"Stale" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... of dry stale bread will hunger out to flight: Why then are grief and care so heavy on my spright? Death is, indeed, most just, since, with an equal hand, Khalif and beggar-wretch, impartial, it ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume IV • Anonymous
... did not see that this artful woman was playing the stale game of her sex; stimulating his curiosity under pretence of putting him off. He began to fret with suspicion and curiosity, and insisted on her ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... though 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
... trifling incident, the editor of Astley's Collection gives the following marginal reference, A merry passage. Ludere cum sacris is rather a stale jest, and perhaps the grand Raulim was as ingenious as Correa and his priest, to trick the ignorant unbelievers in their sacred ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr
... seem to have dined on old surgical-appliance stock. I MUST go out now, or I shall feel stale india-rubber right through." ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... life was never monotonous or stale. There was always Pisah, the fish, to be caught in the many streams and the little lakes, and Sabor, with her ferocious cousins to keep one ever on the alert and give zest to every instant that ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... I didn't let on. A stale actor in a play couldn't have pulled himself together in a more unconcerned-I-do-this-every-night fashion than I signed for the note, tipped the poor little shaver and closed ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... 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
... shapeless gloom Shudders to drizzling daybreak that reveals Disconsolate men who stamp their sodden boots And turn dulled, sunken faces to the sky Haggard and hopeless. They, who have beaten down The stale despair of night, must now renew Their desolation in the truce of dawn, Murdering the livid ...
— Counter-Attack and Other Poems • Siegfried Sassoon
... the suits were brought in, and the vapor released from the small tanks. A change was at once noticed. The old stale air in the cabin was forced out of the exhaust pipes, and the fresh took its ...
— Under the Ocean to the South Pole - The Strange Cruise of the Submarine Wonder • Roy Rockwood
... of perry 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
... Mary vaguely. "I don't care so much about first nights. I like the theatre; but I go so seldom. Aunt Marcelle does not care for English plays; she says they are like stale bread-and-butter. I tell her that is ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... Thornton as if there were sunlight in one corner of that cobwebbed room with its unwashed windows and its stale smells, and elsewhere hung the murk of little hope. A few staunch friends, at least, he had, but they were friends among enemies, and he steeled himself for ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... air became familiar. It was a perfect mixture of flavors; oilskins, stale tobacco-smoke, brine, burned grease, tar, and, as a background, fish. His ears almost immediately detected water noises running close by, and he could feel the pull of stout oak timber that formed the inner ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... how Hattie moved 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 Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... 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 ...
— The Honour of the Flag • W. Clark Russell
... 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 all ...
— Molly Brown's Senior Days • Nell Speed
... got into 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
... these ramblings Rogron picked up various bits of information about Provins, its inhabitants, their marriages, together with stale political news; all of which he narrated to his sister. Scores of times in his walks he would stop and say,—often to the same person on the same day,—"Well, what's the news?" When he reached home he would fling himself on the sofa like a man exhausted with labor, whereas he was ...
— Pierrette • Honore de Balzac
... But what does the fete mean to you? Heat, dust, and stale dance-music. Besides, we will tell you all about it in the morning; and then you are a poet, and can imagine the whole affair to be much finer than it really was. So don't take it to heart. You may think you have ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... denied me. So life may run on like a leaden stream, and everything that grows and blossoms on its banks remain scentless and grey. The golden sunshine has hidden itself behind a mist, joy lies fainting in my heart, and all that once pleased me has grown stale and charmless. Do you recognize the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... too, too solid flesh would melt, Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew! Or that the Everlasting had not fixed His canon 'gainst self-slaughter! O God! O God! How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable Seem to me all the ...
— Familiar Quotations • Various
... earth would never do, unless a bit of Heaven it had. Men needed eyes divinely blue to toil by day and still be glad. A world where only men and boys made merry would in time grow stale, And so He shared His Heavenly joys that faith in Him should never fail. He sent us down a thousand charms, He decked our ways with golden curls And laughing eyes and dimpled arms. He let us have ...
— The Path to Home • Edgar A. Guest
... much had happened in that quiet room since he had quitted it the night before. There stood the easy-chair in which he had left Elphick; there, close by it, but pushed aside, as if by a hurried hand, was the little table with its spirit case, its syphon, its glass, in which stale liquid still stood; there was the novel, turned face downwards; there, upon the novel, was Elphick's pipe. But the rest of the room was in dire confusion. The drawers of a bureau had been pulled open and never put back; papers of all descriptions, old legal-looking documents, old letters, ...
