board. Everything was looking exactly as we left it six years ago; there was not a sign of damp discoverable anywhere; and the only objectionable thing noticeable was that the air in the hull smelt decidedly stale and offensive. However, I soon had vapour enough generated to start the dynamo, when I switched on the light in the pilot-house lantern, as a warning to Mildmay to get out of the way; after which I slowly ejected the water from the water chambers, ... — With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... accomplishment of Push. She had made up her mind that, cost what it might, she would see Mr. Wells in the flesh; and she had achieved her end at a garden party. She had better luck than so rash an enterprise deserved. Mr. Wells came up to her expectations. Age had not withered him, nor could custom stale his infinite variety in half an hour. His pleasant neatness and compactness, his small hands and feet, his teeming ready brain, his unaffected accessibility, and a certain fine apprehensiveness which stamped him as susceptible from his topmost hair ... — Pygmalion • George Bernard Shaw
... recall those characteristics in Alfred Stevens, by which her confidence had been beguiled. This task was not a difficult one in that early day of her distress; before experience had yet come to confirm the apprehensions of doubt—before the intoxicating dream of a first passion had yet begun to stale upon her imagination. Her own elastic mind helped her in this endeavor. Surely, she thought, where the mind is so noble and expansive, where the feelings are so tender and devoted, the features so lofty and impressive, the look so sweet, the language so delicate and refined, ... — Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... here, Cyprienne, I am not to be put off with stale, second-hand gossip—the echoes of the Clubs; vague, empty rumours that are on everybody's tongue long before they come to me. I must have fresh, brand-new intelligence, straight from the fountain-head. You must get it for ... — The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... is a sport to see, when a bold fellow is out of countenance; for that puts his face into a most shrunken, and wooden posture; as needs it must; for in bashfulness, the spirits do a little go and come; but with bold men, upon like occasion, they stand at a stay; like a stale at chess, where it is no mate, but yet the game cannot stir. But this last were fitter for a satire than for a serious observation. This is well to be weighed; that boldness is ever blind; for it seeth ... — Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon
... learn," said the baronet, "we ought to win the seat; and every two new votes won in that way are worth half-a-dozen such as Tom Willoughby's, for instance, whose loyalty is a stale ... — Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... assignment. You understand I am not complaining of my lot as a midget, but I am fed up on the role. I want a rest—a change. And just now, is a good time to make the change from a game where I've grown stale. My financial affairs are in good shape, thanks to one of the finest men in all America, and I want to lay off this freak business until I can ... — David Lannarck, Midget - An Adventure Story • George S. Harney
... he sang of how Danes had come and burnt Harwich town. But the people told him to sing less stale news than that, for Harwich was close at hand. Now it was Halfden's ship which had done that, and the fires we saw before the fog came had been the beacons lit ... — Wulfric the Weapon Thane • Charles W. Whistler
... best, and Coutchie-Coulou has at least died an honorable death and saved herself from being fried in a pan or boiled in her own shell. So cheer up, little egg, and I will be your friend—at least so long as you remain fresh. A stale egg I never ... — Mother Goose in Prose • L. Frank Baum
... act of reflection takes place in the mind, when we look at ourselves in the light of thought, we discover that our life is embosomed in beauty. Behind us, as we go, all things assume pleasing forms, as clouds do far off. Not only things familiar and stale, but even the tragic and terrible are comely as they take their place in the pictures of memory. The river-bank, the weed at the water-side, the old house, the foolish person, however neglected in the passing, have a grace in the past. ... — Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... other thought impossible to him: he started from his chair, and paced the room with rapid disordered strides. What was all the world to the ecstasy of such a love? All—all that he had hitherto lived for, was it not flat, stale, poor, puerile, in comparison to it? Why not leave all, and seize a happiness so infinitely greater than any he had ever known or imagined? Why not marry her, and be hers for ever, as she was anxious to ... — A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... old boy, your son, ply his old task, Turn the stale prologue to some painted mask; His absence in my verse is all ... — Discoveries and Some Poems • Ben Jonson
... angry; but it made her angry that she couldn't be sad. And yet where was misery, misery too beaten for blame and chalk-marked by fate like a "lot" at a common auction, if not in these merciless signs of mere mean, stale feelings? ... — The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2 • Henry James
... the allurement of a new and remarkable type of woman, and that these headlong passions were neither healthy nor lasting; but his reasoning brought him no real sense of conviction, and his life, as he looked forward to it, appeared singularly flat and stale. His one consolation, poor as it seemed, lay in the fact that he had played the man to the best of his ability and was really glad, even if a ... — The Net • Rex Beach
... not I live when she lived, to marry her?" muttered Helwyse in a dream. "A woman whose infinite variety age could not alter nor custom stale! A true wife would have kept me from error. What man can comprehend the world, if he puts half the world away? Now it is too late; she might have helped me rise to greatness, but not to bear disgrace. Ah, Balder Helwyse, poor fool! you babble as if she stood before you to take or leave. You ... — Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... newspaper woman trudging from one indifferent editor to another peddling "space." And why not? Mae Smith had been young and good-looking once, also a local celebrity in her way when she had signed a column in a daily. But she had grown stale with the grind, and having no special talent or personality had been easily replaced when a new Managing Editor came. Now, though chipper as a sparrow, she was always in need of ... — The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... wither him, nor custom stale His infinite variety; other men cloy The appetites they feed; but he makes ... — Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... the same wretched pretence of exclusive favoritism? And do we not know that no warrant has ever been given to you to recite a single line before the emperor, either in or out of the arena? We are here to revel, not to listen to your stale aphorisms upon death and immortality. Ho, there, more wine! Take off these viands, which already pall ... — The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... rouse compassion. They do not play on the strings of other people's hearts so that they may sigh and make much of them. They do not say "I am misunderstood," or "I have become second-rate," because all this is striving after cheap effect, is vulgar, stale, false.... ... — Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... garden, he had the hills and valley, the birds, the flowers, the clouds, the sun, he had the Rampio, he had Annunziata, he even had Annunziata's uncle; and with all this he had a sense of having stepped out of a world that he knew by heart, that he knew to satiety, a world that was stale and stuffy and threadbare, with its gilt rubbed off and its colours tarnished, into a world where everything was fresh and undiscovered and full of savour, a great cool blue and green world that from minute to minute opened up new ... — My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland
... alleged reason for giving up the writing of tales in verse was that Byron beat him. But there must have been something besides this: it is plain that the pattern of rhyming romance was growing stale. The Lay needs no apology; Marmion includes the great tragedy of Scotland in the Battle ... — Sir Walter Scott - A Lecture at the Sorbonne • William Paton Ker
... frais," M. De Banville says himself. He admits that his lighter works, the poems called (in England) vers de societe, are a sort of intellectual cigarette. M. Emile de Girardin said, in the later days of the Empire, that there were too many cigarettes in the air. Their stale perfume clings to the literature of that time, as the odour of pastilles yet hangs about the verse of Dorat, the designs of Eisen, the work of the Pompadour period. There is more than smoke in M. De Banville's ruling inspiration, his lifelong ... — Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... provoking that Davidson should not be able to give one some idea of the girl. Was she pretty? He didn't know. He had stayed the whole afternoon in Schomberg's hotel, mainly for the purpose of finding out something about her. But the story was growing stale. The parties at the tables on the veranda had other, fresher, events to talk about and Davidson shrank from making direct inquiries. He sat placidly there, content to be disregarded and hoping for some chance word to turn up. I shouldn't wonder if the good fellow hadn't been dozing. ... — Victory • Joseph Conrad
... romances read and seen, do fall In our opinions; yet not seen at all, Whom would they please? To an heroic tale Would you not listen, lest it should grow stale? ... — Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... BEEF, MUTTON, AND VEAL, form the basis of all good soups; therefore it is advisable to procure those pieces which afford the richest succulence, and such as are fresh-killed. Stale meat renders them bad, and fat is not so well adapted for making them. The principal art in composing good rich soup, is so to proportion the several ingredients that the flavour of one shall not predominate over another, and that all the ... — The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... to be avoided, however. We may become so taken up with the overwrought descriptions of the emotions as found in literature or on the stage that the common humdrum of everyday life around us seems flat and stale. The interpretation of the writer or the actor is far beyond what we are able to make for ourselves, so we take their interpretation rather than trouble ourselves to look in our own environment for the material which might appeal to our emotions. It is not rare to find those who easily ... — The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts
... down a full description of the country immediately behind our present line. The Skipper, for fear we should become stale, allowed us plenty of leave. We would make little expeditions to Bethune for the baths, spend an afternoon riding round Armentieres, or run over to Poperinghe for a chop. We even arranged for a visit to the Belgian lines, but that ... — Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson
... the shadows of the dark landing the dog came slowly and warily, ready to turn and slink off if he met no welcome, but Tode was in the mood when even a strange dog was better than his own company. He fed the half-starved creature with some stale sandwiches, and then talked to him and tried to teach him some tricks until to his own surprise he heard the city clocks striking nine, and the long, lonely evening ... — The Bishop's Shadow • I. T. Thurston
... one else paid any attention to him, Tom ascended the stairs and entered the cabin. He wanted to see what sort of a looking place it was, but almost recoiled when he opened the door, for it was filled so full of stale tobacco smoke that he did not see how anybody could live in it. But he knew that he would have to become accustomed to that smell before he was on the prairie very long, so he kept on and finally found a chair at the ... — Elam Storm, The Wolfer - The Lost Nugget • Harry Castlemon
... too, could not have found a more amused admirer. "Pinafore" never grew stale for her, and her brothers yielded to her fancy, or pleased it, by naming their little steamer Pinafore. She went to the theatre again and again to see this, and all the succeeding comedies by the same hands. She never seemed to weary ... — Authors and Friends • Annie Fields
... softly for fear of waking, We shall leave the gentleman in a pretty taking. Give me thy coat, hold this in thy hand: This fellow would be married to Science, I understand. But, ere we leave him, tell me another tale! Now let us make him look somewhat stale. There lie, and there be: the proverb is verified, I am neither ... — A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Robert Dodsley
... and quite as curious were often adopted to conceal dispatches, when the messenger was in danger of capture by an enemy. A boot with a hollow heel, a fragment of corn-pone too stale to tempt a starving man, a strip of adhesive plaster over a festering wound, or a ball of cotton-wool stuffed into the ear to keep out the west wind, often hid a message whose discovery would cost a life, and perhaps endanger an army. The writer has himself seen the hollow half-eagle ... — The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... out in groups; the elder ones dressed in black, emitting a stale odor from their innumerable skirts and petticoats; the young ones erect in rigid corsets which crushed their breasts and obliterated the prominent curves of their hips, displaying with stately pride, above the motley hued handkerchiefs, gold chains and enormous crucifixes. There were ... — The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... ever said it? Again, they plead for women who "revolt" from the "disfigurement" of the gestation period. The great artist Botticelli did not think this was disfigurement. What true women do? Are they not those of whom Kipling writes, "as pale and as stale as a bone"? And, if so, are these unworthy specimens of their sex worth tears? The vast majority of women bear the discomforts of gestation and the actual perils and pangs of birth with exemplary fortitude: and it is a gross slander for anyone ... — Birth Control • Halliday G. Sutherland
... Titus, no, the Emperour needs her not, Nor her, nor thee, nor any of thy stocke: Ile trust by Leisure him that mocks me once. Thee neuer: nor thy Trayterous haughty sonnes, Confederates all, thus to dishonour me. Was none in Rome to make a stale But Saturnine? Full well Andronicus Agree these Deeds, with that proud bragge of thine, That said'st, I beg'd the ... — The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... unconsciously did she paint her own family—her own self; how selfish, one and all; pursuing what mean ends; grasping and scrambling frantically for what petty prizes; ambitious for what shabby recompenses; trampling—from life's beginning to its close—through what scenes of stale dissipations and faded pleasures! "Are these the inheritors of noble blood?" thought George, as he went home quite late from his aunt's house, passing by doors whence the last guests of fashion were issuing, ... — The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... regretted that these lectures were not effectively published. Their delivery wrought a tremendous disillusion as to the novelty of our ideas and methods of propaganda; much new gospel suddenly appeared to us as stale failure; and we recognized that there had been weak men before Agamemnon, even as far back as in Cromwell's army. The necessity for mastering the history of our own movement and falling into our ordered ... — The History of the Fabian Society • Edward R. Pease
... of the faithful hand of Bolton in economical patches of the woodwork; but she was not sure that they had not been there eleven years before; and there were darnings in the carpets and curtains, which affected her with the same mixture of novelty and familiarity. Certain stale smells about the place (minor smells as compared with the prevalent odour) confused her; she could not decide whether she remembered them of old, or was reminded of the odours she used to catch in passing ... — Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... at the same door. She says: "You tell me I have no intellect. Give me a chance." "You tell me I shall only embarrass politics; let me try." The only reply is the same stale argument that said to the Jews of Europe: You are fit only to make money; you are not fit for the ranks of the army, or the ... — History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... Jonson's lyrics have been chosen. Obviously it is freshness that he generally lacks, for all his vigour, his emphatic initiative, and his overbearing and impulsive voice in verse. There is a stale breath in that hearty shout. Doubtless it is to the credit of his honesty that he did not adopt the country- phrases in vogue; but when he takes landscape as a task the effect is ill enough. I have already had the temerity to find fault for a blunder of meaning, with the passage ... — Flower of the Mind • Alice Meynell
... object that's at times the tea-urn and at times the soup-tureen, according to the nature of the last twang imparted to its contents which are the same groundwork, fended off from the traveller by a barrier of stale sponge-cakes erected atop of the counter, and lastly exposed sideways to the glare of our Missis's eye—you ask a Boy so sitiwated, next time you stop in a hurry at Mugby, for anything to drink; you take particular notice that he'll try to seem ... — Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens
... pivot of it was in certain events, political and even personal. They roughly resolve themselves into two: the marriages of Henry VIII. and the affair of the monasteries. The marriages of Henry VIII. have long been a popular and even a stale joke; and there is a truth of tradition in the joke, as there is in almost any joke if it is sufficiently popular, and indeed if it is sufficiently stale. A jocular thing never lives to be stale unless it is also serious. Henry was popular in his first days, and even foreign contemporaries ... — A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... his governess, "if you had some stale bread to rub with; for people have gotten along without a great many things which they ... — Among the Trees at Elmridge • Ella Rodman Church
... was ready for anything, as she expressed it, and no noise wearied her, felt tired at last, and longed for peace and quiet. At twelve o'clock at night, supper was served, consisting of a piece of stale dry cheese, and some cold turnovers of minced ham, which seemed to me more delicious than any pastry I had ever tasted; there was only one bottle of wine, and that was a strange one; a dark-coloured bottle with ... — The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... of elegant manners and spotless reputations; they seem to welcome my visits, and they listen to my anecdotes with unflinching attention. I have only one grievance against them; they will keep in their houses mawkish books full of stale epithets, which, when I only seem to smell their proximity, produce in me a ... — More Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith
... wall a lizard ran for shelter, at his elbow a macaw compassing the circle of its tin prison muttered dreadful oaths. Outside, as the washerwomen beat their linen clubs upon the flat rocks of the river, the hot, stale air was spanked with sharp reports. In Camaguay theirs was the only industry, the only sign of cleanliness; and recognizing that another shirt had been thrashed into subjection and rags, Everett winced. No less visibly did his own thoughts cause him to wince. Garland he had forgotten, and ... — The Lost Road • Richard Harding Davis
... given some biscuits and stale cake, looked up at them inquiringly, as much as to say, "Aren't we going home now?" Visions of his comfortable bed rose before him, and he felt very inclined for a noon-day nap. But the children told him he was not to go home yet, ... — The Carroll Girls • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... too solid flesh would melt, Thaw and resolve itself into a dew! Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd His canon 'gainst self-slaughter! O God! God! How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable, Seem to me all the uses of this world! Fie on't! ah fie! 'tis an unweeded garden, That grows to seed; things rank and gross in ... — Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... Anyhow, it is only in this way that I can account for all these expensive miseries of matrimony. I can't understand a woman in full possession of her faculties deliberately exasperating the man she has to live with—I suppose all men submit to it under protest—for these stale and stereotyped antics. ... — Select Conversations with an Uncle • H. G. Wells
... a very low, close, swampy country, and our goat's flesh began to be very stale through the heat, not only of the sun, but the muletto's back: however, we pleased ourselves we should have one more meal of it before it was too bad to eat; so, having travelled about three miles from the river, we took up our lodging on a little rising, and tied our muletto in a valley ... — Life And Adventures Of Peter Wilkins, Vol. I. (of II.) • Robert Paltock
... to look at. You are made to be queen of a ball-room; not a London ball-room, where everything, I take it, is flash and faded, painted and stale, and worn out; but down here in the country, where there is some life among us, and where a girl may be supposed to be excited over her dancing. It is in such rooms as this that hearts are won and lost; a bid made for diamonds is all that is done ... — The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope
... over yonder? He'd stale the milk out of your tea, he would, be the same token. Well, last night he got vicious and took a crack at my lines. I had rayson to suspect he'd be afther tryin' somethin' on, so I laid for him. I planted a certain mule where he could stale it an' guarded the rest four deep. Begob, ... — Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Nov. 14, 1917 • Various
... was, unfortunately, as stale a subject in 1833 as in 1883. For what particular sins of her own England has been cursed with a neighbour so bloodthirsty, so unreasonable, and so troublesome as Ireland, it would be difficult to say. ... — English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... the students warm, nourishing, and appetizing food upon which to begin the day's work on the farm and in the shops and classrooms. Nothing made him more indignant than to find the coffee served lukewarm and the cereal watery or the eggs stale. For such derelictions the guilty party was promptly located and admonition or discharge followed speedily. Probably in nothing was his instinct for putting first things first better shown than in his insistence upon ... — Booker T. Washington - Builder of a Civilization • Emmett J. Scott and Lyman Beecher Stowe
... "Some stale sponge cake is cut in slices less than an inch thick, and these are spread generously with jam and arranged on a crystal dish, blanched and chopped with Clara and Jo and all their young ... — Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 5, 1916 • Various
... born, The old world was sure forlorn Wanting thee, that aidest more The god's victories than before All his panthers, and the brawls Of his piping Bacchanals. These, as stale, we disallow, Or judge of thee meant; only thou His true Indian conquest art; And, for ivy round his dart, The reformed god now weaves A ... — The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... men should revolt and that they should retort by denying the existence of order in the business world, by declaring that the spectacle which they see is one of discord, confusion and chaos. And then we are engulfed in a controversy as stale, flat and unprofitable as that between the "theorist" ... — Supply and Demand • Hubert D. Henderson
... action of the commanders of the Advanced Guard and of the Main Body will depend on information received, and not only must information be gained by every available means, but it must also be communicated without delay to all concerned while it is fresh and before it becomes stale. It must also be remembered that negative information (e.g. that such and such a village has been thoroughly searched and no trace of the enemy found) is at least of equal value to positive information. The repetition ... — Lectures on Land Warfare; A tactical Manual for the Use of Infantry Officers • Anonymous