— The Middle Temple Murder • J.S. Fletcher
... The butcher's boy came whistling down the lane to deliver the rump-steak or mutton-chop I had decided on for dinner; the greengrocer delivered his vegetables; the cheesemonger took solemn affidavit concerning the freshness of his stale eggs and the superior quality of a curious article which he called country butter, and declared came from a particular dairy famed for the excellence of its produce; the milkman's yahoo sounded cheerfully in the morning hours; and the letter-box was filled with cards from all sorts and descriptions ...
— The Uninhabited House • Mrs. J. H. Riddell
... young Rawheads? And if Lady Ogreham happens to die—I 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 shaking in thy pumps, ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... 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 ...
— An Essay on Professional Ethics - Second Edition • George Sharswood
... 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 and discounted fact." ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... comments in some such strain as the following:—"The state of the ancient heathens, thus brought upon us in one cheap declamation more, is now a matter of trivial import, just fit to give some show and exaggeration to the stale common-place, that ignorance is likely to produce depravity, and that depravity and misery are likely enough to go together. The pagans might be wretched enough; and perhaps also the matter has been extravagantly magnified for the service of a favorite theme, ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... by side, their faces solemn and black, and I walked at their heels. My mouth stank of the drink, and my head was sick with the stale fumes of it, and I would have cut off my right hand for a drink of water, one drink, a mouthful even. And, had I had it, I know it would have sizzled in my belly like water spilled on heated stones for the roasting. It is terrible, ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London
... that is, to make an impression and a stamp; stow, to stow, to bestow, steward, or stoward; stead, steady, stedfast, stable, a stable, a stall, to stall, stool, stall, still, stall, stallage, stage, still, adjective, and still, adverb: stale, stout, sturdy, stead, stoat, stallion, stiff, stark-dead, to starve with hunger or cold; stone, steel, stern, stanch, to stanch blood, to stare, steep, steeple, stair, standard, a stated measure, stately. In all these, and perhaps some others, st ...
— A Grammar of the English Tongue • Samuel Johnson
... up the beast, and went by the path trodden by the gods. Thereupon what happened to Rudra, learn from me, O Yudhishthira! Influenced by the dread of Rudra, the gods set apart for evermore, the best allotment out of all shares, such as was fresh and not stale (to be appropriated by the god). Whosoever performs his ablutions at this spot, while reciting this ancient story, beholds with his mortal eyes the path that leads to the region ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... sincerest form of flattery is, and certainly our dear old pet, Alice in Wonderland, whose infinite variety time cannot stale, will gracefully acknowledge the intenseness of the compliments conveyed in Olga's Dream, as written by NORLEY CHESTER, illustrated by Messrs. FURNISS AND MONTAGU (the illustrations will carry the book), ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 17, 1892 • Various
... the inauguration of a better taste by Mickiewicz and other great writers, the so-called French or Classical school of literature in Poland produced a quantity of panegyrics or complimentary verses in honour of great personages, with stale classical images, and strained, far-fetched metaphors, destitute of real poetry. Our author has seized this happy opportunity of satirising the faults ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... 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, ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... men Marlowe and Jonson, Shakespeare, and Spenser before him, drank beer at rising, and tamed it with a little bread. In the regiment we used to drink black coffee without sugar, and cut off a great hunk of stale crust, and eat nothing more till the halt: for the matter of that, the great victories of '93 were fought upon such unsubstantial meals; for the Republicans fought first and ate afterwards, being in this quite unlike the Ten Thousand. Sailors I know eat nothing for some hours—I mean those who ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... 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 is more ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... it got in quite well!" They imitated its unsuccessful leaps, lay down again and rolled about in exuberant mirth. At last, however, the joke became stale. ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... occupation for the English satirist in the exposing of the cant and knavery of the pretenders to religion, what room is there for him to lash the infamies of the law! On this point the French are babes in iniquity compared to us—a counsel prostituting himself for money is a matter with us so stale, that it is hardly food for satire: which, to be popular, must find some much more complicated and interesting knavery whereon to exercise ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the cliff was long and black, and the air was stale and thick with the stench of rodents. Stanton stood still for a minute, stretching his muscles. Crawling through that cramped little opening had not been easy. He looked around him, trying to probe the luminescent gloom that the goggles he wore ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... minute lay as he had fallen, scarce daring to think. But nothing followed, and he got up and found a shut door which let him into yet a third room, wherein he barked both shins on a chair; and escaped to a fourth whose atmosphere was highly flavored with reluctant odors of bygone cookery, stale water and damp plumbing—probably the kitchen. Thence progressing over complaining floors through what may have been the servants' hall, a large room with a table in the middle and a number of promiscuous chairs (witness ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... was expected, Buller's easily beat all the outhouses, with Claremont's house as runners-up. Claremont's house had once been the great athletic house, but when a house master takes but little interest in a house's performances, that house is apt to get stale, and soon Claremont's became a name for mediocrity. As a house it was like V. B, a happy land where no one worried about anything, and it was quite safe to smoke in the studies on a Sunday afternoon. A side made up of two houses that had never ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... tea, as too commonly found at our hotels and boarding-houses, are that it is made in every way the reverse of what it should be. The water is hot, perhaps, but not boiling; the tea has a general flat, stale, smoky taste, devoid of life or spirit; and it is served, usually, with thin milk instead of cream. Cream is as essential to the richness of tea as of coffee. We could wish that the English fashion might generally prevail, of giving the traveler his own ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... the one hundred and ten degrees. Sydney lived through the experience but had always after that a delicate interior and was petted more than ever in consequence. And there was a tennis court occasionally wetted down with the beer that always went stale while they were saving it for state occasions. It was all a happy, glorious time—because they had discovered and were making one of the great ...
— Herbert Hoover - The Man and His Work • Vernon Kellogg
... uncle asked how he liked them. He answered, 'They yield well, grow very long,—one end is very poor, and the other good for nothing.' I laughed about it after he was gone, but uncle looked sour and said there was no wit in his answer, and that the saying was 'stale.' It was new to me, and his way of saying it very funny. Perhaps uncle did not like to hear his favorite potato spoken of in that way, and that if the captain had praised it he would have ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... went to him a month after her death, I expected he would still be crushed as he was at the funeral. I listened with a feeling of revulsion to his stilted and, as it seemed to me, perfunctory platitudes on his "irreparable loss"—stale rhetoric about her, and to her most intimate friend and his! I had thought he would be imagining himself done with ambition for ever; I had feared his strongly religious nature would lead him to see a "judgment" upon him and her for having exaggerated her indisposition to gain a political point. ...
— The Plum Tree • David Graham Phillips
... days ago, 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 the ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... 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 vegetables Irish potato, ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... tried to 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. Instead of counting drops he amused ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... tobacco, observes that "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
... Puddings:—Grate a penny stale loaf, and put to it a like quantity of beef-suet finely shred, and a nutmeg grated, a little salt, some currants, and then beat some eggs in a little sack, and some sugar, and mix all together, and knead it as stiff as for ...
— Old Cookery Books and Ancient Cuisine • William Carew Hazlitt
... cares yet, or of bad health, or of roguery, or poverty, or to-morrow's disappointment. The play has not been acted so often as to make him tired. Though the after drink, as we mechanically go on repeating it, is stale and bitter, how pure and brilliant was that first sparkling draught of pleasure!—How the boy rushes at the cup, and with what a wild eagerness he drains it! But old epicures who are cut off from the delights of the table, and are restricted to a poached egg and ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... gave him a sense of refuge, of having reached a safe haven at last. The house was over-warm, and there was a musty smell of over-aged furniture, old leather, and the pungence of mothballs. It seemed to generate a feeling of firm stability. Even the slightly stale air—there probably hadn't been a wide open window since the storm sashes were installed last autumn—provided a locked-in feeling that conversely meant that the world was ...
— The Fourth R • George Oliver Smith
... saloons were well patronized, for not only was the camp astir, but also the usual stale crowd of all-night loiterers was not yet sufficiently intoxicated to go to bed. As 'Poleon neared the first resort, the door opened and a woman emerged. She was silhouetted briefly against the illumination from ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... minions grace, Whilst I at home starve for a merry look. Hath homely age the alluring beauty took From my poor cheek? then he hath wasted it ... ... My decayed fair A sunny look of his would soon repair: But, poor unruly deer, he breaks the pale, And feeds from home; poor I am but his stale." ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... 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
... annoyances and trouble which are necessarily encountered. It was past midnight when we arrived at the railroad station at Burgos, where, having telegraphed from Madrid, a very dirty omnibus was in waiting to take us to the hotel. How that vehicle did smell of garlic, stale tobacco, and accumulated filth, to which the odor of an ill-trimmed kerosene lamp added its pungent flavor. But we were soon set down before the hotel, where there was not a light to be seen, every one, servants and all, being sound asleep. An entrance being finally achieved, the baggage was passed ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... 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 ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... shack was stale because of a faulty filter in the oxygen circulator that neither Wallace nor Simms bothered to clean. The two men lazed around in stocking feet and undershirts, listening to popular music coming over the audio receiver on a late pickup ...
— On the Trail of the Space Pirates • Carey Rockwell
... many more 'humours' to tell, but A- can show you all the long story I have written. I hope it does not seem very stale and decies repetita. All being new and curious to the eye here, one becomes long-winded ...