... dress'd, And blooming beauty is caress'd In ev'ry form art can devise— } With soothing flattery solemn lies, } And all that nymphs deluded prize } Here fashions reign, and modes prevail, And in twelve moons again grow stale, Thus ever vary, ever change, Yet ever please—a thing most strange! And here each thing is told that's new } What Loundoun or what Richlieu do, } Each secret expedition too— } And then great FREDERICK'S noble feats, When he th' imperial ... — Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis
... when, having embanked the Thames, we shall follow suit to the Seine and the Rhine, by tenanting it with cheap baths for the many. Until we do so, the stale joke of the "Great Unwashed" recoils upon ourselves, and is no less symptomatic of defective sanitary arrangements than the possibility of a drought in Bermondsey. But we are forgetting our bathers. They have gone, leaving the place to solitude—some, I hope, ... — Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... with flour, and its team of six horses, brave with brass harness and bells, a timber-carriage, and a couple of spring-carts, were drawn up on the half-moon of gravel before the porch; while, from out the open door, came a sound of voices and odour of many pipes and much stale beer. ... — The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... since that visit to Hale Castle. Then all the pleasures of life were new to her—to-day they seemed all alike flat, stale, and unprofitable. She had been surfeited with splendours and pleasures since her marriage. The wealth which Daniel Granger so freely lavished upon her had rendered these things common all at once. She looked back and ... — The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... inside the doors of the House of Representatives the rush of foul air staggered him. The reek of vile cigars and stale whiskey, mingled with the odour of perspiring negroes, was overwhelming. He paused and gasped ... — The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon
... pleasures, every one, I find are stale, and dull, and slow; And yesterday, when work was done, I felt myself so sad and low, I could have seized a sentry's gun My wearied brains out out to blow. What is it makes my blood to run? What makes my heart to ... — Ballads • William Makepeace Thackeray
... back to Willett," said Mount quietly. "As for me, my errand is done, and the strange, fishy smells of New York town stifle me. I'm stale and timid, and I like not the shape of the gallows yonder. My health requires the half-light of the woods, Mr. Renault, and the friendly shadows which lie at hand like rat-holes in a granary. I've drunk all the ale at the Bull's-Head—weak stuff ... — The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... the theater where the sheeted chairs stretched off into a circle of darkness. The stage, naked of setting; the actors whose haggard faces looked ghastly beyond the retrievement of make-up; the noisy and belated frenzy of carpenters and stage crew: all these were sights and sounds grown so stale that he found it hard to focus his attention on those nuances of interpretation which would make or ruin his play. He was conscious only of a yearning to find some quiet place where there was shade along a sea beach, and there to lie ... — The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... trying something new will sometimes fall in the endeavour. So never lose hope, however much you fall. If you have been running rather well, and then get a day when you do nothing but only means that you are stale and that your muscles and nerves need a rest. This is where the all-round Winter sportsman gains. He can spend a day on the rink or curling or tobogganing and not feel that he ... — Ski-running • Katharine Symonds Furse
... on at the king's palace, I went with Grant, by appointment, to see the queen. As usual, she kept us waiting some time, then appeared sitting by an open gate, and invited us, together with many Wakungu and Wasumbua to approach. Very lavish with stale sour pombe, she gave us all some, saving the Wasumbua, whom she addressed very angrily, asking what they wanted, as they have been months in the country. These poor creatures, in a desponding mood, defended themselves by saying, which was quite true, that they ... — The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... LXXIX. "Age cannot stale, nor creeping years impair Stout hearts as ours, nor make our strength decay. Our hoary heads the heavy helmet bear. Our joy is in the foray, day by day To reap fresh plunder, and to live by prey. Ye love to dance, and dally with ... — The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... it at all, after you had let it hang so long in the wind, if I had not taken on myself to make it agreeable to the gentleman, and cooked as neat a mess out of it as I have seen a Frenchman do out of a stale sprat?" ... — St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... o'clock. The Bullock of Beef rather too much boiled & the beer rather stale. Mem: to talk to the Cook about the first fault & to mend the second myself ... — The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope v. I. • A. M. W. Stirling (compiler)
... of health, I had gone to bed early the previous night wishing to prepare for the ordeal. Evidently I was out of condition (critics are like prize-fighters, they must keep in constant training else they go "stale"). Or was the music to blame? Schoenberg is, I said to myself, the crudest of all composers, for he mingles with his music sharp daggers at white heat, with which he pares away tiny slices of his victim's flesh. Anon he twists the knife in the fresh ... — Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... of this unsounded depth, it may well afford to repeat the same forms forever, nor incurs thereby any danger of exhausting its significance and becoming stale. Vital repetition, accordingly, goes on in Nature in a way not doubtful and diffident, but frank, open, sure, as if the game were one that could not be played out. It is now a very long while that buds have burst and grass grown; yet Spring comes forward still without bashfulness, fearing ... — Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... incursions among the outlying colonies, but could find no sign of the girl, or Mawg, in whose hands he imagined her still to be. But working warily around the outskirts of the tribe, to northward, he came at last upon the stale but unmistakable trail of a flight and a pursuit. This he followed up till the pursuit came stragglingly to an end, and the trail of the fugitive stood out alone and distinct. One clear footprint in the wet earth ... — In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... Bread—The cornpopper can be used for toasting odds and ends of stale bread which would ... — Fowler's Household Helps • A. L. Fowler
... with this ambiguous invitation, the visitor and commander disappeared down the small cuddy in the afterpart of the felucca, where was a low, stifling hole of a cabin, dank with stale tobacco-smoke, and smelling awfully of rats and roaches. There was a little round table in the middle, and on one side was a single berth, with some dirty bedding, which had not been cleaned, apparently, since the vessel was built. Light was shed ... — Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... stooping forward fearfully as I walked, in order to spare my chest what little I could. I had examined my body a few days ago, one noon up in my room, and I had stood and cried over it the whole time. I had worn the same shirt for many weeks, and it was quite stiff with stale sweat, and had chafed my skin. A little blood and water ran out of the sore place; it did not hurt much, but it was very tiresome to have this tender place in the middle of my stomach. I had no remedy for it, and it wouldn't heal of its own accord. I washed it, dried it carefully, and put on ... — Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... England and surround it by velvety lawns and ancient trees that have grown and spread with the lapse of ages, your existence would become a long and romantic daydream, and you would be in danger of living the life of a recluse and never separating yourself from these influences. Custom would never stale their infinite variety; familiarity would never breed contempt. Who tires of wandering through a gallery of the old masters? who can endure the modern in comparison? It is not the mere antiquity of all these things that charm; it is that they are beautiful in themselves, and belong ... — The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 2, February, 1891 • Various
... pressure followed by eructations of gas and regurgitation of food within a period of a quarter of an hour to several hours after eating, are present. If the esophageal dilatation be great, regurgitation may occur only after an accumulation of several days, when large quantities of stale food will be expelled. The general nutrition is impaired, and there is usually the history of weight loss to a certain level at which it is maintained with but slight variation. This is explained by the trickling of liquified food from the esophageal ... — Bronchoscopy and Esophagoscopy - A Manual of Peroral Endoscopy and Laryngeal Surgery • Chevalier Jackson
... high among them and their supporters. Bulgarin led the attack. Everything that is usually said against a new departure in literature or art was said against the Revizor. It was not original. It was improbable, impossible, coarse, vulgar; lacked plot. It turned on a stale anecdote that everybody knew. It was a rank farce. The characters were mere caricatures. "What sort of a town was it that did not hold a ... — The Inspector-General • Nicolay Gogol
... seisin, to the vulturous sun. Wasted, yet daily renewed, enduring, yet murmuring not, he hurled defiance at Fat, scoffed at the vain rage of Jupiter Pinguis, and proffered to the world below a new life in his fiery gift of stale bran-bread. Would you could have heard that vesper hymn stealing hirsute through the mellow evening-air! It sung the Peptic Saints and Martyrs, explored the bowels of old Time, and at last died away in dulcet cadence as it chanted the glories of the coming Age of Grits. Again, in the silent night-watches, ... — The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... too much studied at our universities. This seems a science to which the meanest intellects are equal. I forget who it is that says, "All men might understand mathematics if they would."' Goldsmith's Present Stale of Polite ... — Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... a start, to find the room flooded with golden sunlight. A glance at the clock on the mantel-shelf showed that it was after nine. My body was cramped and stiff and I felt stale and musty from having slept in my clothes. It was only after a cold shower and a complete change that I felt refreshed enough to pick up the threads where I had dropped them ... — 32 Caliber • Donald McGibeny
... he's not a common boy? he doesn't whine,' she remarked, and handed me a stale bun, saying, 'Here, Master Charles, and ... — The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... poor and plain need at all envy, and that instead of the perennial smell of the grass and woods and shores, their typical redolence is of soaps and essences, very rare may be, but suggesting the barber shop—something that turns stale and musty in ... — Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... I exclaimed. And I dare say I writhed on my seat. 'As far as I am concerned the jest is a stale one, sir, ... — A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... and the drawers belonging to the dresser, formed the seating accommodation. The floor of the room was covered with all manner of debris, dust, dirt, fragments of old mortar and plaster. A sack containing cement was leaning against one of the walls, and a bucket containing some stale whitewash stood ... — The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... wealth and splendor, it held forth the prospect of a fair field and no favor to every newcomer. There it is not possible to keep in thraldom the fear less heart and the active intellect. There, no petty circle of society can fetter the energies or enfeeble the endeavors. No mocking, stale conventionalities can usurp the place of natural laws, and put genius and talent into the accursed strait-jacket of routine! Thither will I go. I remembered the late conference with my friend Kingsley, and the whole course of my reasoning on the subject of my removal was despatched in half an ... — Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... just so. Marriage was good to her still. Not yet, though but a thing of this world, as she and her husband were agreed, had it begun to grow stale and wearisome. She was troubled. It was with no reaction against the opinions to which she had practically yielded; but not the less had the serpent of the truth bitten her, for it can bite through the gauze of whatever opinions or theories. Conscious, persistent wrong may harden ... — Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... the two met, in a display of aggressive tennis so remarkable that the boy was helpless before it. Richards was stale and below form, but even if he had been at his best, he could not have withstood Johnston's attack. Little Bill followed this up by sweeping Williams off the court by another marvellous streak of well ... — The Art of Lawn Tennis • William T. Tilden, 2D
... tenderly as Lamb saw them. For days afterwards you will not be able to look upon a child without recalling Lamb's portrayal of the grace of childhood. He will have shared with you his perception of beauty. If you possess children, he will have renewed for you the charm which custom does very decidedly stale. It is further to be noticed that the measure of his success in picturing the children is the measure of his success in his main effect. The more real they seem, the more touching is the revelation of the fact that they do not exist, and never have existed. ... — Literary Taste: How to Form It • Arnold Bennett
... beautiful district, which has acquired such a reputation since so many of the best people from town have taken villas here; is his Majesty to make the journey in one of these third-class carriages, with the chance of travelling in company with tradesman stinking of stale cheese?—with folk who, moreover—well, perhaps in common decency I ought not to go on, as ladies are present. (Laughter.) "Economy," I hear some one suggest. That word is in great favour nowadays. But I should ... — Three Dramas - The Editor—The Bankrupt—The King • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... the family lawyer of the aged man concerning the responsibilities of being his heiress. So there you have it. I doubt whether anything even temporarily unpleasant so much as suggests itself; for "O. DOUGLAS" has apparently discovered that, in a world still struggling with stale peace-bread, her pink sugar-cakes are not only cheerful to cook but ... — Punch or the London Charivari, October 20, 1920 • Various
... the net was; the black fellows closing in behind, followed quickly. Poor Noorunglely floundered into the net, up rushed a black fellow and, seizing her, wrung her neck. Having secured her, they would next secure her eggs; that they might be a trifle stale was a matter of ... — The Euahlayi Tribe - A Study of Aboriginal Life in Australia • K. Langloh Parker
... eyelids would lift over the great, old-world eyes; upon which, like a clayey monster refusing to be informed with heavenly fire, he rolled to the right of his chair and to the left, and pitched forward, and insisted upon being inanimate. Brought at last to a condition of stale consciousness, he looked at his master long, and uttered surprisingly "Farmer, there's queer things going on in this house," and then relapsed to a combat with Mrs. Sumfit, regarding the candle; she saying that it was not to be entrusted to him, and he sullenly contending ... — The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the creeds, but stale the schools, Revamped as the mode may veer, But Orm from the schools to the beaches strays And, finding a Conch hoar with time, he delays And reverent lifts it to ear. That Voice, pitched in far monotone, Shall it swerve? shall it deviate ever? The ... — John Marr and Other Poems • Herman Melville
... stated Jennie Stone solemnly, "burned incense upon any and all occasions—red letter days, labor days, celebrating Columbus Day and the morning after, I presume. But we moderns burn gasoline. And, phew! I believe I should prefer the stale smoke of incense in the unventilated pyramids of Egypt to this odor of gas. O-o-o-o, Tommy, do ... — Ruth Fielding Down East - Or, The Hermit of Beach Plum Point • Alice B. Emerson
... as he drew his hand away, for he felt that this time she was looking at him and not at a whimsical caricature of his brother. "Why, what have I done now?" he asked, lamely. "I can't remember having sent you any stale candy or ... — The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... a boy and girl. Yellow, meagre, ragged, scowling, wolfish; but prostrate, too, in their humility. Where graceful youth should have filled their features out, and touched them with its freshest tints, a stale and shriveled hand, like that of age, had pinched, and twisted them, and pulled them into shreds. Where angels might have sat enthroned, devils lurked, and glared out menacing. No change, no degradation, ... — A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various
... were kept in motion by the heat of the sun, causing breezes and winds, it would become stale and wouldn't do at all for our lung-bellows to use. The air we breathe must be kept moving and fresh if it is to make us feel bright and strong and happy. Mother Nature has given us miles upon miles and oceans upon oceans of this clear, fresh air to breathe—"all outdoors," ... — The Child's Day • Woods Hutchinson
... away from it and mapped out their own territory. The whole metaphysical realm consisted in nothing more than creatures of fancy and heavenly things at the precise time when real beings and earthly things were beginning to concentrate all interest upon themselves. Metaphysics had become stale. Helvetius and Condillac were born in the same year that Malebranche and Arnauld, the last great French metaphysicians of the seventeenth ... — Selected Essays • Karl Marx
... the meal. We had each of us a fresh cocoa-nut with a hole bored in it, containing at least a pint of clear, sweet- tasting water. This is erroneously termed by us "Milk," but it only becomes thick and milky when the cocoa-nut is very stale, in which condition it is ... — A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... out of the eating-house into the gathering twilight. The lamps were springing into light in long straight lines down the dusky streets. The evening breeze blew in from the great lake tempering the stale heat of the day. Boys were crying the late editions of the newspapers with "Full account arrest o' the Farnham burglar!" He bought one, but did not stop to open it. He folded it into the smallest possible compass, and stuffed it into his pocket, ... — The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... are perhaps too much studied at our universities. This seems a science to which the meanest intellects are equal. I forget who it is that says, "All men might understand mathematics if they would."' Goldsmith's Present Stale of ... — Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... this was an opening! I registered malt, hops, ale, and small-beer, till I began to feel as though the world was one vast brewhouse; and calculated, added, and subtracted pounds, shillings, and pence, until all other lore appeared "stale, flat, and unprofitable." I was in this counting-house four years, and was, finally, discharged by my prudent principal as an unthrifty servant, for having, during a day of unusual business, cut up two entire quills, and overturned the inkstand on a new ledger! Again ... — The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 265, July 21, 1827 • Various
... omission, the Worcestershire sauce is left out by braggarts who aver that they can take it or leave it. And, in these degenerate days, when it comes to substitutions for the original beer or stale pale ale, we find the gratings of great Cheddars wet down with mere California sherry or even ginger ale—yet so far, thank goodness, no Cokes. And there's tomato juice out of a can into the Rum Turn Tiddy, and sometimes celery soup in place of ... — The Complete Book of Cheese • Robert Carlton Brown
... sweeping sawdust across the sidewalk. In the windows that flanked the open doors of his shop dusty cigar boxes were piled. The shelves within were empty. Harlan recognized the nature of the establishment. It was a grog-shop in its partial disguise. He got the odor of stale liquors from the open ... — The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... must be thoroughly cooled before being put into box or jar. If not, the steam will cause them to mold quickly. Crusts and pieces of stale bread should be dried in a slow oven, rolled into fine crumbs on a board, and put away for croquettes, cutlets or anything that is breaded. Pieces of stale bread can be used for toast, griddle- cakes and puddings and for dressing for poultry and other kinds of ... — Miss Parloa's New Cook Book • Maria Parloa
... of Italian piety excited among the contemporary Greeks. On occasion of the quarrel with the Aetolians it was reported of the Roman commander-in-chief that during battle he was solely occupied in praying and sacrificing like a priest; whereas Polybius with his somewhat stale moralizing calls the attention of his countrymen to the political usefulness of this piety, and admonishes them that a state cannot consist of wise men alone, and that such ceremonies are very convenient for ... — The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... pleasant for you to do to-day. I am not sure that we can keep up the pace yesterday set us, for it was a pretty thrilling one. Robberies and arrests do not come every day, to say nothing of flotillas of ships and Wild West shows. However, we will do the best we can not to let the day go stale by contrast. But first I must dictate a few letters and glance over the morning paper. This won't take me long and while I am doing it I would suggest that you go into the writing room and send a letter to your mother. I will join you there in half an hour and we will do whatever you like before ... — Steve and the Steam Engine • Sara Ware Bassett
... stainless purity all too lustreless a gift for him she loves, may fancy what were the feelings of Madeline, as love, with its royal longing to give, was born in her heart. With what lilies of virgin innocence would she fain have rewarded her lover! but her lilies were yellow, their fragrance was stale. With what an unworn crown would she have crowned him! but she had rifled her maiden regalia to adorn an impostor. And love came to her now, not as to others, but whetting the fangs of remorse and blowing ... — Dr. Heidenhoff's Process • Edward Bellamy
... view even though it reached him in a fragmentary and subliminal way. Day after day he told himself that he would have all his faculties at the ready before the train swung into the curve. But morning after morning he was still emerging from the stale fumes of the preceding night's beer, or he allowed himself to be hypnotized by the sound of the wheels or fascinated by the jiggling of another passenger's earlobe at that critical moment. The train had always entered the clangorous ... — In the Control Tower • Will Mohler
... schooner was called the Lightning, she was by no means a clipper. She was built on lines which were fashionable forty years before, when the shipwright held that a ship's stability must be risked if she was one inch longer than five times her beam. She was an old vessel, but dry as a stale cheese; wallowed rather than rolled, yet was stiff; would sit upright with erect spars, like the cocked ears of a horse, in breezes which bowed passing vessels down to their wash-streaks. Her round bows bruised the sea, and when it entered her head to take to her heels, she would wash through ... — The Honour of the Flag • W. Clark Russell
... resolved that age should not wither nor custom stale the charms of the beloved volumes. And that he should love them to the end. His mother thought that he might grow tired of them some day and ... — The Tin Soldier • Temple Bailey
... Trade Review. I had in mind that something of this kind would be expected by my fellow steel manufacturers, and if we waited until the full report of the Commission was made, the information would be stale. This article appeared in many of the trade journals and is ... — A Journey Through France in War Time • Joseph G. Butler, Jr.