— Letters from the Cape • Lady Duff Gordon
... plaudits of the flower of the Stale the monarch affixed the cherished tokens to the heroes' breasts. "My Braves!" he exclaimed. "In the name of the Fatherland ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, September 2nd, 1914 • Various
... as his legs were all bruised and scraped by sliding, a manager who was not an idiot would have a care of such valuable runmakers for his team. Lake had "Charley-horse." Hathaway's arm was sore. Bane's stomach threatened gastritis. Spike Doran's finger needed a chance to heal. I was stale, and the other players, three pitchers, swore their arms should be in ...
— The Redheaded Outfield and Other Baseball Stories • Zane Grey
... criticism and scholarly eye of WILLIAM CULLEN | | 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, by subscription. | | | | Teachers, Clergymen, ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 2, No. 36, December 3, 1870 • Various
... Collot d'Herbois lounged before him, with mud-bespattered legs stretched out before him, with dubious linen at neck and wrists, and an odour of rank tobacco and stale, cheap wine pervading his whole personality, the more fastidious man of the world, who had consorted with the dandies of London and Brighton, winced at the ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... appropriating them at roll-call; students squabbled over palettes, brushes, portfolios, or rent the air with demands for Ciceri and bread. The former, a dirty ex-model, who had in palmier days posed as Judas, now dispensed stale bread at one sou and made enough to keep himself in cigarettes. Monsieur Julian walked in, smiled a fatherly smile and walked out. His disappearance was followed by the apparition of the clerk, a foxy creature who flitted through the battling ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... "The trick is stale, and will not answer," the ruffian returned, with a hoarse laugh; "you may load me with chains, and starve me to death, but ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... stale, but the children were too hungry to be disdainful. At home they would have scorned such a supper with infinite disgust, but now they ...
— Little Folks - A Magazine for the Young (Date of issue unknown) • Various
... from 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 cavern angled down into a rough, tunnel-like opening, from which the draft swept. It was a heavy air, weighted with the smell of moist earth and lifeless water and a nameless, flat, stale gas. They slowly made their way through the impeding stalagmites, surrounded by a dark blur of shadows, the ghostly phosphorescent light illuminating well only the few rods around them. Utter silence brooded over ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various
... "A stale crust was proffered. The cat ate it greedily, and afterwards rubbed himself gratefully against ...
— Novel Notes • Jerome K. Jerome
... used in this process of scouring demand some notice. These comprise soda ash, soda crystals, caustic soda, silicate of soda, potash, caustic potash, soaps of various kinds, stale urine, ammoniacal compounds. Which of these may be used in any particular case depends upon a variety of reasons. Potash is the best alkaline agent to use. It agrees better with the fibre than any other, leaving it soft ...
— The Dyeing of Woollen Fabrics • Franklin Beech
... a moment pretend that her son was an 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 a decent, honest, ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... the villa, and while this was being done, Nero quenched his thirst from a pond of stagnant water, near the opening of the pozzolana quarries. Once inside the villa, he was asked to lie down on a couch covered with a peasant's mantle, and was offered a piece of stale bread, and a glass of tepid water. Food he refused, but touched the rim of the cup with his parched lips. It is curious to read in Suetonius of the many grimaces the wretch made before he could determine to kill himself; he made up his mind to do so only when he ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani
... the 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; and if you don't, you'll be ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 24, September 10, 1870 • Various
... to two ounces, a soft boiled; coddled or poached egg, and a tablespoonful of boiled rice, or mutton or chicken broth, four ounces; one or two pieces of stale bread or zwieback; and if most of the teeth are present, one scant teaspoonful of scraped rare beef, slowly increased to one tablespoonful, alternating with two ounces of beef juice and a salt-boiled or coddled egg. (Some advise a little prune jelly, apple sauce, ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... two sides with deal compartments bulging with dusty papers. There were two or three shelves of uninteresting-looking books, and a desk which extended into a counter. The upper panes of the window were ragged with cobwebs, and the air of the place was redolent of stale publications. A thick-set little man in spectacles sat at the desk. It was not ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)
... a different face on the transaction, but it added spice to the operation; and Napoleon actually succeeded in getting for his stale home bread, goodly sized pieces of fresh chestnut bread, and enough of the much-loved broccio, and bunches of luscious grapes, "to boot," to provide him with a generous meal. But the next day the shepherd boys rebelled; they told Napoleon that his bread was stale, and not good. They preferred ...
— The Boy Life of Napoleon - Afterwards Emperor Of The French • Eugenie Foa
... an 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 fact, that schoolteachers ...
— Collector's Item • Robert F. Young
... small, 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 ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... satisfied; and he said in a half-musing tone: 'The same stale, hackneyed story. She is on her way to where the first misstep always leads. Already he is wearied, and wants but an excuse to fling her off; and I—I—I—her avenger,' exclaimed he with a burst of fierce impatience, 'I am shackled; a prisoner, ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... young negro, clothed in rags unspeakably vile, which scarcely concealed his nakedness, was standing in the midst of a group of white men, toward whom he threw now and then a shallow and shifty glance. The air was heavy with the odour of stale tobacco, and the floor dotted with discarded portions of the weed. A white man stood beside a desk and was addressing ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt
... host and requested something to read; he brought me the whole literary stock of his household, a Dutch family Bible, an almanac in the same language, and a number of old Paris newspapers. As I sat dozing over one of the latter, reading old news and stale criticisms, my ear was now and then struck with bursts of laughter which seemed to proceed from the kitchen. Every one that has travelled on the Continent must know how favorite a resort the kitchen of a country ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... unbearable—a stench of 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 ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... fruits, will avoid it, as they will many more fruits eaten in the Tropics, but digestible only by the dura ilia of Indians and Negroes. Whatever virtue it may have when fresh, it begins, as soon as stale, to give out an odour too abominable to be even ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... time, what with the stale cookin' and bilge water scents that was comin' from the stuffy cabin, and this charmin' mood that old Spiller was in, I was gettin' restless. "Say, Chunk," I breaks in, "you may be enjoyin' this, all right; but I've got enough. It's ...
— Odd Numbers - Being Further Chronicles of Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... sensitiveness, moody; at times his mind seemed all aglow; he wrote, on such occasions, with extraordinary rapidity, and with that cheery appreciation of his labor which to any author is an immense stimulant. But following upon these happy humors came seasons of wearisome depression; the stale manuscript of yesterday lost its charm; the fancy refused to be lighted; he has not the heart to hammer at the business with dull, lifeless blows, and flings down his pen in despair. There are successive months during which this mood hangs upon him like an incubus; then it passes suddenly, like a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... 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
... 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
... the disease—by preserving them in dry tubes—the poison gradually lost its power. At last the virus seemed to die altogether. Then the experiment of inoculating against the disease was begun. A dog was first inoculated with dead virus. No result followed. Then he was inoculated with stale virus, and then with other virus not so stale. It was found that by continuing this process the animal might be rendered ...
— Notable Events of the Nineteenth Century - Great Deeds of Men and Nations and the Progress of the World • Various
... with 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 ...
— The Curious Case of Lady Purbeck - A Scandal of the XVIIth Century • Thomas Longueville
... 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 which was ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... sexes are thrown together, and as most of the poetry and philosophy of tea-drinking teem with female virtues, vanities, and whimsicalities, the inference is that, without women, tea would be nothing, and without tea, women would be stale, flat, and uninteresting. With them it is a polite, purring, soft, gentle, kind, ...
— The Little Tea Book • Arthur Gray
... 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 ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... taking her by the arm and stemming this current with her. "We've got to have a minute of shelter to finish this up in," and he led her into the north lobby of the public library. The stale baked air of the place almost made them gasp. But, anyway, it was quiet and altogether deserted. They could hear themselves think in here, he said, and led the way to a ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... me," said Clement, smiling, "as the old woman said when her husband did not die before the funeral cakes were stale. But could it not come off at ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge
... He is on a farm in Australia now, and I am thinking whether to try for little Bernard; but I am afraid his case would be a stale one, being of seven ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... different from these other fools, and at least you have never wearied me. To have done that is to have done something. I would not lose you, Marcel; as lose you I shall if you marry this rose of Languedoc, for I take it that she is too sweet a flower to let wither in the stale atmosphere of Courts. This man, this Vicomte de Lavedan, has earned his death. Why should I not let him die, since if he ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... the savannahs that border the Orinoco on the west. The Jesuit Fathers had already formed a mission on this spot, and bearing the same name. No tribe is more difficult to fix to the soil than the Guahibos. They would rather feed on stale fish, scolopendras, and worms, than cultivate a little spot of ground. The other Indians say, that a Guahibo eats everything that exists, both on ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... dissipation, which early in the evening had been the 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 and memory, the janitors of the mind, first admitted the light of consciousness, ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... 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 ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 2, February, 1891 • Various
... water, stewed some tea, and eaten what they had. Even this was not luxurious. The Major produced the heel of a cheese and two crushed-looking bananas, and Frank a half-eaten tin of sardines and a small, stale loaf. The Major announced presently that he would make a savory; and, indeed, with cheese melted on to the bread, and sardines on the top, he did very well. Gertie moved silently about; and Frank, in the intervals of rather abrupt ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... 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 ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... 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 the inauguration ...
— A Book of Burlesques • H. L. Mencken
... heat does not rise above 75 deg. or 80 deg.. In such a case if the manure is otherwise in good condition and fresh, it is well enough and a good crop may be expected. But if the manure, to begin with, had been a little stale, rotten and inert, I certainly would not hesitate to at once break up the bed, add some fresh horse droppings to it, mix thoroughly, then make it up again. Or a fair heat may be started in such a stale bed by sprinkling ...