... becomes a pageant that hath ceased to entertain. As I moved through the mist and the silence, and felt the tug of the thong that bound me to the wrist of the savage who stalked before me, I cared not how soon they made an end, seeing how stale and unprofitable were all ... — To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... that. Though indeed she took herself quite seriously as a conjurer, she brought to her art neither conscience nor ambition, in any true sense of those words. Since her debut, she had learned nothing and forgotten nothing. The stale and narrow repertory which she had acquired from Edward Gibbs was all she had to offer; and this, and her marked lack of skill, she eked out with the self-same "patter" that had sufficed that impossible young man. It was especially her jokes that now sent ... — Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... supporters of State government ignored the latter charge and replied to the taxation argument by quoting the provisions of the Distribution Act. Altogether the discussion lacked freshness, force, and vigor—it was stale and hackneyed. Two years of growth and reflection had wrought a change in sentiment. The public mind had evidently settled down in favor of State organization. At the elections in April the people returned a large majority in favor of calling a ... — History of the Constitutions of Iowa • Benjamin F. Shambaugh
... playful children use, Has burnt to tinder a stale last year's news, The flame extinct he views the roving fire, There goes my lady, and there goes the squire, There goes the parson, oh! illustrious spark, And there, scarce ... — Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... forerunner of Heaven—His most excellent gift of charity." Then, in one generous burst, she prayed for love divine, and there was many a sigh and many a tear, and at the close an "Amen!" such as, alas! we shall never, I fear, hear burst from a hundred bosoms where men repeat beautiful but stale words ... — A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... Shuttles weaving back and forth Amid the warp! (Oh, listen ye!) Can sightless touch—can vision keen Hunt where the Winds of the World have been And searching, learn what rumors mean? (Nay, ye who are wise! Nay, listen ye!) When tracks are crossed and scent is stale, 'Tis fools who shout—the fast who fail! But wise ... — Winds of the World • Talbot Mundy
... "Stale," said Aladdin. "Might as well have 'Grandfather's Clock.' What's that thing you were humming at prep. ... — Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... requirement. To deal adequately with the neurasthenic is to have unending sympathy and patience and an energy that is limitless. Without such energy or endurance the physician either slumps to a prescriber of tonics and sedatives, a dispenser of such stale advice as "Don't worry" and "You need a rest", or else ... — The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson
... expense of much coal, now so dear. On a small farm extra hands have to be engaged, the straw has to be stacked or carried to the barns, and the same applies to the chaff and rowens. If the weather is damp, straw, chaff, and rowens get stale, mouldy, and unpalatable to the stock, a heavy charge is made for the hire of the machine and the machine men, and the latter require food and drink or payment instead. The machine breaks and bruises many grains of corn, which are thereby damaged for seed or malting, whereas the ... — Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... on yesterday's manna; we can gather it fresh to-day. Compassion becomes stale when it becomes thoughtless. It is new thought that keeps our pity strong. If our perception of need can remain vivid, as vivid as though we had never seen it before, our sympathies will never fail. The fresh eye insures the sensitive heart. And our God's compassions are so ... — My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett
... shaft beside me sent up its dank breath of stale powder fumes, and the acrid odor was as the fragrance of a fertile field ripe for the sickle. In this reeking pit at my elbow, gold, the subtle, the potent, the arbiter of all destinies, stood ready to fight for me. The liberty which I had stolen, but which had first been stolen from me, ... — Branded • Francis Lynde
... wise, they would rather go to a brothel-house; for there most mistresses have left behind them their maiden-heads, of blessed memory: and those, which would not go off in that market, are carried about by bawds, and sold at doors, like stale flesh in baskets. Then, for your honesty, or justness, as you call it, to your keepers, your kept-mistress is originally a punk; and let the cat be changed into a lady never so formally, she still retains ... — The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... "Are you hurt bad? Can I bind it up or wash it for you? I've got plenty of hot water here, and it's bad letting a wound get stale." ... — The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... though he had not seen it. Along the endless flat potato-fields, broken by pine-groves under whose sultry shadow negro cabins sweltered, the heat clung persistently. The show-tent was always filled with a stale scent ... — The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... superfluity of the others. When all was over, he dressed; then played high at piquet or hombre; or rode out, if it was absolutely necessary. All was now over for the day. He supped copiously with his familiars: was a great eater, of wonderful gluttony; a connoisseur in no dish, liked fish much, but the stale and stinking better than the good. The meal prolonged itself in theses and disputes, and above all in praise ... — Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... be off in the yellow coach, but they had not long started before she began to suffer. The moving panorama of desolate landscape, rocky coast, rough sea, moor and mountain, with the motion of the coach, and the smell of stale tobacco and beer in inn-parlours where they waited to change horses, nauseated her to faintness. Her sensitive nervous system received too many vivid impressions at once; the intense melancholy of the scenes they passed ... — The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... was finished the party returned to the Exposition. There was such a dense crowd in the galleries, it seemed impossible to penetrate it. An odor of perspiring humanity, a stale smell of old gowns and coats, made an atmosphere at once heavy and sickening. No one looked at the pictures any more, but at faces and toilets, seeking out well-known persons; and at times came a great jostling ... — Strong as Death • Guy de Maupassant
... than it is like Job, and describes rather the restlessness of a largely-gifted nature which, missing the guidance of the heart, plays experiments with life, trying knowledge, pleasure, dissipation, one after another, and hating them all; and then hating life itself as a weary, stale, flat, unprofitable mockery. The temper exhibited here will probably be perennial in the world. But the remedy for it will scarcely be more clear under other circumstances than it is at present, and ... — Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... dug trenches of a year ago have given way to the peaked mounds in which turnips wait transplanting. Where there were vast stretches of mud, scarred with intrenchments, with the wheel tracks of guns and ammunition carts, with stale, ill-smelling straw, the carcasses of oxen and horses, and the bodies of men, is now a smiling landscape, with miles of growing grain, green vegetables, ... — With the French in France and Salonika • Richard Harding Davis
... Foul and filthy as the room is, foul and filthy as the air is, it is not easy to perceive what fumes those are which most oppress the senses in it; but through the general sickliness and faintness, and the odour of stale tobacco, there comes into the lawyer's mouth the bitter, vapid ... — Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... great many cows—hundreds of cows. The mouse stopped at the pasture-ground of these cows. Now, the cowherds were so poor they could not buy bread every day, and sometimes they ate bread which was twelve days old. When the mouse arrived, the cowherds were eating their bread, and it was very stale and mouldy. ... — Indian Fairy Tales • Anonymous
... the innumerable little states of the Peninsula,—halted every other mile to show his passport, and robbed by customs officers in every color of shabby uniform and every variety of cocked hat,—the present railroad period is one of but stale and insipid flavor. Much of local life and color remains, of course; but the hurried traveller sees little of it, and, passed from one grand hotel to another, without material change in the cooking or the methods of extortion, he might nearly as well remain at Paris. The Italians, ... — Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... suppose anything very wonderful will happen in them," said Felix pessimistically. To Felix, just then, life was flat, stale and unprofitable because it was his turn to go home ... — The Golden Road • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... P.M. Beef juice and one egg; or, broth and meat; care being taken that the meat is always rare and scraped or very finely divided; beefsteak, mutton chop, or roast beef may be given. Very stale bread, or two pieces of zwieback. Prune pulp or baked apple, one to two ... — The Care and Feeding of Children - A Catechism for the Use of Mothers and Children's Nurses • L. Emmett Holt
... frying, never to use any oil, butter, lard, or drippings, but what is quite clean, fresh, and free from salt. Any thing dirty spoils the look; any thing bad-tasted or stale, spoils the flavour; and salt ... — The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... of the quay, abrupt, confused, mingled with the vapors, instantly concealed from sight, produced the effect of an escarpment of the infinite. Nothing was to be seen, but the hostile chill of the water and the stale odor of the wet stones could be felt. A fierce breath rose from this abyss. The flood in the river, divined rather than perceived, the tragic whispering of the waves, the melancholy vastness of the arches of the bridge, ... — Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... to spare my chest what little I could. I had examined my body a few days ago, one noon up in my room, and I had stood and cried over it the whole time. I had worn the same shirt for many weeks, and it was quite stiff with stale sweat, and had chafed my skin. A little blood and water ran out of the sore place; it did not hurt much, but it was very tiresome to have this tender place in the middle of my stomach. I had no remedy for it, and it wouldn't heal of its own accord. I washed it, dried it carefully, and put ... — Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... dead men. They lie so close to the surface that a shell, anywhere near, brings them up. Three quarters of your casualties are from disease. The wound doesn't heal; it gets gangrene and tetanus from the stale old soil. And instead of having a good fighting man back in trim in a fortnight, you have a sick man in a London hospital for a couple of months, and a ... — Young Hilda at the Wars • Arthur Gleason
... had worked hard each afternoon, and conscientiously, only to be filled at the last with despair and despondence. She had read, re-read, written and re-written it, until she knew every word by heart, and all seemed stale, dull, and trivial. ... — Anxious Audrey • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... the Rue de Rennes, beside a plot of waste and, was a stall where an old woman sold dusty ginger-bread and sticks of stale barley-sugar. She had a face the colour of brick dust under a striped cotton sun-bonnet, and eyes of a pale, steely blue. Her whole stock-in-trade had not cost a couple of francs, and on windy days the white dust from houses building ... — The Aspirations of Jean Servien • Anatole France
... by deriding the pretensions of the Americans. The moon served as a pretext for a thousand stale puns and a score of ballads, in which bad taste contested the palm with ignorance. But as formerly the French paid before singing, so now they paid after having had their laugh, and they subscribed for a sum of 1,253,930 francs. At that price they ... — Jules Verne's Classic Books • Jules Verne
... ungrammatical, roughly clad men, and of having no maid to serve her and not even the comfort of privacy, loomed large in the mind of Mrs. Singleton Corey. Never before in her life had she drunk coffee with condensed cream in it, or eaten burned bread with stale butter, and boiled beans and bacon. Never before had she shared the bed of another woman, or slept in a borrowed nightgown that was too tight in the arms. To Mrs. Singleton Corey these things bore all the earmarks ... — The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... life by a perfect stranger! This thing happened to me at Bristol, some time ago, in the way I am about to relate. I slept at a Commercial Hotel, and early next morning was joined in the big empty coffee-room, smelling of stale tobacco, by an intensely respectable- looking old gentleman, whose hair was of silvery whiteness, and who wore gold-rimmed spectacles and a heavy gold watch-chain with many seals attached thereto; whose linen was of the finest, and whose outer ... — A Traveller in Little Things • W. H. Hudson
... historian—the historian, in fact—and he persisted heroically in his task, rereading stale paragraphs and checking dreary dates, going over battles and conquests and invasions and interregnums. Despite his mood and despite the heat, the manuscript probably would have arrived at his publishers chronologically complete. So complete, in ... — Collector's Item • Robert F. Young
... her Kim? But now the neighbourhood remonstrance roars, He's naughty still, and naughty out of doors. 'Tis well enough that he should tell Mamma Her sons are tired of being what they are, But to give friendly bears, expecting buns, A paper full of stale unwholesome Huns— One might be led to think, from all this work, That little master's growing quite ... — Poems: New and Old • Henry Newbolt
... thirst, comrades, drink only from your canteens. If the canteens fail, never fill them from flowing water unless the Indians also drink from the stream. There are always small pools to be found, and, though their water may be warm and stale, it is not likely to be poisoned, as the streams ... — The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel
... voyage, pack them aboard like sheep, and cross the Atlantic, either to New York or to Quebec, just as they have been able to entice a cargo to either port. Then come the horrors of a long voyage and short provisions, and high prices for stale salt junk and biscuit; and, at the end, if illness has been on board, the quarantine, that most dreadful visitation of all—for hope deferred maketh ... — Canada and the Canadians - Volume I • Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... Letters and Certain Sonnets, 1592," the year when Nash's "Summer's Last Will and Testament" was performed: "They wrong him much with their epitaphs and solemn devices, that entitle him not at the least the second Toy of London, the stale of ... — A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... all I, too, could catch the faint odor of stale tobacco. No time was to be lost, however, and while Craig set to work rapidly going through the contents of a desk in the corner, I glanced over the contents of a drawer of a ... — The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... the oil of the machines and the new leather—a combination which, added to the stale odours of the building, was not pleasant even in cold weather. The floor, though regularly swept every evening, presented a littered surface. Not the slightest provision had been made for the comfort of the employees, the idea being that something was gained by giving ... — Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... the afternoon. The air in our compartment was hot and stale. When we opened the window, the wind blew in on our faces in parching gusts. But it was grateful after the smells of cabbage, soup, tobacco, and dirty Jews that we had been breathing for ... — Trapped in 'Black Russia' - Letters June-November 1915 • Ruth Pierce
... of my contemporaries—that is, men between thirty and forty-five—have given the world one single drop of alcohol?... Science and technical knowledge are passing through a great period now, but for our sort it is a flabby, stale, dull time.... The causes of this are not to be found in our stupidity, our lack of talent, or our insolence, but in a disease which for the artist is worse than syphilis or sexual exhaustion. We lack "something," that is true, and that means ... — Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry
... | BRYANT, a man reverenced among men, a poet great among | | poets. | | | | This is a Library of over 500 Volumes in one book, whose | | contents, of no ephemeral nature or interest, will never | | grow old or stale. It can be, and will be, read and re-read | | with pleasure as long as its leaves hold together. Over 800 | | pages beautifully printed, choicely illustrated, handsomely | | bound. Sold only through Agents, ... — Punchinello, Vol. 2, No. 36, December 3, 1870 • Various
... it's rather stale to be in the school. I don't see why your fellows should be looked down on, but ... — Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... Glover, "that at one time he [Gourgaud] might have taken the Duke of Wellington prisoner, but he desisted from it, knowing the effusion of blood it would have occasioned."[550]—It is charitable to assume that this utterance was inspired by some liquid stronger than the alleged "stale water that had been to India ... — The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... for ordinary minds to attempt giving utterance to such simplicities. On their tongues truths become truisms. Sentiments, that seem always fresh, falling from the lips of moral wisdom, are stale in the mouths of men uninitiated in the greater mysteries. Genius colours common words with an impressive light, that makes them moral to all eyes—breathes into them an affecting music, that steals into all hearts like a revelation and a religion. ... — Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... wounded. And not just once, but twice. Yes, I know a lot of things. I remember forms, and gaits, and faces; and you can't disguise a person that's done me a kindness so that I won't know him thereafter wherever I find him. I know the art of searching for a trail, and I know the stale track from the fresh. I can keep a trail all by myself, with Buffalo Bill asleep in the saddle; ask him—he will tell you so. Many a time, when he has ridden all night, he has said to me at dawn, "Take the watch, Boy; if the ... — A Horse's Tale • Mark Twain
... a heap of moistened plaster was lying in a corner. On the shelves, formerly occupied by fruit and vegetables, were scattered some casts from the antique, covered with a tracery of cinder-like dust which had gradually collected there. A wash-house kind of dampness, a stale smell of moist clay, rose from the floor. And the wretchedness of this sculptor's studio and the dirt attendant upon the profession were made still more conspicuous by the wan light that filtered through the shop windows besmeared ... — His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... minutes Peter Pupkin was off again and heading straight for the Pepperleighs' house, poet or no poet, and, what was more to the point, he carried with him three great bricks of Eliot's ice cream—in green, pink and brown layers. He struck the verandah just at the moment when Browning was getting too stale and dreary for words. His brain was all sizzling and jolly with the bromo-seltzer, and when he fetched out the ice cream bricks and Zena ran to get plates and spoons to eat it with, and Pupkin went with her to help ... — Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town • Stephen Leacock
... should have a clean wholesome odor, characteristic of their particular class. The odor of decomposition can be readily detected; stale and musty odors ... — The Home Medical Library, Volume V (of VI) • Various
... salmon, stuff with one-half a loaf of stale bread moistened with hot water, seasoned with one-fourth a cup of butter, salt and pepper to taste, and one-half a cup of capers. Mix all well, and bind with one beaten egg. Place the salmon on the rack of a baking-pan in a very hot oven, cover with thin slices of bacon, and let ... — American Cookery - November, 1921 • Various
... sharply. — Well, go, take your choice. Stay here and rot with Naisi or go to Conchubor in Emain. Conchubor's a wrinkled fool with a swelling belly on him, and eyes falling downward from his shining crown; Naisi should be stale and weary. Yet there are many roads, Deirdre, and I tell you I'd liefer be bleaching in a bog-hole than living on without a touch of kindness from your eyes and voice. It's a poor thing to be so lonesome you'd squeeze kisses on a cur dog's nose. DEIRDRE. ... — Deirdre of the Sorrows • J. M. Synge
... jubata), was not uncommon here. After the first few weeks of residence, I ran short of fresh provisions. The people of the neighbourhood had sold me all the fowls they could spare; I had not yet learned to eat the stale and stringy salt-fish which is the staple food in these places, and for several days I had lived on rice-porridge, roasted bananas, and farinha. Florinda asked me whether I could eat Tamandua. I told her almost anything in the shape of flesh would ... — The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... Don Andres Xiron incurred excommunication for having thus presented himself, the archbishop likewise incurred it when he appeared there. But no consideration was given to this, and the point of fuerza is a stale one in Espana, and consequently it was not discussed. The archbishop was notified of a royal provision issued by Don Phelipe, by which he was ordered to absolve the auditor Marcos Zapata. The archbishop obeyed it, and that afternoon he sent ... — The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXV, 1635-36 • Various
... Mr. Seward again sent forth to Europe and to her Cabinets, one of his stale, and by no means Delphic oracles, predicting the success of Burnside's campaign, and immediately follows a bloody and disgraceful calamity! Such is always the result of Seward's prophecies! A diplomat calls Seward the evil eye of ... — Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... silently preparing a cup of tea, which, with a quantity of sea-biscuit, a little cold salt pork, and a hunch of stale bread, constituted his supper. Pup watched his every movement with an expression of earnest solicitude, combined with goodwill, in ... — The Lighthouse • Robert Ballantyne
... foods. Some of the simpler compounds of which flavors are composed may exist in entirely different form or combination in food products; as for example, pineapple flavoring is ethyl butrate. This can be prepared by combination of butyric acid from stale butter with alcohol which supplies the ethyl radical. The chemical union of the two produces the new compound, ethyl butrate, the distinctive flavoring substance of the pineapple. Banana flavor can be made from stale butter, caustic soda, and chloroform. None of these ... — Human Foods and Their Nutritive Value • Harry Snyder
... drops his pretty head And seems to be dispirited, And then his little mistress says: "Poor Dickie misses his chickweed, Or else I've fed him musty seed As stale as last year's oranges!" But all the time I wonder If we half comprehend In sweet song-words The thought of birds, Or why so oft their raptures In sudden ... — Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... is not much superior to newspaper literature. Its forte is to cultivate sex excesses: it renders homage either to shallow enlightenment or to stale prejudices and superstitions. Its general purpose is to represent the capitalist order of society, all its shortcomings notwithstanding, which are conceded in trifles, as the ... — Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... show it, but Pepsy was frankly in despair. In her free hours she sat in their little shelter, her thin, freckly hands busy with the worsted masterpiece that she was working. Pee-wee, at least, had his appetite to console him, but she had no relish for the stale lemonade and melting, oozy taffy which stood pathetically on the counter ... — Pee-wee Harris • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... came out in groups; the elder ones dressed in black, emitting a stale odor from their innumerable skirts and petticoats; the young ones erect in rigid corsets which crushed their breasts and obliterated the prominent curves of their hips, displaying with stately pride, above the motley hued handkerchiefs, gold chains and enormous ... — The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... political one. It has long been the temporal bulwark around the Mormon community. Results which have been seen in Utah affairs, preservative of the Mormon power and people, unaccountable to 'the outsider' except on the now stale supposition that 'the Mormon Church has purchased Congress,' may be better traced to the silent but potent influence of Z. C. M. I. among the ruling business men of America, just as John Sharp's position as one of the directors of U. P. R—-r,—a compeer among such ... — The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... jokes, however stale, He jumps about and wags his tail, And Human People clap their hands And think he ... — The Kitten's Garden of Verses • Oliver Herford
... trough of three hundred feet long, fifty broad, and eight deep; which, being well pitched, to prevent leaking, was placed on the floor along the wall in an outer room of the palace. It had a cock near the bottom to let out the water, when it began to grow stale; and two servants could easily fill it in half-an-hour. Here I often used to row for my own diversion, as well as that of the queen and her ladies, who thought themselves well entertained with my skill and agility. Sometimes I would put up my sail, and then my business was only to steer, while ... — Gulliver's Travels - Into Several Remote Regions of the World • Jonathan Swift
... wasn't sure," said the restaurant keeper. "The man who runs the hotel, Mr. Brown, had a lot of trouble with him because he wouldn't pay his bill—said it was too high. Then he came here once and said the meat wasn't fresh and the bread was stale and sour. I came close to pitching him out. Don't let him walk over you—if he does ... — Dave Porter in the Far North - or, The Pluck of an American Schoolboy • Edward Stratemeyer
... of Bolton in economical patches of the woodwork; but she was not sure that they had not been there eleven years before; and there were darnings in the carpets and curtains, which affected her with the same mixture of novelty and familiarity. Certain stale smells about the place (minor smells as compared with the prevalent odour) confused her; she could not decide whether she remembered them of old, or was reminded of the odours she used to catch in passing the pantry on ... — Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... meerly ratable accordingly, fifty or a hundred pounds as his suit is. His main ambition is to get a knight-hood, and then an old lady, which if he be happy in, he fills the stage and a coach so much longer: Otherwise, himself and his cloaths grow stale together, and he is buried commonly ere he dies in the gaol, or ... — Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... He's driving somebody's car. And I found the job for him through my paper. When he has money enough he plans to tramp off into God's green world of spring to get himself in trim. Says he's stale and tired and thinking wrong. In the fall he's going abroad for me and that, Kenny, is about all ... — Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... my bird. Thy shape invisible retain thou still: The trumpery in my house, go bring it hither For stale to catch these thieves. ... — The Tempest • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... Boiled with her sighs, in giving up the ghost, That for her late deceased husband died; Into the same then let a woman breathe, That being chid did never word reply; With one thrice married's prayers, that did bequeath A legacy to stale virginity. If this receipt have not the power to win me, Little I'll say, but think ... — Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Idea, by Michael Drayton; Fidessa, by Bartholomew Griffin; Chloris, by William Smith • Michael Drayton, Bartholomew Griffin, and William Smith
... way they serve their Congress Water at the Cataract House? They put a big lump of ice in a tumbler, take a bottle from a shelf, pour the warm, stale fluid, (tasting like perspiration, as one might fancy,) into this glass, and expect you to wait till it has grown cool enough to be palatable. Well, if you wait, you lose what little life there is left in the stuff; ... — Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 24, September 10, 1870 • Various
... many men should revolt and that they should retort by denying the existence of order in the business world, by declaring that the spectacle which they see is one of discord, confusion and chaos. And then we are engulfed in a controversy as stale, flat and unprofitable as that between the ... — Supply and Demand • Hubert D. Henderson
... McCoys, they were reckless mountain boys," whose history is now as stale as that of the Capone mob. Their feud, which ... threatened to provoke a civil war between two states, gave rise to the general belief in the lasting endurance of the hill dwellers. A race must be hardy as the ... — Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... But the Jews make a laughing-stock of modern Hebraists when they convince them that the Holy Scriptures can not be understood except through grammatical rules and an exact science of vowel-points. No exposition is so absurd but that they defend and polish it with their stale grammatical rules. ... — Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... of an Expert, a detective, brave and shrewd. Hagar says that I am like my father, and that I have inherited his talents. When I recall the knot we have just unravelled, the war we have just waged, I can but think that my father's chosen calling may have become mine. If the world ever grows stale, if I pine for change or excitement or absorbing occupation, I can go to my father's chief and say, 'I am the daughter of Lionel Payne, the Expert, and I have inherited a measure of my father's talents.' Do you think he will trust his knotty ... — Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch
... white, ambling Golden house, with its peculiar smell of stale lamb gravy, and on the old broken couch—where her father had snored all through every bright ... — The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... pieces stale sponge cake or lady fingers, a few macaroons, some French cherries and apricots (glace), and mix all together. Make a custard of 1 quart milk and 6 eggs, and when cooked, reserve 1 cupful for a sauce, and add to the remainder 1/4 ounce of gelatine. Put the mixture of cake and fruit in an ice cream ... — The Cookery Blue Book • Society for Christian Work of the First Unitarian Church, San
... English {17} people—hard-working, much-suffering, poor, patient, and almost absolutely indifferent to changes in governments and the humors and struggles of parties. "These wrangling jars of Whig and Tory," says Dean Swift, "are stale and old as Troy-town story." But if the principles were old, the titles of the parties were new. Steele, in 1710, published in the Tatler a letter from Pasquin of Rome to Isaac Bickerstaff, asking for "an account of those two religious orders which have lately sprung up ... — A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... trudging from one indifferent editor to another peddling "space." And why not? Mae Smith had been young and good-looking once, also a local celebrity in her way when she had signed a column in a daily. But she had grown stale with the grind, and having no special talent or personality had been easily replaced when a new Managing Editor came. Now, though chipper as a sparrow, she was always in need of a ... — The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... own cage into the main room Babbitt mourned, "McGoun's a good stenog., smart's a whip, but Stan Graff and all those bums—" The zest of the spring morning was smothered in the stale office air. ... — Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... night, he felt, were going to shape into the actuality of fight; but what an hour to go out fighting! Why should they be hauled out to fight in the dark? Why could not men wait for light? Wait until the world was aired? He was thirsty and uncomfortable, with the taste of stale tobacco in his mouth, and joined in the variegated imprecations muttered by the men when he found there would be only a few minutes to get anything to eat and no time for hot coffee. Presently he is a unit in a long ... — Impressions of a War Correspondent • George Lynch