— Mushrooms: how to grow them - a practical treatise on mushroom culture for profit and pleasure • William Falconer
... put you on the kitchen table," she mused. "Likely he will see you there first and eat you while you are fresh. I'd hate mortal bad for him to overlook you, and let you get stale, after all the care I've took with your crust, and all the sugar, cinnamon, and butter that's under your lid. You're a mighty nice pie, and you ort to be et hot. Now why under the sun is all them clean letters ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter
... over the matter of the sermons, and 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 have made him thin the way he worried over this matter ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... at the quaint old parlor with its sporting prints, its glass cases of stuffed squirrels and badgers, and its horsehair-seated chairs with crochet antimacassars hung over the backs. The atmosphere was certainly rather redolent of stale beer and tobacco, but a bunch of crimson wall-flowers on the table did their best to spread a pleasant perfume. The tea, when, after much delay, it arrived, was delicious. The Pelican was a farm as well as an inn, and the rosy-faced servant girl carried in cream, fresh butter, ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... and was a Corporation-man, Sir; and of the 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. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... fellow-townsmen was to hire a large and ferocious looking "cow-puncher" to recognise in Mr. D—— an ancient enemy, and make a vicious attack upon him with blank cartridges and much pomp and circumstance. Still it had no permanent effect on Mr. D——. Badinage could not wither him nor cussing stale his infinite variety. With all his exasperating traits, he had an impassable child-like faith in his doings and a soothing influence that made one smile when ...
— Red Saunders' Pets and Other Critters • Henry Wallace Phillips
... and many winters must ripen. We seek our friend not sacredly but with an adulterate passion which would appropriate him to ourselves. In vain. We are armed all over with subtle antagonisms, which, as soon as we meet, begin to play, and translate all poetry into stale prose. Almost all people descend to meet. All association must be a compromise, and, what is worst, the very flower and aroma of the flower of each of the beautiful natures disappears as they approach each other. What a perpetual disappointment is actual society, even of the virtuous and ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... 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 things ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... clear 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 with a desperate promptitude ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... kept. This should have been previously washed and dried and then allowed to stand in the sunshine, so as to be free from mold or any substance that will taint or otherwise injure the bread. After the loaves have been put into it, keep it well covered and allow no stale crumbs nor pieces of bread to collect. To keep such a receptacle in good condition, it should be scalded and dried every ...
— Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 1 - Volume 1: Essentials of Cookery; Cereals; Bread; Hot Breads • Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences
... passe 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
... interlarding my discourse with sundry apophthegms of Bacon, and stale paradoxes of Rochefoucaud, I passed current throughout Servia considerably above my real value; so after the usual toasts due to the powers that be, the superior proposed my health in a very long harangue. Before I had time to reply, the party broke into the beautiful ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... worked 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 forthwith all vain imaginings ...
— Kilmeny of the Orchard • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... Spencer's mare's nest of "the servile State," and revolted with all the petulant anarchism of the literary profession against the ideal Interfering Female as typified in their heated imaginations by poor Mrs. Sidney Webb, who became the Aunt Sally of our young artists in stale anti-bureaucratic invective; and, above all, the mulishly silent refusal of our governing classes to see why the unemployed should not be simply left to starve, as they had always been (the Poor Law being worse than useless for so large a purpose), ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... better, preserve both by a due admixture of each sort of malt, and with suitable additions and proper correctives in the process or preparation of porter, both salubrious; as by the subsequent mixture of stale and mild beer, before sending out, or, afterwards, by drawing them from different casks into the same pot, when on draught, to suit the ...
— The American Practical Brewer and Tanner • Joseph Coppinger
... unlimited means and no particular occupation, the pleasures of a life of fashionable amusement are apt to grow "weary, flat, stale, and unprofitable," after a certain time. Douglas Dale was beginning to be very tired of balls and dinner parties, flower-shows and morning concerts, when he happened to meet his cousin, Reginald Eversleigh, at a club ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... 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 these matters with those which ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... him about: the idea of marriage, the philosophy, the poetry, the sublimity of it." It was impossible wholly to restrain one's mirth at this, and some rude ripple that I emitted again caused my companion to admonish me. "It sounds a little stale, but you know ...
— The Coxon Fund • Henry James
... in our gallop on the racecourse that evening. The horses were stale, and moved as though they had been ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... and generally by night," her Majesty's revenues being seldom collected in that happy valley, its rents being pronounced dubious, and its water communication described as "frequently cut off," we found in respect to the whole picture thus lightly-sketched in, that age did not wither nor custom stale its ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... 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 the ...
— Fred Markham in Russia - The Boy Travellers in the Land of the Czar • W. H. G. Kingston
... get awful tired of being a jackass? Sometimes I want to kiss you, and sometimes I feel as if I had to kick you. I 'll compromise with you now by letting you bring me some more beer. This got all stale while your sister was here. I saw she did n't like it, and so I would n't drink any more for fear she 'd try to keep ...
— The Sport of the Gods • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... he received Tiddler's atrocious sketch, representing the author of The Insurgent as a Diogenes looking for gray-eyed girls, he had ceased to smile over the thing. The joke was becoming a trifle stale. ...
— Quaint Courtships • Howells & Alden, Editors
... proportion," he said. "You've worked so hard you're getting stale. You ought to get out of it for ...
— His Family • Ernest Poole
... caus'd the king, suddenly, to laugh most heartily, Till the tears trickled fast down from his eyes. Then to their supper were they set orderly, With hot bag-puddings and good apple-pies; Nappy ale, good and stale, in a brown bowl, Which did about ...
— The Book of Brave Old Ballads • Unknown
... old friends and constituents in Syracuse had sent me a general invitation to come over from the university and preside at some one of their Republican mass-meetings. My answer was that as to the "hack speakers'' of the campaign, with their venerable gags, stale jokes, and nauseating slanders, I had no desire to hear them, and did not care to sit on the platform with them; but that when they had a speaker to whom I cared to listen I would gladly come. The result was that one day I received a letter ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... and drew out a tin foil-covered package. "Here's a piece of chocolate I've been carrying around with me ever since I've been at Ellen's Isle," she said. "It's pretty stale by this time, I guess, but it'll keep you from starving while Sahwah and I go and ...
— The Campfire Girls on Ellen's Isle - The Trail of the Seven Cedars • Hildegard G. Frey
... "Wherefore I abhor myself and repent in dust and ashes." The Sermon on the Mount is the greatest lesson in holiness and is from the only one that can teach holiness. Great lessons can be taught by all persons, taught of God, but 'tis better to drink at the fountain than out of a stale bucket. Besides all have imperfection. "To the law and to the testimony if they speak not according to this word it is because there is no light in them." "They shall all be taught of God." "If any lack wisdom, let him ask of God who giveth to all liberally and upbraideth ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation
... forth of the mouth it is now somewhat stale, whereby Iuglers get much mony among maydes, selling lace by the yarde, putting into their mouthes one round bottome, as fast as they pull out another, & at the iust ende of euery yarde they tie a knott, so as the same ...
— The Art of Iugling or Legerdemaine • Samuel Rid
... 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 the boy came whistling ...
— Betty Gordon in the Land of Oil - The Farm That Was Worth a Fortune • Alice B. Emerson
... down a platform thronged with fellow passengers similarly haunted by the seven devils of haste, beneath a high glazed but opaque vault penning an unappetizing atmosphere composed in equal parts of a stagnant warm air and stale steam, into a restaurant that had patently been up all night, through the motions of swallowing alternate mouthfuls of denatured coffee and dejected rolls, up again and out and down another platform—at last into the hot and dusty ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... heavy door, to which many strands of the vine clung, and Florette placed a stick to hold it up at an angle. Peering within by the light of a match, they saw the interior of what appeared to be a mammoth hogshead from which emanated a stale, but pungent odor. It was, perhaps, seven feet in depth and the same in diameter and the ...
— Tom Slade with the Boys Over There • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... died, likewise at Paris, Madelaine de la Vergne, Marchioness of La Fayette, the most intimate friend of Madame de Sevigne. "Never did we have the smallest cloud upon our friendship," the latter would say; "long habit had not made her merit stale to me, the flavor of it was always fresh and new; I paid her many attentions from the mere prompting of my heart, without the propriety to which we are bound by friendship having anything to do with it. I was assured, too, that I constituted her ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... concession to your absurd prejudices. But you must make a concession to mine. You know how I hate the Jewish canvassing of engagements. Let us keep ours entirely entre nous a fortnight—so that the gossips shall at least get their material stale, and we shall be hardened. I wonder why you're so conventional," he said again, when she had consented without enthusiasm. "You had the advantage of Esther—of Miss ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... 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
... 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 ...
— Strong as Death • Guy de Maupassant
... in silence. The trail which we were following zigzagged through the thickest part of the wood, but its devious windings eventually brought us out on to an open space on the farther side. Here we at once perceived traces of another kind. A litter of dirty rags, pieces of paper, scraps of stale bread, bones and feathers, with hoof-marks, wheel ruts, and the ashes of a large wood fire, pointed clearly to a gipsy encampment recently broken up. I laid my hand on the heap of ashes, and found it still warm, and on scattering it with my foot a layer ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman
... least. The same is true of half the diseases afflicting mankind; their prevention may be assured, to a great extent, by attention to the dictates of hygienic laws, which are no more or less than the laws of moderation and common sense, and not, as many suppose, the law of obligation to eat stale bread, or "cold huckleberry-pudding," all the balance of their lives, though this diet might be beneficial if ghost-seeing ...