... heard that his physician and friend was imprisoned by the Inquisition, under the stale pretext of Judaism, addressed a letter to one of them to request his freedom, assuring the inquisitor that his friend was as orthodox a Christian as himself. The physician, notwithstanding this high recommendation, was put to the torture; and, as was usually the case, at the height of his ... — Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... to do next, I confess I don't know," he continued. "At present it seems to be stale mate. For to-night, any way, we are safe, I think, for I shall take turns in keeping guard with Jesse and Ezra. I have the idea that to-morrow, when they realize something has happened to the Marquis ... — The Inn at the Red Oak • Latta Griswold
... an old proverb, viz. "The Mayor of Northampton opens oisters with his dagger." The meaning of which is, to keep them at a sufficient distance from his nose. For this town being eighty miles from the sea, fish may well be presumed stale therein. "Yet I have heard (says Dr. Fuller,) that oisters put up with care, and carried in the cool, were weekly brought fresh and good to Althrop, the seat of the Lord Spencer, at equal distance; and it is no wonder, for I myself have eaten, in Warwickshire, above eighty miles ... — The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 487 - Vol. 17, No. 487. Saturday, April 30, 1831 • Various
... feeling for life the attraction and amusement of possibilities so projected were worth more to you, in nineteen moods out of twenty, than the sufficiency, the serenity, the felicity, whatever it might be, of your stale personal certitudes. You were intellectually, you were "artistically" rather abject, in fine, if your curiosity (in the grand sense of the term) wasn't worth more to you than your dignity. What was your dignity, ... — The Finer Grain • Henry James
... might easily prove who I am, still, as you know I might find the detention inconvenient, I shall therefore sail early in the speronara. Your letters may be addressed to me as before, but bear in mind that your information is generally too stale. Now I will get a little rest, if you will show me where ... — The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... having shown in many ways he was growing stale on the job and in need of a vacation, I decided to take him with me. Besides, if the thought of using the weed as a source of cheap rawmaterial came to anything, the engagement of his interest at an early stage would increase his usefulness. Before setting ... — Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... O'Connell returned to the Hall, and repeated to a jaded audience, week after week, the same stale list of grievances. From any other man the repetition would be intolerable. But the public ear had become attuned to his accents, to which, whatever the sense of his language, men listened as to a messenger of heavenly tidings. Mr. ... — The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... write down a full description of the country immediately behind our present line. The Skipper, for fear we should become stale, allowed us plenty of leave. We would make little expeditions to Bethune for the baths, spend an afternoon riding round Armentieres, or run over to Poperinghe for a chop. We even arranged for a visit to the Belgian lines, but that excursion was forbidden by a ... — Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson
... bringing off basin and pond And all the piled acres of lumber beyond From the Oregon ranges the tang of the pine And the breath of the Baltic as bracing as wine, In a fly-spotted window I there did behold, Among the stale odours of hot food and cold, A ship in a bottle some sailor had made In watches below, swinging South with the Trade, When the fellows were patching old dungaree suits, Or mending up oilskins and leaky seaboots, Or whittling a model or painting a chest, Or yarning ... — Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 22, 1920 • Various
... know. It's just their perversity. It'll look so stupid to have two separate shows. Whichever comes last will seem so stale after ... — The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... specimen of the true mob-literature! ... written to-day, forgotten to-morrow! 'Tis a droll thing to meditate upon, the ephemeral nature of all this pouring-out of unnecessary words and stale stock-phrases!—and, wouldst thou believe it, Theos! each little paid scribe that adds his poor quota to this ill-assorted trash deems himself wiser and greater far than any poet or philosopher dead or living! Why, in this very news-sheet I have seen the immortal works ... — Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... of here, if you look so jolly blue," said Warminster. "It's stale enough this term, without having a chap with a face like a boiled fish gaping ... — Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... Kitchener, the sympathetic author of the Cook's Oracle, writing in 1825, says: "Your luncheon may consist of a bit of roasted poultry, a basin of beef tea, or eggs poached, or boiled in the shell; fish plainly dressed, or a sandwich; stale bread; and half a pint of good homebrewed beer, or toast-and-water, with about one-fourth or one-third part of its measure of wine." And this prescription would no doubt have worn an aspect of liberal concession ... — Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... think'st thou, Scott! by vain conceit perchance, On public taste to foist thy stale romance. Though Murray with his Miller may combine To yield thy muse just half-a-crown per line? No! when the sons of song descend to trade, Their bays are sear, their former ... — Marmion • Sir Walter Scott
... thrill again Of pleasure shot from feet to brain; And both paced deck, ere any knew Our peril. Round us press'd the crew, With wonder in the eyes of most. As if the man who had loved and lost Honoria dared no more than that! My days have else been stale and flat. This life's at best, if justly scann'd, A tedious walk by the other's strand, With, here and there cast up, a piece Of coral or of ambergris, Which, boasted of abroad, we ignore The burden of the barren shore. I seldom write, for 'twould be still Of how the nerves refuse to thrill; ... — The Victories of Love - and Other Poems • Coventry Patmore
... in the little hotel in Jermyn Street, filled at this time of the year principally by Americans, and he dined alone there—dined well, and smoked a long cigar. Then he went for a walk. London at the beginning of August was not empty, but stale, crowded, untidy, hot—unlike itself. He tried not to think of the garden of the Green Gate. Suddenly, with a stab, he imagined Harry and Valentia; probably now he was telling her that the engagement was broken off, and she was smiling ... — The Limit • Ada Leverson
... caterpillars were dropping from the tree into his bowl. We shifted our seats—and ate some more, and then made the astonishing discovery that the breakfast food was full of worms. We looked at the package and found that the grocers had palmed off some stale goods on us and that the box was fairly alive. We all enjoy the recollection of it more than we did ... — Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... ottava rima, and seldom shows any conspicuous power of narrative. Belonging to the same class of composition, though of a very different order of poetic merit, is Lorenzo's wonderfully graceful tale of Ambra. The grace lies in the telling, for the plot was probably already stale when Phoebus and Daphne were protagonists. The poem recounts how the wood-nymph Ambra, beloved of Lauro, is pursued by the river-god Ombrone, one of Arno's tributary divinities, and praying to Diana in her hour of need, is by her transformed into a rock[44]. Lorenzo's ... — Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... And see—the sky is bluer! The world, so ancient yesterday, To-day seems strangely newer; All that was wearisome and stale Has wrapped itself in rosy veil— The wraith of winter, grown so pale That smiling ... — Fires of Driftwood • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... other things, the Boys of the House did not think themselves at leisure to mind him. I could observe the old Fellow was very uneasy at the Affront, and at his being obliged to repeat his Commands several times to no purpose; 'till at last one of the [Lads [2]] presented him with some stale Tea in a broken Dish, accompanied with a Plate of brown Sugar; which so raised his Indignation, that after several obliging Appellations of Dog and Rascal, he asked him aloud before the whole Company, Why he must be used with less Respect ... — The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... to beat it in the air: 'Why not, why not?' I'm sure I can't say! I don't see why not. I don't see why I shouldn't do something. It appears to me really a very bright idea. This sort of thing is certainly very stale. And then I could come back with a trunk full of dollars. Besides, I might possibly find it amusing. They call me a raffine; who knows but that I might discover an unsuspected charm in shop-keeping? It would really have a certain romantic, picturesque ... — The American • Henry James
... the workers in their struggle for better conditions. By means of newspaper-made war hysteria the profiteers of Big Business entrenched themselves in public opinion. By posing as "100% Americans" (how stale and trite the phrase has become from their long misuse of it!) these social parasites sought to convince the nation that they, and not the truly American unionists whose backs they were trying to break, were working ... — The Centralia Conspiracy • Ralph Chaplin
... watch, and stood for a moment, pumping the stale air and tobacco-smoke of the telecast station out of his lungs, as the light airjeep let down into the street. Oh-one-fifteen—two hours and a half since the mutiny at the native-troops barracks had broken out. The Company reservation was still ablaze with lights, and over ... — Uller Uprising • Henry Beam Piper, John D. Clark and John F. Carr
... the age, and yet not one writer has dared to tell you so; whether we have been all conscious to ourselves that it was a needless labour to give this notice to mankind, as all men are ashamed to tell stale news; or that we were justly diffident of our own performances, as even Cicero is observed to be in awe when he writes to Atticus; where, knowing himself over-matched in good sense, and truth of knowledge, he drops the gaudy train of ... — The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... and Lucien. Young Rastignac evidently was entertaining the party; he had raised the laughter that needs fresh fuel every day in Paris, the laughter that seizes upon a topic and exhausts it, and leaves it stale and threadbare in a moment. Mme. d'Espard grew uneasy. She knew that an ill-natured speech is not long in coming to the ears of those whom it will wound, and waited till ... — A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... can plainly see it is nearing the end. For more than two hours we have been strolling about the boulevards, but have not met with one adventure. Everywhere the stereotyped faces and masks; the same jokes as last year; even the coffee and the cake look stale to me. Arthur, ... — The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume II (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... table, and other things which I had taken, I commenced trade on my own account, having contrived to learn a few of his tricks. My only capital was the change for half-a-guinea, which he had once let fall, and which I picked up, which was all I could ever get from him: for it was impossible to stale any money from him, he was so awake, being up to all the tricks of thaives, having followed the diving trade, as he called it, for a considerable time. My wish was to make enough by my table to enable me to return with credit ... — The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... the tables. The men mostly discussed various phases of the game; there was so little else for idlers to talk about these days. No comedies or other diversions, neither cock-fighting nor bear-baiting, and abuse of my Lord Protector and his rigorous disciplinarian laws had already become stale. ... — The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... certainly reads somewhat more rationally than that of the Cologne Cathedral Committee (of which, I told you); but the good folks can nevertheless not refrain from referring to the trash about "my former triumphs, unrivalled mastery as a pianist," etc., and this is utterly sickening to me—like so much stale, lukewarm champagne. Committee gentlemen and others should verily feel somewhat ashamed of their inane platitudes, in thus unwarrantably speaking to my discredit by reminding me of a standpoint I occupied years ago and have long since passed.—Only one Musical ... — Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated
... are less profane—very much less—than white people; less bitter, vindictive, and bloodthirsty; less intemperate, and far, far less revengeful; and less selfish than what they contemptuously snub as "poor white trash." But he is a sinner! I believe the old stale rhyme tells some truth in a modified sense, "In Adam's fall we sinned all;" but I do not believe the serpent's tooth struck a more deadly and depraving virus into the Negro's share of the apple of Eden, dooming him as a sinner to a lower plane of wickedness than others. He commits ... — Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... than the editor found that everybody believed it to be a sheer invention of his own to "once more boom" the "Clarion." If they had doubted MR. Dimmidge, they utterly rejected MRS. Dimmidge as an advertiser! It was a stale joke that nobody would follow up; and on the heels of this came ... — Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... for human consumption, which is altogether the wrong view to take of it. As a foodstuff this article hasn't even the merit that attaches to stringy celery. You do not derive much nourishment from stale celery, but eating at it polishes the teeth and provides a healthful form of exercise that gives you an appetite for the rest of ... — Eating in Two or Three Languages • Irvin S. Cobb
... O God! How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable Seem to me all the uses of this world! Hamlet, ... — The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... two suns cannot shine together in the same sphere with equal splendour, so I affirm, and will prove with my body, that your mistress, in comparison with mine, is as a glow-worm to the meridian sun, a rushlight to the full moon, or a stale mackerel's eye to a pearl of orient." "Harkee, brother, you might give good words, however. An we once fall a-jawing, d'ye see, I can heave out as much bilgewater as another; and since you besmear my sweetheart, Besselia, I can as well bedaub ... — The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... Then, if ever, the heart sickens and the will flags, and life becomes a pageant that hath ceased to entertain. As I moved through the mist and the silence, and felt the tug of the thong that bound me to the wrist of the savage who stalked before me, I cared not how soon they made an end, seeing how stale and unprofitable were all ... — To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... Sherrard. So far there had been no decided slump in the playing of either team, and, since a slump is always looked for at some time during the season, both Mr. Robey and Danny Moore were getting anxious. Danny almost begged the fellows to go stale a little. "It ain't natural," he declared. "It's got to come, so let it and have it over with." Neither had there been any injuries of moment. On this score Danny had no regrets, however. He was a good trainer and prided himself on ... — Left End Edwards • Ralph Henry Barbour
... which have led to the so-called realistic and romantic movements. No fear of repetition in the study of the respective novelists has kept me from illustrating from many points of view and taking advantage of the opportunity offered by each author, the distinction thus set up. For back of all stale jugglery of terms, lies a very real and permanent difference. The words denote different types of mind as well as of art: and express also a changed interpretation of the world of men, resulting from the social ... — Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... - 'Call not blessed.' - Yes, if I could die just now, or say in half a year, I should have had a splendid time of it on the whole. But it gets a little stale, and my work will begin to senesce; and parties to shy bricks at me; and now it begins to look as if I should survive to see myself impotent and forgotten. It's a pity suicide is not thought the ticket in the ... — Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... becoming impregnated with the volatile salts of the excrements, it may be rendered brisker, stronger, and more f[oe]tid." It is said to be a fact, that in manufacturing tobacco, it is frequently sprinkled with stale urine. ... — A Disquisition on the Evils of Using Tobacco - and the Necessity of Immediate and Entire Reformation • Orin Fowler
... lines. A Greek poet could not have conceived them: unless we imagine to ourselves what AEschylus or Pindar, oppressed by long illness, and forgetful of the gods, might possibly have felt. In its sense of spiritual vacancy, when the world and all its uses have become flat, stale, unprofitable, and the sentient soul oscillates like a pendulum between weariful extremes, seeking repose in restless movement, and hurling the ruins of a life into the gulf of its exhausted cravings, we perceive already ... — Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... stated) from Sadleir. "He saith, whatever pretence they make, the principal mark they shoot at is to make an alteration of the State and authority." This at least is explicit enough. The Reformers were actually renewing the civil war on charges so stale and so false. The Duke had possibly promised to desert her if she broke the truce, and now he seized on the flimsy pretence, because the Congregation, as the leaders said, had "tempted him" sufficiently. They had ... — John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang
... as he did so the clock struck three, and he opened the door and passed out into the hall. It was paved with black and white marble; the walls were washed in a dull yellowish tint, and the prevalent odour of antiseptics was mingled with a stale smell of cooking. At the back rose a straight staircase carpeted with brass-bound India-rubber, like a ship's companion-way; and down that staircase she would come in a moment—he fancied he heard her ... — The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... work Shakespeare has more faults than any other poet of England. He is in turn careless, extravagant, profuse, tedious, sensational; his wit grows stale or coarse; his patriotism turns to bombast; he mars even such pathetic scenes as the burial of Ophelia by buffoonery and brawling; and all to please a public that was ... — Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... bowl of nice-looking eggs in the pantry and a piece of home-cured bacon neatly sewed into a white muslin bag and partly sliced. This, with slices of golden brown toast—the bread box held only half a loaf of decidedly stale bread—solved her breakfast menu. There were two pans of milk standing on the table, thick with yellow cream, and Betty was just wondering if Bob had milked and when, for the cream could not have risen under two or three hours' time, when ... — Betty Gordon in the Land of Oil - The Farm That Was Worth a Fortune • Alice B. Emerson
... red, the eyes full, and the whole fish firm and stiff, they are fresh and good; if, on the contrary, the gills are pale, the eyes sunken, the flesh flabby, they are stale. ... — Recipes Tried and True • the Ladies' Aid Society
... alternately side-splitting and terrifying. On occasions he would use the birch—and very thoroughly, too, as I have reason to remember —but he ruled us by fear of authority. For though he dressed like a clergyman, he always smelled strongly of stale cigar smoke, and his language at times was more forcible than is generally expected of ... — The Confessions of Artemas Quibble • Arthur Train
... by the thought that he was late. He took three long steps, collided with a sodden old gentleman who was just arising from a bench—and then was standing very still, looking about him as in a daze, unconscious of the mutter of apology which, together with an odor of stale beer, was fermenting beneath his nose. The old gentleman, pursuing a ray of sun, slipped on to a farther bench. But Charles-Norton still stood there, gazing about him in a sort of mild astonishment, as if, while he was not looking, the scene about him had been transformed ... — The Trimming of Goosie • James Hopper
... in that dawn to be alive, But to be young was very heaven! Oh! times In which the meagre, stale forbidding ways Of custom, law and statute, took at once The attraction of ... — Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston
... on account of a mythical "German plot," which Lord Wimbourne never heard of, which Sir Bryan Mahon, Commander-in-Chief, told Lord French he flatly disbelieved in, and which, when, after more than two years, the documents are produced, proves to be a stale rehash of negotiations before the Easter Week Rising, with some sham "German Irish Society" in Berlin. On this pretext the Sinn Fein leaders, Messrs de Valera and Griffith (whom there is not a shadow of proof to connect with the ... — Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... find how much it had been cut. He issued them slips, which they added as part of the contributions. "Good work—you, too, Gordon. Best week in the territory for a couple of months. I guess the citizens like you, the way they treat you." He laughed at his stale joke, and Gordon was willing to laugh with him. The credit on the dope had paid for most of the contributions. For once, he had money to ... — Police Your Planet • Lester del Rey
... so beautiful to look at. You are made to be queen of a ball-room; not a London ball-room, where everything, I take it, is flash and faded, painted and stale, and worn out; but down here in the country, where there is some life among us, and where a girl may be supposed to be excited over her dancing. It is in such rooms as this that hearts are won and lost; a bid made for diamonds is all that ... — The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope
... pillared house the tall young son wandered aimlessly about after his father's abrupt departure. In the house there was little to interest him; the books were old and stale, the local newspaper flat, and the women had retired with headaches and sewing. He tried a nap, but it was too warm. So he sauntered out into the fields, complaining disconsolately, "Good Lord! how long will this imprisonment last!" He ... — The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... had not been changed since Easter, and were full of dust and grease from the cooking and the table. Even the fresher sprigs of mint among them smelled stale and old. When they were all in the barrow, Nick sighed with relief and wiped his hands upon the ... — Master Skylark • John Bennett
... narrow income put the longed-for life in Paris quite out of the question, she looked about her at the people with whom her life must be spent, and shuddered at her loneliness. There was not a single man who could inspire the madness to which women are prone when they despair of a life become stale and unprofitable in the present, and with no outlook for the future. She had nothing to look for, nothing to expect from chance, for there are lives in which chance plays no part. But when the Empire was in the full noonday of glory, ... — Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... is a message for Bert and Nan too, but I must keep that for lunch time. Nobody likes stale news," the ... — The Bobbsey Twins in the Country • Laura Lee Hope
... clear to him. Like an electric bolt it shot him, thrilling, stirring his heart and soul. She would go with him; more than that, she should. It was her right, won by years of actual want and struggle and service. More, it was her escape from a flat, stale, meaningless boarding-house existence. Suddenly he felt that she was really his mother, knit to him by ties unbreakable, a terrible thing ... — The Nine-Tenths • James Oppenheim
... this which has blighted the countries of the East as much as cruel laws or despotic executives. Thus the legislature has seen fit in certain cases to assign a limit to the period within which actions shall be brought; in order to urge men to vigilance, and to prevent stale claims from being suddenly revived against men whose vouchers are destroyed or whose witnesses are dead. It is true, in foro conscientiae, a defendant, who knows that he honestly owes the debt sued for and that the delay has been caused by indulgence or confidence on the part of his creditor, ... — An Essay on Professional Ethics - Second Edition • George Sharswood
... it is for you, my dear; I have finished it. Mrs. B. I humbly thank you for giving it to me when you have done with it. I hate stale news. Is there anything in the paper? for I can not be at the trouble of ... — McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... other hand, the Democratic minority of the committee, after examining Hoffman and Tweed, who disclaimed any knowledge of the transactions and affected to disbelieve the truth of the charges, pronounced the facts cited "stale slanders," and most of the witnesses "notorious swindlers, liars, and thieves," declaring that the fraudulent vote did not exceed 2,000, divided equally between the two parties. Moreover, it pronounced the investigation a shameful effort to convict the Democracy of crimes that were ... — A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... 'The same is our intent and all our people: God help the right!' So the cardinal returned to Poitiers. In his company there were certain knights and squires, men of arms, who were more favourable to the French king than to the prince; and when they saw that the parties should fight, they stale from their masters and went to the French host; and they made their captain the chatelain of Amposte,[3] who was as then there with the cardinal, who knew nothing thereof till he was ... — Chronicle and Romance (The Harvard Classics Series) • Jean Froissart, Thomas Malory, Raphael Holinshed
... the troops were satisfying their hunger with a frugal repast. The Persians expressed their desire of being introduced to the presence of the Roman emperor. They were at length conducted to a soldier, who was seated on the grass. A piece of stale bacon and a few hard peas composed his supper. A coarse woollen garment of purple was the only circumstance that announced his dignity. The conference was conducted with the same disregard of courtly elegance. Carus, ... — The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... is Wagner's most perfect work, is the finest opera in the world. Unluckily there are in the world far too many persons who are not content to have a work of supreme art, but must needs read into it old, stale platitudes: when they have proved it to be an exposition of these platitudes they conceive that they have deserved the gratitude of the people for interpreting the artist and of the artist for having interpreted him, having made his meaning clear. As I have written elsewhere ... — Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... a long room with a raised dais. There were long tables ranged down it, covered with stained cardboard mounts for beer-glasses. Cigar ashes were in saucers, cigar ends on the floor. The smell of stale beer permeated the atmosphere. It was ... — An Account of Our Arresting Experiences • Conway Evans
... proposals of mine in my own committee. However, he got himself sold at all points...The Polypterus paper and the Aye-Aye paper fell flat. The latter was meant to raise a discussion on your views, but it was all a stale hash, and I only made some half sarcastic remarks which stopped any ... — The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... shreds of his sentences he can shape an oration, from all the world hee carries it awaie, although in truth it be no more than a fooles coat of many coulours. No inuention or matter haue they of theyr owne, but tacke vp a stile of his stale galimafries. The leaden headed Germanes first began this, and we Englishmen haue surfetted of their absurd imitation. I pittie Nizolius that had nothing to doe, but picke thrids ends out of an olde ouerworne garment. This is but by the waie, we must ... — The Vnfortunate Traveller, or The Life Of Jack Wilton - With An Essay On The Life And Writings Of Thomas Nash By Edmund Gosse • Thomas Nash
... water, as it were, all round them like a moat. This they did a hundred times—in fact, every day. 'But,' said Mr. Hay, 'you can't watch nothing now a minute without some great lout coming along with a stale baccy pipe in his mouth, making the air stink; they spoils everything, these here half-towny fellows; everybody got a neasty stale pipe in their mouths, and they gets over the hedges anywhere, and disturbs everything.' It is common on the banks of a stream or a pond to see half a dozen of ... — Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... yourself on that stuff; that is the stale argument of some of the smart young men who write for posterity. Rent is probably as high to-day as it was when wages were twice as high. The prices of flour, pork, and beef are regulated by the crop, not by the buyers' wages. If I were hammering at an anvil I would take my increased wages and ... — A Man of Samples • Wm. H. Maher
... makes common things common; that is, it makes the familiar thing and round seem and feel common. It's the unhallowed and unhallowing touch of the selfish, of sin, that makes things seem common, in the sense of not being holy and sweet and pure and refreshing. Sin makes things grow stale to you. Selfishness affects your eye, the way things look to you. God's presence recognized keeps things fresh. His touch upon us, ever afresh, makes us fresh. Everything we touch and see is touched by a God-freshened hand, and seen through a ... — Quiet Talks on Following the Christ • S. D. Gordon
... of course that one shouldn't be rationally persuaded. But that's a different thing. 'Influence' makes me think of canting clergymen, and stout pompous women, who don't know what they're talking about, and can't argue—who think they've settled everything by a stale quotation—or an appeal to 'your better self'—or St. Paul. If Mr. Winnington tries it on with ... — Delia Blanchflower • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... governess—petite—she would repeat, blonde, plump, or better still "potelee" (the governess had later suggested, when she came to tea and hoped to be asked to stay) potelee, blue-eyed and pink-cheeked. Dresden china and all the stale similes applied to a type of little woman of whom the modern ... — Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... religious, I felt nothing but a great weariness of spirit. Nevertheless, I must have gone on looking at pictures for ten years before I would honestly admit to myself that they merely bored me. Since then I have given up all attempts to take a holiday. I go on cultivating my old stale daily self in the resigned spirit with which a bank clerk performs from ten till six his daily task. A holiday, indeed! I'm sorry for you, Gombauld, if you still look forward to having ... — Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... forward and I was all but stifled with the stale odour of the patchouli with which ... — The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams
... the liquor from a can of peaches; dip each piece of cake into the liquor and lay them in a glass dish; lay the peaches between and pour a cold custard over; spread over the top the whites of 3 or 4 eggs beaten to a stiff froth, sprinkle over a little sugar and serve. Any kind of stale cake may be used ... — Desserts and Salads • Gesine Lemcke
... honestly too; He shall be counted Ancient Without so much ado. What you do grant, I'm very free To use now at my pleasure: Another Month, or Year, d' ye see I'll bate, as I have leasure; So Hair by Hair, from the Mare's Tail I'll pull, as well I may. So what is good, is quickly stale, Though ... — Magazine, or Animadversions on the English Spelling (1703) • G. W.
... two officers sat opposite to each other inhaling the stale odour of tobacco and spirits peculiar to this room, with little or no ventilation. It was enough to sicken anyone, but both men, accustomed to such places in the pursuit of their calling, apparently thought nothing ... — The Girl of the Golden West • David Belasco
... comprehend in a single question, and now you will manifestly be in the old difficulty, and will not be able to show that you know the expedient, either because you learned or because you discovered it yourself. But, as I perceive that you are dainty, and dislike the taste of a stale argument, I will enquire no further into your knowledge of what is expedient or what is not expedient for the Athenian people, and simply request you to say why you do not explain whether justice and ... — Alcibiades I • (may be spurious) Plato
... the mature age of "NOTES AND QUERIES," commonplace compliments as to its usefulness and high general value, begin to be very stale; but I cannot close without a hearty "God speed" to you in ... — Notes and Queries, Number 70, March 1, 1851 • Various
... A most sumptuous dressing; it compares favorably with our popular stale bread pap usually called ... — Cooking and Dining in Imperial Rome • Apicius
... is still much that I might say about the transactions of that time, but I think that even what I have said is more than enough. The blame rests with Aeschines, who has drenched me with the stale dregs[n] of his own villainy and crime, from which I was compelled to clear myself in the eyes of those who are too young to remember the events; though perhaps you who knew, even before I said a single word, of Aeschines' service as ... — The Public Orations of Demosthenes, volume 2 • Demosthenes
... rapidly. What may be news for one edition is no longer news when another edition goes to press an hour later. A feature that may be worth playing up in a morning paper would not have the same news value in an evening paper of the same day. The news grows stale so quickly because new things are continually happening and new developments are continually changing the aspect of previous stories. If a story has been run through two or three editions and new developments have changed it, the story ... — Newspaper Reporting and Correspondence - A Manual for Reporters, Correspondents, and Students of - Newspaper Writing • Grant Milnor Hyde
... days. A little indulgence may, perhaps, be shown toward persons who are a week or a fortnight from us by the post, since otherwise we could never converse together. But even they should reply to only the weightier matters suggested, since what they say will probably be stale before it reaches the eyes for which it was written. For the like reasons, I hold a Californian or European correspondence to be an impossibility. As for him whose want of politeness fixes a gulf, a week broad, between himself and his correspondent, there is no excuse. As one reads a letter, ... — The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... up because a little girl he had seen for five minutes failed to appear! Where was his common sense, his "gumption," as old Robert Williamson would have said? Naturally a man liked to look at a pretty face. But was that any reason why he should feel as if life were flat, stale, and unprofitable simply because he could not look at it? He called himself a fool and went home in a petulant mood. Arriving there, he plunged fiercely into solving algebraical equations and working out geometry exercises, determined to put out of his head ... — Kilmeny of the Orchard • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... to display it Through all our cloudy parts, it doth convey it Forth at the eye, as the most pregnant place, And that reflects it round about the face. 250 And this event, uncourtly Hero thought, Her inward guilt would in her looks have wrought; For yet the world's stale cunning she resisted, To bear foul thoughts, yet forge what looks she listed, And held it for a very silly sleight, To make a perfect metal counterfeit, Glad to disclaim herself, proud of an art That ... — The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... by a huge studio-window, over which various tattered blinds were drawn; a floor of bare boards, with a few rags of carpet here and there; in the middle, a table covered with painter's apparatus of different kinds; palettes, paints, rags, tin-pots, and, thrown down amongst them, some stale crusts of bread; a large easel, with a number of old and dirty canvases piled upon it; two chairs, one of them without the usual complement of legs; a few etchings and oil-sketches and fragments of coloured ... — The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... ne'er advance a Judgment of their own, But catch the spreading notion of the Town; They reason and conclude by precedent, 410 And own stale nonsense which they ne'er invent. Some judge of author's names, not works, and then Nor praise nor blame the writings, but the men. Of all this servile herd the worst is he That in proud dulness joins with Quality, 415 ... — The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope
... arises from the human herd. It comes from the sheepskin, which is worked in, slept in, and, what is more, often inherited from a parent who had also worn it as his winter hide. Added to the smell of the sheepskin is that of an unwashed human, and the reek of stale food, for the poorest of the Russian peasants have no chimneys to their houses. They cannot afford to let ... — Woman as Decoration • Emily Burbank
... to food it seems impossible to lay down any general rule. De Quincey advises beefsteak, not too much cooked, and stale bread as the chief diet, and doubtless this was the best diet for him. Yet it is not the less true that "what is one man's meat is another man's poison," and food that is absolutely harmless to one may disorder the entire digestion of another. Roast pork, mince pies, ... — The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... groped her way upstairs. The house smelt repulsively of stale food, and gas mingled, and the wailing wind from outside seemed to pursue the visitor with its voice as she mounted. On the second floor landing, she knocked at the ... — Delia Blanchflower • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... my marching orders. Mr Gibbs finds Leichardt's Land a bit stale. I take train to Sydney next week and tour the Riverina, the Blue Mountains and the country along the railway line to Melbourne. Are you coming ... — Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... What happiness is that to leave the home Of the Waywode, my father, for the house Of some count palatine, a grateful bride? What do I gain of new from such a change? And can I joy in looking to the morrow When it brings naught but what was stale to-day? Oh, tasteless round of petty, worn pursuits! Oh, wearisome monotony of life! Are they a guerdon for high hopes, high aims? Or love or greatness I must have: all else Are unto me alike indifferent. ... — Demetrius - A Play • Frederich Schiller
... better known than he; So are the camels and the western hog, And so is Lepidus his printed dog[569]: Why doth not Ponticus their fames envy? Besides, this Muse of mine and the black feather Grew both together fresh in estimation; 10 And both, grown stale, were cast away together: What fame is this that scarce lasts out a fashion? Only this last in credit doth remain, That from henceforth each bastard cast-forth rhyme, Which doth but savour of a libel vein, Shall call me father, and be thought my crime; So dull, and with so little sense ... — The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... Caliban and his associates? Is it likely that these drunken fellows could frame any plot that would be but as gossamer before his art? Is it natural that so low a creature as Caliban should show more intelligence than Stephano and Trinculo in disregarding Ariel's 'stale' set to catch them? How do you explain his superior caution? Describe the device employed by Prospero and Ariel to rout these plotters. Would it be ... — Shakespeare Study Programs; The Comedies • Charlotte Porter and Helen A. Clarke
... than a few words, Sir Andrew was leading her right across the town, to the other side from that where they had landed, and the way towards Cap Gris Nez. The streets were narrow, tortuous, and mostly evil-smelling, with a mixture of stale fish and damp cellar odours. There had been heavy rain here during the storm last night, and sometimes Marguerite sank ankle-deep in the mud, for the roads were not lighted save by the occasional glimmer from a ... — The Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... got to a sticking-point with his work! It's all very well," I thought, "for you to sniff at my miniatures, my friend, but we all get stale on our work sometimes, and the fresh eye, ... — Widdershins • Oliver Onions
... rankled in the soul of Miss Snow, and caused Miss March to assume the airs of a studious young peacock. But, alas, alas! Pride goes before a fall, and the revengeful Snow turned the tables with disastrous success. No sooner had the guest paid the usual stale compliments and bowed himself out, than Jenny, under pretense of asking an important question, informed Mr. Davis, the teacher, that Amy March had pickled limes in ... — Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... that he had ordered that these people be well fed; that he had supplied the money to buy them good and nourishing food. Now, if his poor pensioners received nothing but dry bread, and very stale, hard bread at that, while he paid for good food for them, somebody must be making money out of him, to whom he had no idea of being ... — St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, May, 1878, No. 7. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... the highest order, with a big diamond stuck in the centre of a broad expanse of white shirt front. At the other end is the so-called stage, while scattered about indiscriminately are the tables and chairs. The air is filled—yea, reeking—with the fumes of bad whiskey, stale beer, and the odor of foul smelling cheap tobacco smoke, and through all this haze the would-be "show," goes on, and the applause is manifested by whistles, cat calls, the pounding of feet on the floor and glasses on the tables. Occasionally some artist (?) will appear who ... — Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... has a distinctive smell, as of an arid dried-out swamp, with a faint taint of fish. But in the Flats the odor changes. Here is the smell of factories, warehouses, and trading marts; the smell of stale cooking drifting from the homes of the laborers and lower class techmen ... — Monkey On His Back • Charles V. De Vet
... Travennes had been entertained in the manner narrated, Mr. Connors had passed the time by relating stale jokes to the uproarious laughter of his extremely bored audience, who had heard the aged efforts many times since they had first seen the light of day, and most of whom earnestly longed for a drink. The landlord, hearing ... — Hopalong Cassidy's Rustler Round-Up - Bar-20 • Clarence Edward Mulford
... when heaven opens? I beg you to believe," he went on with great dignity, "that just so soon as I made certain you had nothing to learn from me I left you to your rose-gathering. Observe I have not said one word about the thorns. That is the stale gibe of the cynic whose heart of youth has dried before its time. And what if there are thorns? A single rose with the dew of love upon it is worth more than a pair of scratched hands. Gape? Could you believe it of me—of me, Francois ... — The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... half of their journey was accomplished, they made a halt, under the lee of a sheltering mountain, for rest and refreshment. And, sitting down on a fallen tree, from whose barkless trunk they brushed off the snow, they took out and commenced chewing their stale and frozen bread, with a few small pieces of duck-meat, remaining from their breakfast, and comprising the last of their provisions. The animal heat, produced by their great and continued exertions in travelling, had thus ... — Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... was howling, and holding one hand under his arm, while he danced a hornpipe and protested, that, if I'd save him this time, he'd "niver stale another cint's worth as long as ... — The Young Trail Hunters • Samuel Woodworth Cozzens
... She tried to be sad, so as not to be angry; but it made her angry that she couldn't be sad. And yet where was misery, misery too beaten for blame and chalk-marked by fate like a "lot" at a common auction, if not in these merciless signs of mere mean, stale feelings? ... — The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2 • Henry James
... life: but how changed did all at first appear! It seemed as if scales had fallen off their eyes, showing coarseness and deformity, where previously none had appeared. They had tasted the rapture of a more beautiful life; and now the ordinary toils of humanity appeared "stale, flat, and unprofitable," and common men and women tedious, rude, and mean. But the brave knight struggled against this feeling. "Shall we be so ungrateful, because a glimpse of the earthly paradise has been vouchsafed ... — Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins
... sketch of one or two of those people whom you see every day, and call "dregs," sometimes,—a dull, plain bit of prose, such as you might pick for yourself out of any of these warehouses or back-streets. I expect you to call it stale and plebeian, for I know the glimpses of life it pleases you best to find; idyls delicately tinted; passion-veined hearts, cut bare for curious eyes; prophetic utterances, concrete and clear; or some word ... — Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis
... not got tired of quoting "Heureux en jeu; malheureux en amour." It seems one of the least true of all stale, stupid proverbs. Luck will run itself out in more ways than one; and sometimes you will never hold a trump, however often the suit changes. The ancients knew better than we when they called the double-sixes "Venus's cast." The monotony of Guy's reckless dissipations ... — Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... to an old man's ditty; Tho yo live ith' country village,— Tho yo live ith' busy city. Aw've a little tale to tell yo,— One 'at ne'er grows stale wi' tellin,— It's abaat One who to save yo, Here amang men made His dwellin. Riches moor nor yo can fancy,— Moor nor all this world has in it,— He gave up becoss He loved yo, An He's lovin yo this minnit. All His power, pomp and glory, Which to think ... — Yorkshire Lyrics • John Hartley
... herrin'-gutted bush-ranger over yonder? He'd stale the milk out of your tea, he would, be the same token. Well, last night he got vicious and took a crack at my lines. I had rayson to suspect he'd be afther tryin' somethin' on, so I laid for him. ... — Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Nov. 14, 1917 • Various
... let me draw the picture, dear Chevalier. Here was a discredited, dissolute fellow whose life was worth a pin to nobody. Tired of the husks and the swine, and all his follies grown stale by over-use, he takes the advice of a good gentleman, and joins the standard of work and sacrifice. What greater luxury shall man ask? If this be not running the full scale of life's enjoyment, pray you what is? The world loves contrasts. The deep-dyed ... — The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... have been able to make a handsome affair out of it at all, after you had let it hang so long in the wind, if I had not taken on myself to make it agreeable to the gentleman, and cooked as neat a mess out of it as I have seen a Frenchman do out of a stale sprat?" ... — St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... of the room, the cheap tobacco, and the effects of his heavy meal, he dropped off to sleep. Late in the afternoon his canary bird, in its gilt cage just over his head, began to sing. He woke slowly, finished the rest of his beer—very flat and stale by this time—and taking down his concertina from the bookcase, where in week days it kept the company of seven volumes of "Allen's Practical Dentist," played upon it some half-dozen ... — McTeague • Frank Norris
... his flaming head, And sees the harm the envious night has done While he, the solar orb, has been abed— Sees here a yawl wrecked on the slushy sea, Or there a chestnut from its roost blown down, Or last year's birds' nests scattered on the lea, Or some stale scandal rampant in the town— Sees everywhere the petty work of night, Of sneaking winds and cunning, coward rats, Of hooting owls, of bugaboo and sprite, Of roaches, wolves, and ... — Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... I nould believe your tales and fables stale and trite, Irksome as twice-sung tune that tires the dulled ... — The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... bullet had passed under my crooked elbow and armpit, merely searing the forearm in a caressing sort of way. The blood was negligible. Altogether, it was a "cushy blighty," as the Tommy puts it. We reloaded our revolvers to wait for nightfall. There was a bit of stale bread in the bottom of my gas mask, forgotten until now. I split it into three parts, about two mouthfuls for each, and dug out some ... — Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood
... fifty broad, and eight deep; which, being well pitched, to prevent leaking, was placed on the floor along the wall in an outer room of the palace. It had a cock near the bottom to let out the water, when it began to grow stale; and two servants could easily fill it in half-an-hour. Here I often used to row for my own diversion, as well as that of the queen and her ladies, who thought themselves well entertained with my skill and agility. Sometimes I would put up my sail, and then ... — Gulliver's Travels - Into Several Remote Regions of the World • Jonathan Swift
... with Frode, nor abated his old intimacy with him. For he decided that any opportunity of an interview with the king must be paid for, and gave out that no one should have any conversation with him who brought no presents. Access, he announced, to so great a general must be gained by no stale or usual method, but by making interest most zealously. He wished to lighten the scandal of his cruelty by the pretence of affection to his king. The people, thus tormented, vented their complaint of their trouble ... — The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... waste, no worms, no musty smell, no decay! Frost cannot hurt them, heat preserves them! For long voyages, army and navy use, mining, lumbering, and hunting outfits, they are simply invaluable! For all classes of consumers, they are cheaper, cleaner and more wholesome than the ordinary stale and wilted vegetables, for sale in the city markets! We have named these cubes, 'Solaris Vegetable Concentrates,' a title which we have copyrighted. The packages readily wholesale at 75 cents, to be retailed at one dollar. ... — Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... his mother. It was so dark on this stair that, in dull weather, ill-trimmed lamps burnt all day long on the different landings. To its convolutions, in its unaired corners, clung what seemed to be the stale, accumulated smells of years; and these were continually reinforced; since every day at dinnertime, the various kitchen-windows, all of which gave on the stair, were opened to let the piercing odours of cooking escape. The house, like the majority of its kind in this relatively new street, was divided ... — Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... from The Red Lion and had a peculiar smell of stale straw. They drove with both windows closed so that the Vicar should not catch cold. The sexton was waiting at the porch to take the communion plate, and while the Vicar went to the vestry Mrs. Carey and Philip settled themselves in the vicarage pew. Mrs. Carey placed in front of her ... — Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... quite aloof, Herr Schurz, I'm certain, but not on your side exactly either. I like to look on and hold the balance evenly, not to throw my own weight too lightly into either stale. The objective attitude of the mere spectator is after all the right one for an impartial philosopher ... — Philistia • Grant Allen
... visitor, Ellerey could not determine, but the door was opened wide, and they were admitted into a small, ill-lighted lobby. The entrance was a private one, not a usual cafe entrance, but the smell of stale liquor and smoke and the reek of highly spiced dishes proved that the cafe was under the same roof, and proclaimed it as a resort of that lower stratum of society which loves its food pungent and highly flavored. That there was such silence ... — Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner
... I might easily prove who I am, still, as you know I might find the detention inconvenient, I shall therefore sail early in the speronara. Your letters may be addressed to me as before, but bear in mind that your information is generally too stale. Now I will get a little rest, if you will show me where I am ... — The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... read aright! The bitter dregs of days and nights of doleful meditation were in Latisan—the memory of aimless venturings into this or that corner where he could hide away, the latest memory of the stale little room in a cheap New York hotel persisting most vividly in his shamed thoughts because he had penned himself there day after day, trying to make up his mind to do this or that—and, especially at the nadir of what he felt was his utter ... — Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... broke, and went away; the Trade and the Tradesmen were hiss'd off the Stage together; so that the Devil, who, it must be confess'd, got infinitely by the Cheat, became bankrupt, and was oblig'd to set other Engines at work, as other Cheats and Deceivers do, who when one Trick grows stale, and will serve no longer, are ... — The History of the Devil - As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts • Daniel Defoe
... Impressionism, some twenty years after its patent manifestation, they academized it. They set their faces against any sort of development and drove into revolt or artistic suicide every student with an ounce of vitality in him. Before the inspiration of Cezanne had time to grow stale, it was caught up by such men as Matisse and Picasso; by them it was moulded into forms that suited their different temperaments, and already it shows signs of taking fresh shape to express the sensibility of a ... — Art • Clive Bell
... 745 Not all that pride that makes thee swell As big as thou dost blown-up veal; Nor all thy tricks and sleights to cheat, And sell thy carrion for good meat; Not all thy magic to repair 750 Decay'd old age in tough lean ware; Make nat'ral appear thy work, And stop the gangrene in stale pork; Not all that force that makes thee proud, Because by bullock ne'er withstood; 755 Though arm'd with all thy cleavers, knives, And axes made to hew down lives, Shall save or help thee to evade The hand of Justice, or this blade, Which I, her sword-bearer, do carry, 760 For civil deed ... — Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... sailors, eager to make up so many heads for the voyage, pack them aboard like sheep, and cross the Atlantic, either to New York or to Quebec, just as they have been able to entice a cargo to either port. Then come the horrors of a long voyage and short provisions, and high prices for stale salt junk and biscuit; and, at the end, if illness has been on board, the quarantine, that most dreadful visitation of all—for hope ... — Canada and the Canadians - Volume I • Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... [200] Stale crumb of bread is better, if you are making a delicate drawing, than India-rubber, for it disturbs the surface of the paper less: but it crumbles about the room and makes a mess; and, besides, you waste the good bread, which is wrong; and your drawing will not for a long while ... — The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... the office windows as they passed. "One might think it was a reformatory or the county workhouse or something," he thought. He turned dully to the stack of reports and began to count them. He felt stale—flat. ... — Stubble • George Looms
... at a table in the Buffet. I was sorry, for my soul's sake, to be sitting there. Britannia owns nothing more crudely and inalienably Britannic than her Buffets. The barmaids are but incarnations of her own self, thinly disguised. The stale buns and the stale sponge-cakes must have been baked, one fancies, by her own heavy hand. Of her everything is redolent. She it is that has cut the thick stale sandwiches, bottled the bitter beer, brewed ... — Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... peu de frais," M. De Banville says himself. He admits that his lighter works, the poems called (in England) vers de societe, are a sort of intellectual cigarette. M. Emile de Girardin said, in the later days of the Empire, that there were too many cigarettes in the air. Their stale perfume clings to the literature of that time, as the odour of pastilles yet hangs about the verse of Dorat, the designs of Eisen, the work of the Pompadour period. There is more than smoke in M. De Banville's ruling inspiration, his lifelong devotion ... — Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... ground by four stones. Ropes stretched across these, and covered by a blanket, constituted the bed. A board, of which one end rested on the bedstead and the other was thrust between the logs that composed the wall, sustained the stale fragments of a rye-loaf, and a cedar bucket kept entire by withes instead of hoops. In the bucket was a little water, full of droppings from the roof, drowned insects, and sand. A basket or two neatly made, and a hoe, with a stake thrust ... — Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown
... the young man blessed me, and wept on my neck, and went after his uncle. He placed him in full view, in the second row of benches, that night, and I began on him. I tried him with mild jokes, then with severe ones; I dosed him with bad jokes and riddled him with good ones; I fired old stale jokes into him, and peppered him fore and aft with red-hot new ones; I warmed up to my work, and assaulted him on the right and left, in front and behind; I fumed and sweated and charged and ranted till I was hoarse and sick and frantic and furious; but I never moved ... — Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... telegraph, to show his good feeling, presented me with a stale tin of condensed milk. His second clerk and operator was the most covetous man I met in China. He begged in turn for nearly every article I possessed, beginning with my waterproof, which I did not give him, and ending with the empty milk tin, which I did, for "Give to him that ... — An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... and other countries the peasantry use a Lichen, called Lecanora tartarea to furnish a red or crimson dye. It is found abundantly on almost all rocks, and also grows on dry moors. It is collected in May and June, and steeped in stale urine for about three weeks, being kept at a moderate heat all the time. The substance having then a thick and strong texture, like bread, and being of a blueish black colour, is taken out and made into small cakes ... — Vegetable Dyes - Being a Book of Recipes and Other Information Useful to the Dyer • Ethel M. Mairet
... versatile of writers. He discoursed with equal knowledge and effect on Biblical and philological topics, and his prose work will always be respectfully regarded by the students alike of divinity and of language. But though, on these subjects, his pronouncements may in time grow stale or require correction, he will ever hold an honourable place in English literature as one of the most thoughtful and vigorous of those parson poets of whom this country has always had so large and valuable ... — By-ways in Book-land - Short Essays on Literary Subjects • William Davenport Adams
... bullying, brawling, champion of the Church, Vain as a parrot screaming on her perch; And like that parrot screaming out by rote, The same stale, flat, unprofitable note; Still interrupting all debate With one eternal cry of "Church and State!" With all the High Tory's ignorance increased, By all the arrogance that makes the priest; One who declares upon his solemn word The Voluntary system is absurd; ... — East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie
... of his nature and to reveal the good that lurks in the lawless ways of a young society. He is there to explain himself, voluble, with a glossary for his own artless slang. But his colonialism is only provincialism very articulate. The new air does but make old decadences seem more stale; the young soil does but set into fresh conditions the ready-made, the uncostly, the refuse feeling of a race decivilising. American fancy played long this pattering part of youth. The New-Englander ... — The Rhythm of Life • Alice Meynell
... come on as an organ-grinder, sing a song in broken English, then as a policeman, or a young swell about town. Give me plenty of opportunity, that's the great thing—opportunity to be really funny, I mean. We don't want any of the old stale tricks." ... — Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... when canned. No time should be lost in handling the fish after being caught. Putrefaction starts rapidly, and the fish must be handled promptly. The sooner it is canned after being taken from lake, stream or ocean, the better. Never attempt to can any fish that is stale. ... — Every Step in Canning • Grace Viall Gray
... trainer of other amateurs. His instructions are accompanied with full diagrams showing the approved blows and guards. He also gives full directions for training for condition without danger of going stale from overtraining. It is essentially ... — Taxidermy • Leon Luther Pray
... was no object, and at last they solved the problem. At first Tom backed up to the jug and held it, though clumsily, for Sam to drink, and then the youngest Rover did the same for his brother. The water was warm and somewhat stale, yet both could remember nothing which had ever tasted sweeter to them. They drank about half of what the jug contained, then set the rest carefully away ... — The Rover Boys on the Great Lakes • Arthur M. Winfield
... translation, which, I fear, tells disappointingly little about the mammoth, giving no measurements nor any description of his appearance. The earlier part, too, about the distribution of the elephant family, is doubtless also stale news to you. ... — Some Reminiscences of old Victoria • Edgar Fawcett
... what is more important still, real intervals of travelling. I shall send you to a particular place for a particular purpose, and you will have to write about it on lines which I shall indicate. The danger of this sort of life is that of getting stale. That's why I don't want you to see too much of each other. And last of all," he said, rather gravely, "you must do what I tell you to do. There must be no mistake about that—but with all the apparent discipline of it, I believe you will find it ... — Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... him, nor custom stale His infinite variety; other men cloy The appetites they feed; but he makes hungry Where most ... — Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... I could I nould believe your tales and fables stale and trite, Irksome as twice-sung tune that tires the dulled ... — The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... something!" he exclaimed. "It may be stale news, and it may be something for the future, but it's worth trying. I wonder I didn't think of ... — Tom Swift and his Great Searchlight • Victor Appleton
... all things new. Through eternity, new joys, new knowledge, new progress, new likeness, new service will be ours— and not one leaf shall ever wither in the amaranthine crown, nor 'the cup of blessing' ever become empty or flat and stale. Eternity will be but a continual renewal and a progressive increase of ever fresh and ever familiar treasures. The new and the old ... — Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... salutarily to raise the temper, cultivate caloric, and deepen convictions previously held; he must exchange criticisms and discuss standards with others, else he will be eternally making discoveries that are stale and unprofitable to the rest of the world; he will seek to reach men's souls through channels long dammed up, and his achievements will be marred by naive triteness ... — Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... floating isle, tost on ill fortune's waves, Ordain'd by fate to be the land of slaves; Shall moving Delos now deep-rooted stand; Thou fix'd of old, be now the moving land! Although the metaphor be worn and stale, Betwixt a state, and vessel under sail; Let me suppose thee for a ship a while, And thus address thee in the ... — Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... well, but a small room, circular, with little rivulets of stale water running down the granite walls. The ceiling closed low over his head, and the only source of light came from the single doorway opening into a ... — The Dark Door • Alan Edward Nourse
... the woods and then kept on going until we reached a big city where there was a brewery, but they had set fire to the whole city before they left. We got some beer and wine just the same. It was a little stale, but it was fine. The Huns' warehouses were all fixed for the winter and the boys got cigars and cigarettes, but I was a little too late ... — America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... pretensions of the Americans. The moon served as a pretext for a thousand stale puns and a score of ballads, in which bad taste contested the palm with ignorance. But as formerly the French paid before singing, so now they paid after having had their laugh, and they subscribed for ... — Jules Verne's Classic Books • Jules Verne
... notice that the dishonest are generally pleasing. No, you can't have the table. It would hide a lot of you. I want to talk to you, Helen. Have one of these stale buns. What a meal for you! We've got to ... — Moor Fires • E. H. (Emily Hilda) Young
... it is to start a piece of work, either intellectual or muscular, feeling stale—or oold, as an Adirondack guide once put it to me. And everybody knows what it is to "warm up" to his job. The process of warming up gets particularly striking in the phenomenon known as "second wind." On usual occasions we make a practice of ... — Memories and Studies • William James
... the days of "Posa" and "Werther" and Wieland; "his heart was never more susceptible to what is good," and "his bosom never swelled with nobler thoughts," he says in one of his letters. Then he goes on to describe the "flat, stale, and unprofitable" surroundings in the midst of which he was confined. "Round about me here it is icy cold, as in Nova Zembla, whilst I am burning and being consumed by the fiery breath within me," he says in another place. The violence of his inner conflict, of his heart-torture and unhappiness, ... — Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... What was there left for him? As regards any triumphs which the future might bring in connection with his work, he was, as Mac the stage-door keeper had said, "blarzy". Any success he might have would be but a stale repetition of other successes which he had achieved. He would go on working, of course, but—. The ringing of the telephone bell across the room jerked him back to the present. He got up with a muttered malediction. ... — A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... Some ladies were buying stamps as Susy dashed through the shop on her way to the family rooms at the back. Mrs. Hopkins was selling stationery to a couple of boys; she looked up as her daughter entered. Susy went into the parlor, where tea was laid on the table. It consisted of a stale loaf, some indifferent butter, and a little jam. The tea, in a pewter teapot, was weak; the milk was sky-blue, and the jug that ... — The Rebel of the School • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... visible to the dullest apprehension. The once national sport of horse-racing is being degraded to a trade in which it is difficult to perceive anything either sportive or national. The old pretence about the improvement of the breed of horses has become a delusion, too stale for jesting.' ... — The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... they are boys, hurry along in pairs, with their first coat carefully brushed, and the white trousers of last Sunday plentifully besmeared with dust and ink. It evidently requires a considerable mental struggle to avoid investing part of the day's dinner-money in the purchase of the stale tarts so temptingly exposed in dusty tins at the pastry-cooks' doors; but a consciousness of their own importance and the receipt of seven shillings a-week, with the prospect of an early rise to eight, comes to their aid, and they ... — Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... shadows of the dark landing the dog came slowly and warily, ready to turn and slink off if he met no welcome, but Tode was in the mood when even a strange dog was better than his own company. He fed the half-starved creature with some stale sandwiches, and then talked to him and tried to teach him some tricks until to his own surprise he heard the city clocks striking nine, and the long, lonely evening he had dreaded ... — The Bishop's Shadow • I. T. Thurston
... from the town for a while, without feeling at a loss the moment I am left by myself. Instead of a friend in a postchaise or in a Tilbury, to exchange good things with, and vary the same stale topics over again, for once let me have a truce with impertinence. Give me the clear blue sky over my head, and the green turf beneath my feet, a winding road before me, and a three hours' march to dinner—and then to thinking! It ... — English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... he was late. He took three long steps, collided with a sodden old gentleman who was just arising from a bench—and then was standing very still, looking about him as in a daze, unconscious of the mutter of apology which, together with an odor of stale beer, was fermenting beneath his nose. The old gentleman, pursuing a ray of sun, slipped on to a farther bench. But Charles-Norton still stood there, gazing about him in a sort of mild astonishment, as if, while he was not looking, the scene about him had been transformed ... — The Trimming of Goosie • James Hopper
... attack. Everything that is usually said against a new departure in literature or art was said against the Revizor. It was not original. It was improbable, impossible, coarse, vulgar; lacked plot. It turned on a stale anecdote that everybody knew. It was a rank farce. The characters were mere caricatures. "What sort of a town was it that did not ... — The Inspector-General • Nicolay Gogol
... detaining the fair reader too long, enter into a wholesome dissertation here on the manner of friendship established in those institutions, and the noble feeling of selfishness which they are likely to encourage in the male race? I put out of the question the stale topics of complaint, such as leaving home, encouraging gormandising and luxurious habits, etc.; but look also at the dealings of club-men with one another. Look at the rush for the evening paper! See how Shiverton orders a fire in the dog-days, and Swettenham ... — Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... is austere and haughty and cannot abide familiarity. Once his family were his sole thought, but now he goes about thinking of his fish-hooks all the time. And his wealth makes everybody cringing and obsequious to him. Formerly nobody laughed at his jokes, they being always stale and far-fetched and poor, and destitute of the one element that can really justify a joke—the element of humour; but now everybody laughs and cackles at these dismal things, and if any fails to do it my father is deeply displeased, and shows it. Formerly ... — Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... blows at night all you have is your little hall bedroom in a rooming house that smells of stale smoke and cabbage. There's no place to go except the streets—but you've just got to go somewhere, to break loose and have a little fun,—even though you're so tired you want to throw yourself on the bed ... — The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... perhaps, but he's got the god of war in um. Adjetant Wallis, it's a —— long time between dhrinks, as I think ye was sayin', an' with rayson. See if ye can't confiscate a canteen of whiskee somewhere in the camp. Bedad, if I can't buy it I'll stale it. We're goin' to fight to-morry, an' it may be it's the last chance we'll have for a dhrink, unless there's more lik'r now in the other worrld than ... — Stories by American Authors, Volume 8 • Various
... a mind that is filled with negative, discordant or inharmonious thoughts, I am separating myself from the full expression of the Divine within me. I am the bucket of water going stale on a human island; but, when I make my spirit at one with the Father by harmonious thinking, by love, kindness, good will, fellowship and co-operation, I am not only maintaining all of my original properties, but I am in correspondence with the ... — The Silence • David V. Bush
... intention of its own, insisted for him; but that was all. It was difficult to guess his age—whether he were a young man who looked old or an old man who looked young; it seemed to prove nothing, as against other things, that he was bald and, as might have been said, slightly stale, or, more delicately perhaps, dry: there was such a fine little fidget of preoccupied life in him, and his eyes, at moments—though it was an appearance they could suddenly lose—were as candid and clear as those of a pleasant boy. Very ... — The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2 • Henry James
... werkes{;} speke for ham alle. [&] freine hweonene he cume. [&] hwuch hird ha leade. fearlac{65} hire ontswere. Ich nat nawt e time{;} for ha ne seide hit me nawt. ah eau{er} loki hwenne. for hire wune is to cumen bi stale ferliche [&] unmundlunge hwen me least wene. of hire hird [/] ... — Selections from early Middle English, 1130-1250 - Part I: Texts • Various
... had to get through was dying. It was going to be quicker than the way they had of dying in Davos, but it mightn't be quick enough; it might drive him out of his last fight, back to an inconceivable stale world. ... — The Dark Tower • Phyllis Bottome
... thoroughly cooled before being put into box or jar. If not, the steam will cause them to mold quickly. Crusts and pieces of stale bread should be dried in a slow oven, rolled into fine crumbs on a board, and put away for croquettes, cutlets or anything that is breaded. Pieces of stale bread can be used for toast, griddle- cakes and puddings and for dressing for poultry and other ... — Miss Parloa's New Cook Book • Maria Parloa
... the great pillared house the tall young son wandered aimlessly about after his father's abrupt departure. In the house there was little to interest him; the books were old and stale, the local newspaper flat, and the women had retired with headaches and sewing. He tried a nap, but it was too warm. So he sauntered out into the fields, complaining disconsolately, "Good Lord! how ... — The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... a dingy bar-room, with saw-dust strewn upon the floor, and the odor of stale beer and tobacco-smoke in the air—here suddenly the boy sprang forward, with a cry: "Father!" And a man who sat with bowed head in a corner gave a start, and lifted a white face and stared at him. He rose unsteadily to his feet, and staggered ... — Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... a hateful twinkle of the eyes. "So you're out for a spree," he continued, winking in a knowing way. "Won't you walk into the back-parlor while I get them?" And he showed them into a dingy horrid room behind the house, stale with smoke, and begrimed ... — Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... When Kate was gone they would begin to call her "Miss" sometimes. Somehow she did not care to look ahead. The present seemed enough. She had so wrapped her thoughts in her sister's new life that her own seemed flat and stale ... — Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... was a flavor of stale tobacco smoke in the room this morning when I entered, and ashes on the carpet. I KNOW that young Mr. Alexander has abandoned the pernicious habit. See that it does not ... — Two Men of Sandy Bar - A Drama • Bret Harte
... Speaking about this, some said, Well enough—he has become quite incompetent of late. Getting stale, probably. Unable to discover the obvious, losing his keenness. Ten years in the Far East about does for one. But with Lawson, the situation was different. He had become so tired of boundary lines, of perpetual swaying back and forth from one side to the other, without conviction. Geographical and ... — Civilization - Tales of the Orient • Ellen Newbold La Motte
... doctor called in the forenoon and found his patient easier. Later in the day Mary said to Susan that as her master had taken physic, he would require more gruel, but as there was still some left, she need not make it fresh "as she was ironing." Susan replied that the gruel was stale, being then four days old, and, further, that having herself tasted it, she felt very ill, upon which facts Mary made no comment. She thoughtfully warned the cook, however, that if Susan ate more of the gruel "she might do ... — Trial of Mary Blandy • William Roughead
... and examined it to find how much it had been cut. He issued them slips, which they added as part of the contributions. "Good work—you, too, Gordon. Best week in the territory for a couple of months. I guess the citizens like you, the way they treat you." He laughed at his stale joke, and Gordon was willing to laugh with him. The credit on the dope had paid for most of the contributions. For once, he had money to show ... — Police Your Planet • Lester del Rey
... cirumstance too well known to many farmers. Those who wish to consult the remedies recommended against this, may refer to The Annals of Agriculture, and most other books on the subject. It is usual with farmers to mix the Wheat with stale urine or brine, and to dry it by sifting it with slaked lime, which has the effect of causing it to vegetate quickly, and to prevent the attacks of many insects when the seed is first put into the ground. This is considered as productive of great benefit to the ... — The Botanist's Companion, Vol. II • William Salisbury
... he accepted so many rules and manners and turns in order to free himself of the necessity of making free and full and spontaneous movements. With Reger, creation becomes routine. His works are stereotyped; stale terribly quickly. There are moments when one wonders whether he understood at all what creation is. For certainly, three-quarters of his compositions seem written out of no inner necessity, bring no liberation ... — Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... fingers; and afterward fried the already over-roasted meat with onions, garlic, red pepper, and oil, which is always rancid in Portugal, from the custom of never pressing the olives until they are stale. ... — The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... to fresh vigour by the influence of Savonarola. In spite of the wearisome visions and allegories from which she recoiled in disgust when they came as stale repetitions from other lips than his, her strong affinity for his passionate sympathy and the splendour of his aims had lost none of its power. His burning indignation against the abuses and oppression that made the daily story of the Church and of States ... — Romola • George Eliot
... views thrown upon the screen, Lilly sang from a dark stage into the warm musk and stale linen-smelling theater, a ballad as slow and sweet as taffy ... — Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... Annunziata, although it possesses not a few drawbacks, can be made both amusing and instructive; we can even find something attractive in the quality of the local atmosphere, which suggests at one and the same time sunshine, garlic, incense, stale fish and wood smoke; it is the pungent but characteristic aroma of the South, filled "with spicy odours Time can never mar." And what truly charming pictures do the family groups present in the wide archways giving on the untidy courts within, full ... — The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... was long and black and the air was stale and thick with the stench of rodents. Stanton stood still, trying to probe the luminescent gloom that the goggles he wore brought to his eyes. The tunnel stretched out before him—on and on. Around him was the smell of viciousness and death. ... — Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... one another to live furthest from a station, to have no chimneys visible on the most distant horizon, to depend on tradesmen who only called once a week from cities so distant that fresh-baked loaves grew stale before delivery. "Rival ruralists would quarrel about which had the most completely inconvenient postal service; and there were many jealous heartburnings if one friend found out any uncomfortable situation which the other friend had ... — Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... issued out of their silk prisons full fledged moths. But those who cultivate them to-day are in sore need. They have masses and indulgences to sell; they have big bills to pay. But whether left to grow their wings or not, their solitude is that of a cocoon larva, narrow, stale, unprofitable to the world. While that of a philosopher, a Thoreau, for instance, might be called Nature's filter; and one, issuing therefrom benefited in every sense, morally, physically, spiritually, can be said to have ... — The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... its dirty cushions and half-smoked hookahs, smelt abominably of stale tobacco. In one corner lay a huge and shapeless woman clad in greenish gauzes, and decked, brow, nose, ear, neck, wrist, arm, waist, and ankle with heavy native jewellery. When she turned it was like ... — Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... him; he was rather fat: the excitement of his talk with the little lady had made his forehead shine; when he smiled his drooping moustache could not hide a row of blackened, broken teeth. He smelt of stale tobacco, as though he carried old pipes in every pocket. He ate quickly and noisily, his eyes on his ... — Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... the luncheon was finished the party returned to the Exposition. There was such a dense crowd in the galleries, it seemed impossible to penetrate it. An odor of perspiring humanity, a stale smell of old gowns and coats, made an atmosphere at once heavy and sickening. No one looked at the pictures any more, but at faces and toilets, seeking out well-known persons; and at times came a great jostling of the crowd as it was forced to give way before the high double ladder of the varnishers, ... — Strong as Death • Guy de Maupassant
... wine-shop the driver had promised us. Here was a roof anyhow, so we entered, hoping for supper and beds in the wayside inn. All our host could produce was a very good bottle of Servian "black" wine and some coarse bread of the country, so stale that we could hardly break it. This wine, which is almost as black as ink, comes from Negotin, lower down the Danube, and is rather a celebrated vintage ... — Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse
... cocoa-nut with a hole bored in it, containing at least a pint of clear, sweet- tasting water. This is erroneously termed by us "Milk," but it only becomes thick and milky when the cocoa-nut is very stale, in which condition it is never ... — A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... Fred stoically endured such as refused to be silenced by their brusque non-committalism. Benny, at first welcoming everything with the enthusiasm he would accord to a circus, soon sniffed his disdain, as at a show that had gone stale. ... — Oh, Money! Money! • Eleanor Hodgman Porter
... close, two of the occupants of the leading boat reclined beneath a small awning and watched in silence the western splendor of the waning day,—that wonderful spectacle which is never twice the same and whose incomparable glories never grow stale by repetition. The elder of the two was Madam Rothsay, whose placid face indexed the kindly nature that could not refuse the pleadings of a loved one, even when they were for the undertaking of so wild an ... — At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... made in the thatch, the spirit of revolt took hold of Rosemary McClean again. The stuffy, narrow quarters—the insolent, doubled, unexplained, but very obvious, guard that lounged outside—the sense of rank injustice and helplessness—the weird feeling of impending horror added onto stale-grown ghastliness—youth, chafing at the lack ... — Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... with an education does not always make an editor. Many of our editors grow discouraged over their failure to arouse a support to their journals, blaming the race for non-appreciation, when the fault lies with themselves. Do they give their readers news? If a local sheet, they deal in stale generalities. If a general sheet, they confine themselves to ... — Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... out of them. One of the foreign officers on Lord Roberts' staff, in a criticism in one of his own papers, has written that the English infantry, more than any he knows, has the knack of fighting and marching and keeping on at it, day after day, without getting stale or suffering from any reaction. The fact is, our Tommies go into a fight with much the same indifferent good-humour that they do everything else with. Towards the end of each day's march the soldiers ... — With Rimington • L. March Phillipps
... was a done man, but he went on. When he was going through a wood further on, two men came out to him, one from each side of the road, and they took hold of the bridle of the horse and led it on between them. They were old stale men with frieze clothes on them, and the old fashions. When they came out of the wood he found people as if there was a fair on the road, with the people buying and selling and they not living people at all. The old men ... — The Aran Islands • John M. Synge
... should always be new and fresh in our affection, which is always recent and new in its operation and efficacy toward us. Other news how great or good soever, suppose they were able to fill the hearts of all in a nation with joy, yet they grow stale, they lose their virtue within few days. What footsteps or remainder is of all the triumphs and trophies of nations, of all their solemnities for their victorious success at home and abroad? These great news, which once were the subject of the ... — The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... a lonely year. My occupation was gone and I began to fear that I had outlived my usefulness. Life seemed flat, stale, and unprofitable. Betty's weekly letters were all that lent it any savor. They were spicy and piquant enough. Betty was discovered to have unsuspected talents in the epistolary line. At first she was dolefully homesick, ... — Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... he took his walks in the deserted arcades of the empty Trocadero Palace, back of which he lived; went to the Theatre Francais, where he saw the great success of the day, and was startled that "an undramatic bagatelle with threadbare scenery, stale intrigues and superannuated theatrical tricks, could be playing on the foremost stage of the world;" saw at the Palais de l'Industrie the triennial exhibition of art works, "the creme de la creme of three salons, and found not one work of ... — Plays: Comrades; Facing Death; Pariah; Easter • August Strindberg
... times When all this fret and tumult that we hear Do seem more stale than to the sexton's ear ... — Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... we 're ca'd a wee before The stale "three score an' ten," When Joy keeks kindly at your door, Aye bid her welcome ben. About yon blissfu' bowers above Let doubtfu' mortals speir; Sae weel ken we that "heaven is love," Since love ... — The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... her eyes wandered over all the great wide room into its shadowy corners, and it was as if the frost of winter settled on her young heart. The old man hung up his coat and hat behind the door, and, opening the press, brought therefrom the half of a stale loaf, a plate on which reposed a microscopic portion of highly-coloured butter, and a scrap of cheese wrapped in paper. These he laid on the bare table, where the dust ... — The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... see the play "Bartholomew-fair," with puppets. and it is an excellent play; the more I see it, the more I love the wit of it; only the business of abusing the Puritans begins to grow stale and of no use, they being the people that at last will be found the wisest. This night Knipp tells us that there is a Spanish woman lately come over that pretends to sing as well as Mrs. Knight; [A celebrated singer and favourite ... — The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... another man were smiling at him. White light poured down from a cluster of globes. Somewhere in the ship engines purred with the hum of power. The air was fresh and pure, making him realize how foul and stale the air of the prison ... — Empire • Clifford Donald Simak
... tricks are very good of their kind, but how about those idle boasts of changing rivers into oceans and mice into elephants? Did you not say that you came from the land of dreams? These tricks you have done are stale and shopworn. Have you nothing new with which to regale my ... — A Chinese Wonder Book • Norman Hinsdale Pitman
... before I go. Come; don't move till I have done." And as he spoke to her he went on tugging at the bone, and swallowing the lumps of stale bread. He had already finished the bowl of milk. "And, now," said he, "tell me who ... — Aaron Trow • Anthony Trollope
... playing leaned forward, pipes or cigarettes in their mouths, their stomachs pressed against the table, their eyes narrowed and excited. The air was a stench of stale smoke; the silence between ... — The Plastic Age • Percy Marks
... almost impossible to drive a nail properly if it was started wrong, and the skillful workman will draw it out and start it over again. But such a blunder in lecturing cannot be remedied—at least for that occasion. A stale or confused beginning haunts and depresses the mind of the speaker and makes his best work impossible. It also destroys the confidence of the audience, so that what comes later is likely to ... — The Art of Lecturing - Revised Edition • Arthur M. (Arthur Morrow) Lewis
... particular, Samuel Weller and Mrs. Gamp, of which I say no more. I am pining for Broadstairs, where the children are at present. I lurk from the sun, during the best part of the day, in a villainous compound of darkness, canvas, sawdust, general dust, stale gas (involving a vague smell of pepper), and disenchanted properties. But I hope to get down ... — The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... spend the night. He wanted to look the wind and weather straight in the face, there in the glacial air, in the gloom under the pale sheen of the arc-lights fastened to the mast. He shuddered at the thought of a night in the oppressive confines of his cabin, with the closed port-hole and the hot, stale air. But that alone was not the reason which kept him chained to the deck. It was the urge, in case of danger, to be near Ingigerd Hahlstroem. And when he seated himself near the smoke-stack, with his back against the heated wall, his hat drawn ... — Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... nevertheless, most fitted for the convivial role of host, and no part that he played in his varied repertoire afforded such opportunity for the nice display of his unusual talents. History hath sneered at his rhymes as flat, stale and unprofitable; upon the bloody field he had been defeated and subsequently imprisoned; clever in diplomacy, the sagacity of his opponent, Charles, had in truth overmatched him; yet as the ostentatious Boniface, in grand bib and tucker, prodigal in joviality ... — Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... have a clean wholesome odor, characteristic of their particular class. The odor of decomposition can be readily detected; stale and ... — The Home Medical Library, Volume V (of VI) • Various
... of three hundred feet long, fifty broad, and eight deep; which, being well pitched, to prevent leaking, was placed on the floor along the wall in an outer room of the palace. It had a cock near the bottom to let out the water, when it began to grow stale; and two servants could easily fill it in half-an-hour. Here I often used to row for my own diversion, as well as that of the queen and her ladies, who thought themselves well entertained with my skill and agility. Sometimes ... — Gulliver's Travels - Into Several Remote Regions of the World • Jonathan Swift
... and it has been told by Lockhart in one of those capital passages of English literature on which it is folly to attempt to improve or even to comment, and which, a hundred times quoted, can never be stale. Sir Walter Scott died at Abbotsford on September 21, 1832, and was buried four days later at Dryburgh, a post-mortem examination having disclosed ... — Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... pride that makes thee swell As big as thou dost blown-up veal; Nor all thy tricks and sleights to cheat, And sell thy carrion for good meat; Not all thy magic to repair 750 Decay'd old age in tough lean ware; Make nat'ral appear thy work, And stop the gangrene in stale pork; Not all that force that makes thee proud, Because by bullock ne'er withstood; 755 Though arm'd with all thy cleavers, knives, And axes made to hew down lives, Shall save or help thee to evade The hand of Justice, or this blade, Which I, her sword-bearer, ... — Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... gullery. Nay, perhaps he would be of King Seleucus' opinion, that he who knew the weight of a sceptre would not stoop to pick it up, if he saw it lying before him, so great and painful are the duties incumbent upon a good king.—[Plutarch, If a Sage should Meddle with Affairs of Stale, c. 12.]—Assuredly it can be no easy task to rule others, when we find it so hard a matter to govern ourselves; and as to dominion, that seems so charming, the frailty of human judgment and the difficulty ... — The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... collar; breakfast in dress clothes; a wet house-dog, over-affectionate; the other fellow's tooth-brush; an echo of "Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay"; the damp, musty smell of an empty house; stale beer; a mangy fur coat; Katzenjammer; false teeth; the criticism of Hamilton Wright Mabie; boiled cabbage; a cocktail after dinner; an old cigar butt; ... the kiss of Evelyn after ... — A Book of Burlesques • H. L. Mencken
... and then all that was under me would be swept away. I descended into the muffled saloon, which was a little box enclosing light and warmth partially submerged in the waters. There it smelt of hot engine-oil and stale clothes. I got used to the murmuring transit of something which swept our outer walls in immense bounds, and the flying grind of the propeller, and the bang-clang of the rudder when it was struck . . . and must have gone to ... — London River • H. M. Tomlinson
... the stimulus to the trees the next season. It is a good plan to apply the stable manure on the top of this plowed ground early in the winter. Fall plowing gives a better opportunity for rotting the sod and exposes to the winter action of the elements the soil, which is usually stale and inactive after lying so long unturned. In the spring the regular treatment with springtooth and spiketooth harrows should be followed as ... — Apple Growing • M. C. Burritt
... of medium size, and in colour a dark purple. The rind is very thin, and when broken the pulp dissolves in the mouth immediately. Although Dr. M. has just commenced his vineyard, he has made several casks of wine this year, which is now in a stale of fermentation. I tasted here, for the first time, aguardiente, or brandy distilled from the Californian grape. Its flavour is not unpleasant, and age, I do not doubt, would render it equal to the brandies of France. Large quantities of ... — What I Saw in California • Edwin Bryant
... and unkempt appearance. The atmosphere of the sitting-room was stuffy and redolent of stale tobacco smoke. Wrayson's first action was ... — The Avenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... to the interior of the smoker, which, except for two or three dozing commuters and a noisy euchre-party, had been empty of everything but the fumes and stale odors of tobacco, and found it swarming with visions, the eidolons of everything he remembered from his past life. Whatever had once strongly impressed itself upon his nerves was reported there again as instantly as he thought of it. It was largely a whirling ... — Between The Dark And The Daylight • William Dean Howells
... about his lane, occurring prominently in its night scenery, as a dark figure, or one of two, against the moonlight. He saw also the working of city commerce, from endless warehouse, towering over Thames, to the back shop in the lane, with its stale herrings—highly interesting these last; one of his father's best friends, whom he often afterwards visited affectionately at Bristol, being a fishmonger and glue-boiler; which gives us a friendly turn ... — Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... victorious over some undeserved misfortune and of taking possession of a home to which he had some ancient right, was the tone given to Harry's settlement at Yoden, and for a long time he felt compelled to honor it, even after it had become stale and tedious. For it pleased his mother, and she did many unconsidered things to encourage it. For instance, she gave a formal dinner at Hatton Hall to which she invited all the county families and wealthy manufacturers within ... — The Measure of a Man • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... come to us so late, and so suspiciously, that observations on them would certainly be stale, and possibly wide of their actual state. From their general aspect, however, I collect that your Majesty's interposition in them has been disinterested and generous, and having in view only the general good of the ... — Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... misery as when the human animal eschews all cleanliness to wallow in filth. And matters were made worse by the smell from a small, improvised market—the emanations of the rotting fruit, cooked and sour vegetables, and stale fried fish which a few poor women had set out on the ground amidst a throng of ... — The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... it, which lasted far into the spring, and once or twice we got aboard this great raft and tracked across it, with as much awe and enthusiasm as ever Kane had felt in his arctic explorations. In all, we became intimate friends with the lake idea, new to us then, but never to grow stale; and our good fortune favored us during after-life with many lovely lakes and ponds, including such gems as Rydal, Walden, ... — Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... intermittent) lossage depending on the state and the allocation history of the malloc {arena}. Avoidable by use of allocation strategies that never alias allocated core, or by use of higher-level languages, such as {LISP}, which employ a garbage collector (see {GC}). Also called a {stale pointer bug}. See also {precedence lossage}, {smash the stack}, {fandango on core}, {memory leak}, {memory ... — The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... affair to me, then or after. I don't think we spoke on the way to the ranch; I was busy wishing I'd been around in that part of the world thirty years before, and thinking what a lot of fun I had missed by not being as old as dad. A quarrel thirty years old is either mighty stale and unprofitable, or else, like wine, it improves with age. I meant to ride over to King's Highway some day, and see how he would have ... — The Range Dwellers • B. M. Bower
... Harken to an old man's ditty; Tho yo live ith' country village,— Tho yo live ith' busy city. Aw've a little tale to tell yo,— One 'at ne'er grows stale wi' tellin,— It's abaat One who to save yo, Here amang men made His dwellin. Riches moor nor yo can fancy,— Moor nor all this world has in it,— He gave up becoss He loved yo, An He's lovin yo this minnit. All His power, pomp and glory, Which to think on ... — Yorkshire Lyrics • John Hartley
... stewed, which, while cooking, are sweetened and thickened a little. Our dinners are nearly the same as our other meals, except that we use cold milk, without any water. We have puddings sometimes made of stale bread, at others of Graham or other flour, or rice, or ground rice, usually baked; we have also hasty puddings, made of Indian meal, or Graham flour, which we eat with milk or melted sugar and cream; occasionally we have other simple puddings, such as tapioca, etc. Custards, with or without ... — Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages • William Andrus Alcott
... advantage. These things had not yet grown stale with him, for he still found himself filled with awe and wonder when gazing down from a lofty height at the ... — Air Service Boys Over The Enemy's Lines - The German Spy's Secret • Charles Amory Beach
... on them, lacking as they do esthetic taste. For flies, a snug shelter from cold spring winds such as Jack-in-the-pulpit, the marsh calla, the pitcher-plant, or the skunk cabbage offers; sometimes a fetid odor like the latter's, or dull purplish red or brownish color resembling stale meat, which the purple trillium likewise wears as an additional attraction, are necessary when certain carrion flies must be catered to; and, above all, an abundance of pollen for food - with any or all of these seductions a flower dependent on flies has nothing to fear from neglect. ... — Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... discovery, and adventure. And then, it had attached itself to Ransome. It behaved as if it had some secret understanding with its father. Its sense of comedy, like Ranny's, seemed imperishable. It would respond explosively to devices so old, so stale, so worn by repetition, that the wonder was they didn't alienate it, or disgust. The rapid approach and withdrawal of Ranny's hand, his face suddenly hidden behind its pinafore and exposed, still more suddenly, with a cry of "Peep-bo!" its own inspired seizing of Ranny's hair, would ... — The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... they are because they have been in the refrigerator all night. Some people leave their fruit-dish standing on the sideboard all the time, and all the oranges and apples and bananas grow warm and stale, instead of being cold and crisp and refreshing. Put a white centrepiece in the middle of the table, and we will pile these in a flat dish on it instead of using the pot of ferns we sometimes have. It is always nice to have something pretty in ... — A Little Housekeeping Book for a Little Girl - Margaret's Saturday Mornings • Caroline French Benton
... "Your news grows stale," croaked a hag who was passing; "go to the Piazzetta and you shall see the head of one who prayed before the ... — Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... ingenious and quite as curious were often adopted to conceal dispatches, when the messenger was in danger of capture by an enemy. A boot with a hollow heel, a fragment of corn-pone too stale to tempt a starving man, a strip of adhesive plaster over a festering wound, or a ball of cotton-wool stuffed into the ear to keep out the west wind, often hid a message whose discovery would cost a life, and perhaps ... — The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... clad in a brown stuff dress, with a red bandanna round her head, was mounted on the top step of the stairs which led down to her door, and was employed in setting out her goods—that is, on one side of her door she placed a tin milk-can, and on the other some bunches of stale vegetables, flanked with yellowed cabbages. At the bottom of the steps, in the shadowy depths of the cellar, one could see the light of the burning charcoal in a little stove. This shop situated at the side of the passage, served as a porter's ... — The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... brought him into occasional contact with it among the middle classes, and even in the manor-houses and parsonages for which he made up the medicine in his master's surgery. But his treatment of the subject was too palpably imitative of one poetic model, already stale from repetition. Not only did he choose Pope's couplet, with all its familiar antitheses and other mannerisms, but frankly avowed it by parodying whole passages from the Essay on Man and The Dunciad, the original ... — Crabbe, (George) - English Men of Letters Series • Alfred Ainger
... mountain of Attica, celebrated for the quantity and excellence of its honey. The rock on which the aromatic flowers grew in such profusion for the bees, did not, however, partake of the same delightful quality. In working it a peculiar fetid odour of sulphuretted hydrogen, somewhat like that of a stale onion, was emitted, which gave rise to its modern Italian name—Marmo Cipolla. This repulsive quality, however, disappeared quickly on exposure. The finest specimens of this marble in Rome are the forty-six columns in the Church of St. Paul's, outside ... — Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... version, the man desires his wife to moisten some stale bread she has set before him for supper, and she refuses. After an altercation it is agreed that the one who speaks first shall get up and moisten the bread. A neighbour comes in, and, to his surprise, finds the couple dumb; he kisses ... — The Book of Noodles - Stories Of Simpletons; Or, Fools And Their Follies • W. A. Clouston
... thoroughly. No man alive held the stale old adage of "Beauty when unadorned," etc., in profounder scorn. A pair of badly-fitting gloves, a soiled collerette, or a tumbled dress, had cured more than one of the fever fits of his younger days; and he was ... — Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... the books and all them 'a b, abs,' jest like the old days. Dear! Dear! But the teacher in those days was ez old and grizzled ez I be—and some o' the scholars—no offense to you, Mr. Brooks—was older and bigger nor you. But times is changed: yet look, Almiry, if thar ain't a hunk o' stale gingerbread in that desk jest as it uster be! Lord! how it all comes back! Ez I was sayin' only t'other day, we can't be too grateful to our parents for givin' us an eddication in our youth;" and Mr. Hoover, with the air of recalling an alma mater ... — Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... suspect I must have been a rather unlovely customer, take it all together. Still, every once in a while it boils up in me yet against the discretion that has come with the years, and I want to slam in after the old fashion. Seems to me we are in danger of growing stale with ... — The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... The well-kept gardens are no more. Many of the houses are going to ruin. One is an Italian tenement. The others are inhabited by coachmen, chauffeurs, gardeners, mill-hands, and degenerate Yankees. The inn is a mere barroom. Sounds of revelry and the odor of stale beer come out of it. In front are teams of burden, abandoned, for a time, by their drivers, and sundry human signs of decay loafing in the shadow of the old lindens. Among them are the seedy remnants of a once ... — 'Charge It' - Keeping Up With Harry • Irving Bacheller
... suitable size, clean it well, and rub the inside with pepper and salt. Make a stuffing of bread, butter, parsley, sage and thyme; if the bread is stale, pour a little boiling water on it; mix altogether; fill the pig, and sew it up with strong thread; put in the skewers and spit, and tie the feet with twine; have a pint and a half of water in the bottom of the tin kitchen, with a spoonful ... — Domestic Cookery, Useful Receipts, and Hints to Young Housekeepers • Elizabeth E. Lea
... in all cleanness was given To corruption unveiled and assailed by the malice of Heaven— By the heart-shaking jests of Decay where it lolled on the wires— To be blanched or gay-painted by fumes—to be cindered by fires— To be senselessly tossed and retossed in stale mutilation From crater to crater. For this we shall take expiation. But who shall ... — A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... instruct the house in law. And here the devil, who is himself a kind of lawyer, for he devours his best friends, the devil I say chose these opportunities to vent his choicest malice. He did not set a lawyer to confound a lawyer: that were but a stale device. He humbled him out of the mouths of men who had occasionally read law-books, it is true: but who had read them without a lawyers' obliquity; and had enquired what was the simple unadulterated intention of their authors. Now law, which in all its stages ... — The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... and selfish to obtain them? Could a young man with no great fortune offer her the luxury that was necessary to her? and even so, what changes come with time! He had a full realization of what the boredom of family life can be, when passion has grown stale. ... — Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... mother of course needed a rest away from London after the influenza got done with her; and I discovered that I had gone stale. So she and I and the golf clubs came here yesterday—as near to the sunlit land of Uncle Sam as you can well get on this island. We look across the ocean—at least out into it—in your direction, but I must confess that Labrador is not in sight. The place is ... — The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick
... honest man, getting his bread after an honest fashion. The Grinder's mode of life was too well known for even a mother to attempt to deny it. But she pretended that she was very honest herself, and appealed to sundry brandy-balls and stale biscuits in her window, to prove that she lived after ... — The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... the sake of the Union"; "our country, our whole country, and nothing but our country";—these are the mottoes, old, stale, hackneyed, and threadbare as they may have seemed when employed as the watchwords of an electioneering campaign, but clothed with a new power, a new significance, a new gloss, and a new glory, when uttered as the battlecries of a nation struggling for existence; ... — The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... the halter stale to the shining flank. 'G'lang there!' and he went by, like a flash, the tail of Black Hawk straight out behind him, its end feathering in the wind. It was a splendid thing to see—that white-haired man, sitting erect on the flying animal, with only a rope ... — Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... in its physical aspects, to be typical of the breed and district. It was small, crowded, overheated, underlighted, and stuffy to suffocation with the mingled aromas of stale drink and cheap perfume. As we entered a wrangle was going on among a group of young Frenchmen picturesquely attired as art students—almost a sure sign that they were not art students. An undersized girl ... — Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... their cups; Trimalchio said it was his turn to drink; then wrapt in a scarlet mantle, he was laid on a litter born by six servants, with four lacqueys in rich liveries running before him, and by his side a sedan, in which was carried his darling, a stale bleer-eyed catamite, more ill-favoured than his master Trimalchio; who at they went on, kept close to his ear with a flagellet as if he had whispered him, and made him musick all the way. Wondering, we followed, and, with Agamemnon, came ... — The Satyricon • Petronius Arbiter
... Hungarians," I cross-countered. "I'm wise to Mr. Stale, nee Cohenheimer, the Human Harpoon! Say, Bunch! he's a joke. I caught him the day he first left the blacksmith shop, some ten years ago, with a boathook in each hand and a toasting fork between his teeth. That duck isn't a critic, ... — You Can Search Me • Hugh McHugh
... straight for the Pepperleighs' house, poet or no poet, and, what was more to the point, he carried with him three great bricks of Eliot's ice cream—in green, pink and brown layers. He struck the verandah just at the moment when Browning was getting too stale and dreary for words. His brain was all sizzling and jolly with the bromo-seltzer, and when he fetched out the ice cream bricks and Zena ran to get plates and spoons to eat it with, and Pupkin went with her to help fetch them and they picked out the spoons together, ... — Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town • Stephen Leacock
... laughter and his voice with song, while he gave himself afresh to the faithful Master he served. God's blessings were to him always new and fresh. Answered prayers never lost the charm of novelty; like flowers plucked fresh every hour from the gardens of God, they never got stale, losing none of their ... — George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson
... any but your own people again, Berk. We don't do that. No, no!—no thanks! Shut up all that. If ever you get in a hole, I'll take you out if I can. Good-by—will you go to the Lords? Better not—nothing to see, and still less to hear. All stale. That's the only comfort for us—we are outside!" he said, with something that almost approached hurry in the utterance; so great was his terror of anything approaching a scene, and so eager was he to ... — Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... foot-pounds—these are his conquests, with which he must continually furnish his mind, and which, after he has acquired them, he must continually apply and exercise. They must be not only entries in note-books, to be hurriedly consulted; in the actor's phrase, he must be STALE in them; in a word of my grandfather's, they must be 'fixed in the mind like the ten ... — Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and opened the door. On a shelf he saw half a loaf of bread, dry and stale. He took it in ... — Mark Mason's Victory • Horatio Alger
... certainly knowen, that they were townes not woorth the saluting of such a royal companie, in which there was no maner of wealth in the world left, more then bare houses of stone, and standing walles, and might well haue serued rather as a stale, perchance, to haue entrapped, then as a meanes to haue enriched. And it had bin more then a suspicion of follie, for such an army as this, to haue sought to fight with the aire, and to haue laboured with great paine and charges, yea, and with some euident danger too, to haue ouerthrowen ... — The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, v. 7 - England's Naval Exploits Against Spain • Richard Hakluyt
... frying pan have the depth of an inch of boiling fat; also have prepared slices of stale bread cut up into little half-inch squares; drop into the frying pan enough of these bits of bread to cover the surface of the fat. When browned, remove with a skimmer and drain; add to the hot ... — The Whitehouse Cookbook (1887) - The Whole Comprising A Comprehensive Cyclopedia Of Information For - The Home • Mrs. F.L. Gillette
... not that the historical facts are alluded to in English, unless by Dr. Moore in his View of Italy[368]. His account is false and flippant, full of stale jests about old men and young wives, and wondering at so great an effect from so slight a cause. How so acute and severe an observer of mankind as the author of Zeluco could wonder at this is inconceivable. ... — The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... itself into grimaces, alternately side-splitting and terrifying. On occasions he would use the birch—and very thoroughly, too, as I have reason to remember —but he ruled us by fear of authority. For though he dressed like a clergyman, he always smelled strongly of stale cigar smoke, and his language at times was more forcible than is generally expected of a ... — The Confessions of Artemas Quibble • Arthur Train
... fancy anything less clubable than a set of men like this? You might as well set before me the stale bon-bons and sugar-plums of a dessert for a dinner, as ask me to take such people for associates and companions. The tone of everlasting trifling disgraces even idleness; and these men contrive in their lives ... — Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... accepted— this was an opening! I registered malt, hops, ale, and small-beer, till I began to feel as though the world was one vast brewhouse; and calculated, added, and subtracted pounds, shillings, and pence, until all other lore appeared "stale, flat, and unprofitable." I was in this counting-house four years, and was, finally, discharged by my prudent principal as an unthrifty servant, for having, during a day of unusual business, cut up two entire quills, and overturned ... — The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 265, July 21, 1827 • Various
... means of providing for physical, mental, and social wants; for the pleasure that it affords. But it is also important in its relation to work, for without it body and mind become "fagged," people grow "stale" at their work, producing power and power of ... — Community Civics and Rural Life • Arthur W. Dunn
... choice of items of news, variety in the manner of stating them, and logical order in arranging and connecting them should be cultivated. The writing of good, plain English, rather than "smart" journalese should be the aim. Stale, vulgar and incorrect phrases, such as "Sundayed," and "in our midst," should be avoided. There are two tests in selecting a news item: (1) Will it interest readers? (2) Ought they to know it? When by these tests an item is proved to be real news that demands publication, ... — Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller
... I had scolded you! But to return to your wife—as I understand she shares the fate I endure. We poor women have nothing to expect from our husbands, but the stale leavings that remain after business has absorbed the rest! But your story—go on ... — Uarda • Georg Ebers
... me to the arm-chair, and Rene came in, and, after a profound bow (which did not preclude much staring and smiling at me afterwards), laid, on a dazzling tablecloth, a most tempting breakfast, explaining the while, in his odd English, "The bread is stale, for we bake only twice a month. But there are some cakes hot from the fire, some eggs, new laid last evening, some fresh milk, some tea. It was a happy thing I arrived yesterday for there was no more tea. The butter wants, but Mistress Margery will have some made to-morrow, ... — The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... queer things which are going on, the strange coincidences, the plannings, the cross-purposes, the wonderful chains of events, working through generations, and leading to the most outre results, it would make all fiction, with its conventionalities and foreseen conclusions, most stale ... — The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... remained the tried and practical methods there on the Ridge with its overpowering drama, any act of which almost any day was greater than Spionkop or Magersfontein which thrilled a world that was not then war-stale; and ever its supreme feature was that determination which was like a kind of fate in its progress of chipping, chipping at a ... — My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... literature in this or perhaps any other country. When we see two post octavos of travels newly done up by the binder, we are prepared for a series of useless remarks, weak attempts at jokes, disquisitions on dishes, complaints of inns, stale anecdotes and vain flourishes, which almost make us blush for our country, and the cause of intelligence over the world. The Russian Emperor, who unquestionably has the power of licensing or prohibiting any ... — Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... the ache. These fellows took the color out of the picture, leaving only the cold details of a photograph. They were the men who swung open the street doors at the close of a matinee, admitting the stale sounds of the road, the sober light of ... — The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... invitation, the visitor and commander disappeared down the small cuddy in the afterpart of the felucca, where was a low, stifling hole of a cabin, dank with stale tobacco-smoke, and smelling awfully of rats and roaches. There was a little round table in the middle, and on one side was a single berth, with some dirty bedding, which had not been cleaned, ... — Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... new gravestones every day,— But, come, regale us with appropriate detail, Those disillusions weeping at the fountains, say, Those new disgusts, just like their brothers, littered stale, ... — Poems of Paul Verlaine • Paul Verlaine
... for New Zealand we were all a bit stale, which was not altogether surprising, and a run ashore was to do us a world of good after five months of solid grind, crowded up in a ship which thought nothing of rolling 50 deg. each way. Also, though everything had been done ... — The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... many weeks, to visit Polpier—cleared up soon after midday. At one o'clock or thereabouts Nicky-Nan, having dined on a stale crust and a slice of bacon, and recovered somewhat from his first alarm (as even so frugal a meal will put courage into a man), ventured to the porch again for a look at the weather. The weather and the set of the wind always come first in a Polpier man's interest. They form the staple ... — Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... Roman Empire unhesitatingly chose efficiency. But the atrophy of responsibility proved the canker at the heart of the Empire. Deprived of the stimulus that freedom and the habit of responsibility alone can give, the Roman world sank gradually into the morass of Routine. Life lost its savour and grew stale, flat and unprofitable, as in an old-style Government office. 'The intolerable sadness inseparable from such a life', says Renan, 'seemed worse than death.' And when the barbarians came and overturned the whole fabric of bureaucracy, though it seemed to educated men at ... — Progress and History • Various
... a ghostly and unkempt appearance. The atmosphere of the sitting-room was stuffy and redolent of stale tobacco smoke. Wrayson's first action was to ... — The Avenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... life he chafed at such restraint: "when pressed to stay in country houses," he writes in 1872, "I have had the frankness to say that I have not discipline enough." Repeatedly he speaks with loathing of the "stale civilization," the "utter respectability," of European life; {6} longed with all his soul for the excitement and stir of soldiership, from which his shortsightedness debarred him; {7} rushed off again and again into foreign ... — Biographical Study of A. W. Kinglake • Rev. W. Tuckwell
... moments of regretting that he had not conserved his energies more carefully, been more truly "wedded to his Art," to use the girl's quaint phrase. He felt latterly a little stale, a little jaded and world-worn. It had occurred to him during the night that contact with so vital a personality might refresh him, might do for him what contact with the earth did for the giant Antaeus. Indeed, to his imagination she suggested the earth, field and pasture and wooded stream, ... — Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... literature of the day, employing their memories to conceal their paucity of original wit, and practised upon their imaginations to obtain a salacious philosophy, which consisted of sodden ideas, flat in their expression, stale ... — Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... viz. "The Mayor of Northampton opens oisters with his dagger." The meaning of which is, to keep them at a sufficient distance from his nose. For this town being eighty miles from the sea, fish may well be presumed stale therein. "Yet I have heard (says Dr. Fuller,) that oisters put up with care, and carried in the cool, were weekly brought fresh and good to Althrop, the seat of the Lord Spencer, at equal distance; and it is no wonder, for I myself have eaten, in Warwickshire, ... — The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 487 - Vol. 17, No. 487. Saturday, April 30, 1831 • Various
... of things is the flat, stale, unprofitable stuff we hear about," he added. "You've been sick, too, they ... — The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham
... condition of the modern stage, the writer pointed out how dramatic writing has of late years come to be practised entirely by men who have failed in all other branches of literature. Then he drew attention to the fact that signs of weariness and dissatisfaction with the old stale stories, the familiar tricks in bringing about 'striking situations,' were noticeable, not only in the newspaper criticisms of new plays, but also among the better portion of the audience. He admitted, however, ... — Vain Fortune • George Moore
... and there a half-humorous, but unsuccessful attempt to entangle him in his talk. The meeting agreed with all that had been said regarding the antiquity of the earth and of its life. They had, indeed, known it all long ago, and they rallied the lecturer for coming amongst them with so stale a story. It was quite plain that this large body of clergymen, who were, I should say, to be ranked amongst the finest samples of their class, had entirely given up the ancient landmarks, and transported the conception of life's origin ... — Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... himselfe, the Lord Darcy, sent by King Henry the 8. with a lusty crew of soldiers, for that Ferdinands iust assistance, against the Infidels: but vsed by him as a stale, for the vniust ... — The Survey of Cornwall • Richard Carew
... comrades, drink only from your canteens. If the canteens fail, never fill them from flowing water unless the Indians also drink from the stream. There are always small pools to be found, and, though their water may be warm and stale, it is not likely to be poisoned, as the ... — The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel
... Germany, an American visitor, pacing up and down a railroad siding early one morning, chewing a mouthful of stale sausage meat between thick crusts of rye bread, heard a particular cruelty story which may be used here as an example. It was told by an army surgeon with whom he was having his peripatetic breakfast. On the track alongside stood a so-called Red Cross train, consisting of a combination of well-equipped ... — The Log of a Noncombatant • Horace Green
... Flow! like thine inspirer, Beer, Tho' stale, not ripe; tho' thin, yet never clear; So sweetly mawkish, and so smoothly dull; Heady, not strong, ... — Two Poems Against Pope - One Epistle to Mr. A. Pope and the Blatant Beast • Leonard Welsted
... must not allow my thoughts to wander in that direction. But it's no use bringing her stale eggs, anyhow." ... — The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... Over all I, too, could catch the faint odor of stale tobacco. No time was to be lost, however, and while Craig set to work rapidly going through the contents of a desk in the corner, I glanced over the contents of a drawer of a ... — The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... have conceived them: unless we imagine to ourselves what AEschylus or Pindar, oppressed by long illness, and forgetful of the gods, might possibly have felt. In its sense of spiritual vacancy, when the world and all its uses have become flat, stale, unprofitable, and the sentient soul oscillates like a pendulum between weariful extremes, seeking repose in restless movement, and hurling the ruins of a life into the gulf of its exhausted cravings, we perceive already the symptoms of that unnamed malady ... — Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... drowned husband was brought home with his body full of eels, said when she was asked what was to be done with him, "Take the eels out and set him again," so Harris and Douglas have shown a disposition to take the eels out of that stale fraud by which they gained Harris's election, and set the fraud again more than once. On the 9th of July, 1856, Douglas attempted a repetition of it upon Trumbull on the floor of the Senate of the United States, as will appear from the appendix ... — The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... March to assume the airs of a studious young peacock. But, alas, alas! Pride goes before a fall, and the revengeful Snow turned the tables with disastrous success. No sooner had the guest paid the usual stale compliments and bowed himself out, than Jenny, under pretense of asking an important question, informed Mr. Davis, the teacher, that Amy March had pickled ... — Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... one of the curiosities of journalism. The publishers felt tolerably sure of having what was then considered a good deal of recent news for their three hundred readers during the open season. But, knowing that the supply would be both short and stale in winter, they held out prospects of a Canadian Tatler or Spectator, without, however, being rash enough to promise a supply of Addisons and Steeles. Their announcement makes curious reading ... — The Father of British Canada: A Chronicle of Carleton • William Wood
... (Enter PYTHIAS behind.) When they're abroad, forsooth, there's none so clean, Nothing so trim, so elegant, as they; Nor, when they sup with a gallant, so nice! To see these very creatures' gluttony, Filth, poverty, and meanness, when at home; So eager after food, that they devour From yesterday's stale broth the coarse black bread:— All this to know is ... — The Comedies of Terence • Publius Terentius Afer
... through "process" wade To quick perfection—Science shows them how. But while machinery plants and reaps, he rests Upon his porch, and listens to the quail That pipe far off in yonder hand-made vale, With muscles flabby and with strength gone stale, Until, in desperation, he invests In ... — The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VI. (of X.) • Various
... Under the system of rigid economy which the packers enforced, there were some jobs that it only paid to do once in a long time, and among these was the cleaning out of the waste barrels. Every spring they did it; and in the barrels would be dirt and rust and old nails and stale water—and cartload after cartload of it would be taken up and dumped into the hoppers with fresh meat, and sent out to the public's breakfast. Some of it they would make into "smoked" sausage—but as the smoking took time, and was therefore expensive, ... — The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... but not cast down. He changed the subject, commented on the building that was going on, the prospects of a good harvest, and finally took refuge in that stale old subject, the weather. Then he said in a casual way—as if it had just occurred ... — The Buffalo Runners - A Tale of the Red River Plains • R.M. Ballantyne
... underhandedness seemed to emanate from the letters themselves. Bernard Higginbotham had married his sister, and he knew him well. He let himself in with a latch-key and climbed the stairs to the second floor. Here lived his brother-in-law. The grocery was below. There was a smell of stale vegetables in the air. As he groped his way across the hall he stumbled over a toy-cart, left there by one of his numerous nephews and nieces, and brought up against a door with a resounding bang. "The pincher," was his thought; "too miserly to burn two cents' worth of gas and save his ... — Martin Eden • Jack London
... inside," grinned the ex-missionary owner of the place. I divined on the instant that this was his habit, to stand by the door before supper and say just those words to the last arrivals. I had a vision of him standing by his mission door aforetime, repeating one jest, or more likely one stale ... — The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... so?" asked Dick thoughtfully. "It seems to me that we've done enough hard canoe work for to-day. We don't want to go stale from too ... — The High School Boys' Canoe Club • H. Irving Hancock
... to be sad, so as not to be angry; but it made her angry that she couldn't be sad. And yet where was misery, misery too beaten for blame and chalk-marked by fate like a "lot" at a common auction, if not in these merciless signs of mere mean, stale feelings? ... — The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2 • Henry James
... Jennie Stone solemnly, "burned incense upon any and all occasions—red letter days, labor days, celebrating Columbus Day and the morning after, I presume. But we moderns burn gasoline. And, phew! I believe I should prefer the stale smoke of incense in the unventilated pyramids of Egypt to this odor of gas. O-o-o-o, Tommy, do ... — Ruth Fielding Down East - Or, The Hermit of Beach Plum Point • Alice B. Emerson
... celebrated James Douglas, Earl of Morton. Both sides executed their prisoners without mercy or favour.] where they cut each other's throats for the chance of finding twelve pennies Scots on the person of the slain. Marry, my lord, to make amends, they will eat mouldy victuals, and drink stale ale, as if their bellies were puncheons.—But the dinner-bell is going to sound— hark, it is clearing its rusty throat, with a preliminary jowl. That is another clamorous relic of antiquity, that, were I master, should soon be at the bottom ... — The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... broad upper boulevards are filled with tourists and smart English visitors; and in the narrow streets pert factory-hands come noisily from work. Still he climbs on toward the Cathedral, through tortuous streets and little alley-ways. And in the gloomiest of them all there is no odour of a stale antiquity, but the perfume of a garden-full of roses, of a thousand orange-blossoms, and of locusts, honey-sweet, and he begins to think himself enchanted. He feels the dark, old houses are unreal, as if, instead of cobble-stones beneath his feet, there must be the soft ... — Cathedrals and Cloisters of the South of France, Volume 1 • Elise Whitlock Rose
... pounds in gold (the sum is variously stated) from Sadleir. "He saith, whatever pretence they make, the principal mark they shoot at is to make an alteration of the State and authority." This at least is explicit enough. The Reformers were actually renewing the civil war on charges so stale and so false. The Duke had possibly promised to desert her if she broke the truce, and now he seized on the flimsy pretence, because the Congregation, as the leaders said, had "tempted him" sufficiently. They had come up to his price. Arran, the hoped-for ... — John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang
... boomerangs they could not have returned with greater accuracy to their unhappy dispatcher. Oh, the vileness and utter degradation of the moment when the stale little cylinder of closely written pages, which seemed so fresh and full of promise a few days ago, is handed in by a remorseless postman! And what moral depravity shines through the editor's ridiculous plea of "want ... — The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... left on board. Everything was looking exactly as we left it six years ago; there was not a sign of damp discoverable anywhere; and the only objectionable thing noticeable was that the air in the hull smelt decidedly stale and offensive. However, I soon had vapour enough generated to start the dynamo, when I switched on the light in the pilot-house lantern, as a warning to Mildmay to get out of the way; after which I slowly ... — With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... his mouth with household bread, stale, he at once began: "How are you going down to Robin Hill? You going to take Irene? You'd better take her. I should think there'll be a lot that'll want ... — Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... to see them, and when she heard what they wanted she brought out a plate of stale bread and a thick chunk ... — Four Little Blossoms and Their Winter Fun • Mabel C. Hawley
... the Fifteenth Century, p. 105: 'The undrained neglected soil, the shallow stagnant waters which lay on the surface of the ground, the unhealthy homes of all classes, insufficient and unwholesome food, the abundance of stale fish eaten, and the scanty supply of vegetables predisposed rural ... — A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler
... Jermyn Street, filled at this time of the year principally by Americans, and he dined alone there—dined well, and smoked a long cigar. Then he went for a walk. London at the beginning of August was not empty, but stale, crowded, untidy, hot—unlike itself. He tried not to think of the garden of the Green Gate. Suddenly, with a stab, he imagined Harry and Valentia; probably now he was telling her that the engagement was broken off, and she was smiling ... — The Limit • Ada Leverson
... ill at ease, and greatly bored in his hiding-place, had succeeded in discovering there a stale crust and a triangle of mouldy cheese, and had set to devouring the whole without ceremony, by way of consolation and breakfast. As he was very hungry, he made a great deal of noise, and he accented each mouthful strongly, which startled ... — Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... now as painful as his blase indifference to all emotions, pleasant or unpleasant, could allow. He lingered—he hesitated—he repeated many times how glad he should be to see Beechwood again; how all the world was to him "flat, stale, and unprofitable," except Beechwood. ... — John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... clean out this stale air. Sea-suits off; at emergency posts. Take the helm, Craig; you, Wetherby, trim the ship. No, no, ... — Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various
... the loss of their beloved companion, Hector and Louis no longer took interest in what was going on; they hardly troubled themselves to weed the Indian corn, in which they had taken such great delight; all now seemed to them flat, stale, and unprofitable; they wandered listlessly to and fro, silent and sad; the sunshine had departed from their little dwelling; they ate little, and talked less, each seeming absorbed in his own ... — Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill
... took almost my last dollar to pay for deck passage thereon, I lived on some small cakes of my own baking, which I carried in a bag. I was now in a sad predicament unless I should connect at Lake Bennett with some one who would carry my outfit back to Skagway on credit. I ate my stale cakes and drank lake water, and thus fooled the little Jap steward out of two dollars. It was a sad ... — The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... of the nobility by the elevation of mean persons, whose oppression of the people by multiplied impositions and vexations, had justly, he said, rendered him odious to all men. But Perkin's pretensions, attended with repeated disappointments, were now become stale in the eyes even of the populace; and the hostile dispositions which subsisted between the kingdoms, rendered a prince supported by the Scots but an unwelcome present to the English nation. The ravages also committed by the borderers, accustomed to license and disorder, struck ... — The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... The burden of Longueville's confidences was a heavy load to carry there, but Bernard ventured to hope that he would deposit it at the door. He had given Gordon his impressions, and the latter might do with them what he chose—toss them out of the window, or let them grow stale with heedless keeping. So Bernard meditated, as he wandered about alone for the rest of the evening. It was useless to look for Mrs. Vivian's little circle, on the terrace of the Conversation-house, for the storm in the afternoon ... — Confidence • Henry James
... Lashly. We seemed to get on better, but at the moment the surface changed and we came up over a rise with hard sastrugi. At the top we camped for lunch. What was the difficulty? One theory was that some members of the second party were stale. Another that all was due to the bad stepping and want of swing; another that the sledge pulled heavy. In the afternoon we exchanged sledges, and at first went off well, but getting into soft snow, we found a terrible drag, the second ... — Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... that's stale here, will be new there a twelvemonth hence; and if a man of the town by chance come amongst them, he's reverenced for teaching ... — The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... prosperity than on love and peace, knowledge and purity, noble lives and a Father God; if higher desires and hopes are dying out as we 'get on' in the world, and religious occupations which used to be pleasant are stale; then for all our outward Christianity the stern old woe applies, 'Your riches are corrupted, and the rust of them shall be a witness against you,' and we need the shrill note of the trumpet of Jubilee to be blown in our ears, ... — Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... any degree of comfort. The cabin was close and stuffy, and its atmosphere was heavy with that indescribable odor that rises from the bowels of old ships. The smoking room, bare and dismal and reeking with stale tobacco smoke, was deserted, save when the mail boat doctor and Hugh Wise were occasionally discovered there in a ... — Left on the Labrador - A Tale of Adventure Down North • Dillon Wallace
... Clara? You, the well-known leader of a large social circle—you, the proud beauty and envied lady of rank and fashion,—you will be made a subject for the coarse jests of lawyers,—the very judge on the bench will probably play off his stale witticism at your expense,—your dearest friends will tear your name to shreds,—the newspapers will reek of your doings,—and honest housemaids reading of your fall from your high estate, will thank God that their souls and bodies are more chaste than yours! ... — Thelma • Marie Corelli
Copyright © 2025 Diccionario ingles.com
|
|
|