— Minnesota; Its Character and Climate • Ledyard Bill
... The girls finally found the sizes and shapes they desired at the florist's where they placed their order for May-day blossoms. The confectionery they decided to leave until the day before the basket hanging, so that it would be perfectly fresh. "Don't insult your friends by handing 'em stale candy," was Jerry's advice. ...
— Marjorie Dean, College Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... back your vows. Elsewhere you trimmed and taught these lamps to burn; You bring them stale and dim to serve my turn. You lit those candles in another shrine, Guttered and cold you offer them on mine. Take ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... shew-bread was old and stale, it was to be taken away, and new and warm put in its place, to show that God has but little delight in the service of his own people when their duties grow stale and mouldy. Therefore he removed his old, stale, mouldy church of the Jews from before him, and set in their rooms upon ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... two ladies were made of a very different paste, and that the usual feminine hypocrisies must have cost them, on either side, much more than the usual effort. Mrs. Ambient, smooth-haired, thin-lipped, perpetually fresh, must have regarded her crumpled and dishevelled visitor as a very stale joke; she herself was not a Rossetti, but a Gainsborough or a Lawrence, and she had in her appearance no elements more romantic than a cold, ladylike candor, ...
— The Author of Beltraffio • Henry James
... of pie and your stale bread," the man replied angrily. "I want everything you have got, ...
— Madge Morton, Captain of the Merry Maid • Amy D. V. Chalmers
... 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 the clashing of copper pots. A lean cat in the balcony outside the window mewed hungrily. ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... 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 lodge, and the old ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... 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 ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... song calculated to keep the spirits up, under depressing circumstances? I need one very much, and have nothing more suggestive than the old Methodist hymn, "Better days are coming, we'll all go right," which I shout so constantly, as our prospects darken, that it begins to sound stale. ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... those brief and pregnant generalizations of which he is one of the greatest masters in our language. They are so close to life as all men know it, that the careless reader, as we have already seen, is apt to take them for platitudes; but there is all the difference between the stale superficiality which coldly repeats what only its ears have heard, and these sayings of Johnson heated to new energy in the fires of conscience, thought and experience. "I have already enjoyed too much," says the Prince in Rasselas; "give me something to desire." ...
— Dr. Johnson and His Circle • John Bailey
... in Lisbon 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 ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... penn'orth the most valuable item is the bones, for these, with a bit of carrot and potato and onion, will make a pot of soup sufficient in itself to feed the kiddies for two days. Then, at the baker's, you get a market basket full of stale bread for twopence, and, seeing it's for Sunday, you spend another penny and get five stale cakes. At the grocer's, two ounces of tea, two ounces of margarine, and a penn'orth of scraps from the bacon counter for Dad's ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... palace, did not essentially differ from a dozen other similar structures the party had seen. In fact, palaces and cathedrals were getting rather stale with them, and they coveted a new sensation, which they were likely to realize at their next stopping-place. Before noon the tourists reached Baden-Baden, and were pleasantly installed at the Hotel de l'Europe. As the season was somewhat advanced, there was plenty of room, though the glories of ...
— Down the Rhine - Young America in Germany • Oliver Optic
... 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
... busy with sick rifles; fatigue-parties for straw, rations, and ammunition; long processions of single blue figures turned sideways between the brown sunless walls. One understood after a while the nightmare that lays hold of trench-stale men, when the dreamer wanders for ever in those blind mazes till, after centuries of agonizing flight, he finds himself stumbling out again into the white blaze and horror of the mined front—he who thought he ...
— France At War - On the Frontier of Civilization • Rudyard Kipling
... dyspur[u]eyed or that he beware. For than shold our dyshonour awake. If he were cowardly take in a snare. Ee quod Vyce for that haue I no care. I wyll auauntage take where I may. That heryng Morpleus p{re}uely stale away. ...
— The Assemble of Goddes • Anonymous
... behind the counter under the candy case. 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
... interrupt him with questions: And how is the beautiful little water-nymph who knows how to fasten her silvery veil so coquettishly round her green locks? Does the white-bearded sea-god still persecute her with his foolish, stale love? Are the roses at home still in their flame-hued pride? Do the trees still sing ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... the closed yellow eyelids, the yellow forehead, the rats with their gleaming eyes. In a kind of terror as though she were being led against her will into some disgusting chamber where the skulls were stale and the sights indecent, she saw the friendship of those two—Ellen ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole |
