Mudd

“ This is humorously named by Kate the Rotomahana Hotel, and is the place where lunch is usually devoured.
Up a steep, muddy hill now, and at the top we emerge on the mud flat, where many boiling mudholes repeat the phenomena we have already seen, only substituting liquid boiling mud instead of water. We look down, and see a seething mass of molten mud in incessant motion. It rises up in great circling domes and plastic cupolas, which seethe, and expand, and swell, and then break with a lazy, hissing, escape of steam ”

“ Men sitting by the roadside in the mud, gnawing at unsavoury food; men squatting by the ditches, examining their sores, washing their bleeding feet in the muddy water, replacing the muddy rags about their wounds.
A world without colour. No other colour to be seen beneath the sky but mud. The very buttons on the men’s coats painted to make them look like mud. ”

“ Schoolcraft, his partner, and his Mexican friend sloping along behind them on saddle horses through the lane of mud. The trip across the bottoms and up the great bluff was wearisome and tiring. They no sooner lurched out of one rut than they dropped into another, with the mud and water often to the axles, and they continually were forced to climb out of the depressed road and risk upsettings on the steep, muddy banks to pass great wagons hopelessly mired, notwithstanding their teams of from six to a dozen mules or oxen. ”

“ I do hate wet weather in town. At least, it is not so much the wet as the mud that I object to. Somehow or other I seem to possess an irresistible alluring power over mud. I have only to show myself in the street on a muddy day to be half-smothered by it. It all comes of being so attractive, as the old lady said when she was struck by lightning. Other people can go out on dirty days and walk about for hours without getting a speck upon themselves ”

“ John—Jack at Jill, and Jill at Jack as is the way of the world; "but it is a good deal longer and a great deal muddier than the one we came by."
"I like mud," says Essie, gaily, stooping and picking a daisy from a little child's grave at her feet; "it is my native element; at home we are up to our knees in mud in winter, and over our ankles in summer." ”

“ The “Big Muddy,” as it is now called—the Yellow River of old writers—venerable sire of snag and sawyer, displays at this point the source whence it has drawn for ages the dirty brown silt which pollutes below their junction the pellucid waters of the “Big Drink.” [14] It runs, like the lower Indus, through deep walls of stiff clayey earth, and, like that river, its supplies, when filtered (they have been calculated to contain one eighth of solid matter) , are sweet and wholesome as its brother streams. ”

“ There seems to be an especially slippery quality about the mud of England,—to say nothing of that of France—that makes it very difficult to retain one’s balance. My cane, which according to military regulations I always carried, for the first time now proved useful. Day after day as the soldiers of the camp drilled in the soft, muddy squares, their movements resembled sliding more than orderly marching. Sometimes thick pads of the soft, yellow mud clung heavily to their feet ”

“ Thus they made but slow time, and when they topped the last dull rise of ground and looked down on the long slant of ragged, caked earth to the crossing of Little Muddy, with its single tree and few mean bushes, the final distance where eyesight ends had deepened to violet from the thin, steady blue they had stared at for so many hours, and all heat was gone from the universal dryness. ”

“ Oh, the ruddy mud, the muddy mud, the mud that gets your goat,
The sliding mud, the gliding mud, that sprays your pants and coat!
It cakes in your mouth till you feel like an ox,
It slips down your back and it rests in your sox;
You think that you’re walking on cut glass and rocks—
Sunny France!
There’s mud in your gas mask, there’s mud in your hat,
There’s mud in your helmet, there’s mud on your gat,
Yet though mud’s all around us, we’re happy at that—
Sunny France!
Oh, the dank, dank mud, the rank, rank mud, there’s just one guy to blame;
We’ll wish him well (we will like hell!) ”

“ Awkward and solemn clearness, making louder the unnecessary cries, the hoarse laughter of the invisible harlots in their muddy yard, pointing a cool actual finger at the silly and ferocious group of man-shaped beings huddled in the mud under four or five little trees, came strangely in my own mind pleasantly to suggest the ludicrous and hideous and beautiful antics of the insane. ”

“ Seen from the station, the volcanoes appear like dark specks almost upon the horizon, but in reality they are not far away, and an hour's brisk walk will bring us to them. The mud springs, which are scattered over an area of several hundred acres, present many strange and interesting features. There are holes in the earth with bubbling mud at the bottom, cones from the tops of which streams of muddy water issue, and ponds of mud, in some cases as thick as molasses, in others thin and watery. ”

“ Nobody’ll look there, and we can sit on the bank in the mud and be comfortable. I love to sit in the mud,” says I.
“Good idee,” says Mark. “Fine idee. We can hear p-plain, and not one chance in a hunderd of bein’ seen.”
Under we got and settled there as comfortable as was possible. I don’t know if you ever sat in black mud under an old bridge with your clothes dripping and the evening chilly, but if you did, and got any fun out of it, why then, you are better at enjoying yourself than I am. ”

“ If a woman fell down in the mud with her nice white clothes on, and had a journey to go, she would not lie down and wallow in the mud; she would jump up, and wash herself clean at the nearest spring, and be very careful not to fall again, and reach her journey’s end safely. But other women do not allow that; they must haul out buckets of the mud, and pour it over the fallen one, that there may be no mistake about it at all. ”

“ To see them is a spectacle of a rather curious kind, though repulsive. Coupled two and two—for the precaution is taken, and not unfrequently needed—to keep their leg-chains on; up in mud to the middle of their bodies, and above bespattered with it—such mud too! many of them with faces that, even when clean, are aught but nice to look at; their eyes now flashing fierce defiance, now bent down and sullen, they seem either at enmity or out of sorts with all mankind. ”

“ I had my shoulders against the wreck of my steamer, hauled up on the slope like a carcass of some big river animal. The smell of mud, of primeval mud, by Jove! was in my nostrils, the high stillness of primeval forest was before my eyes; there were shiny patches on the black creek. The moon had spread over everything a thin layer of silver—over the rank grass, over the mud, upon the wall of matted vegetation standing higher than the wall of a temple, over the great river I could see through a sombre gap glittering, glittering, as it flowed broadly by without a murmur. ”

“ The sight of it brought fresh strength to their despairing energies. It gave new life to Tom and Phil. A few steps more, and the soft mud grew harder; and soon after they were all standing on the patch of marsh grass.
No sooner had they reached this place, than they all flung themselves down upon the mud, out of which the coarse grass grew. For some time not a word was spoken. All lay there breathing heavily. Looking back, they could see the wide extent of mud flats which they had traversed. The schooner was far away, and those on board could no longer be distinguished. ”

“ At the edge of the dry mud lay a derelict fish-trunk around which a group of bare-legged boys had gathered—and all along the shore, on the faded grass, on the dry mud and wading in the soft slime, the human water-rats were to be seen, turning over drift-rubbish, prying under stranded boats or grubbing in the soft mud. ”

“ Thought I would leave my skin there. Lost my shoes struggling. And all the time I was thinking to myself how beastly it would be to get a jab with a bally long spear while sticking in the mud like this. I remember how sick I felt wriggling in that slime. I mean really sick—as if I had bitten something rotten.”
‘That’s how it was—and the opportunity ran by his side, leaped over the gap, floundered in the mud . . . still veiled. The unexpectedness of his coming was the only thing, you understand, that saved him from being at once dispatched with krisses and flung into the river. ”

“ King Mud still reigns supreme, coiling his clammy self two feet deep along the trenches. Mud! Mud that clings like a burr, that has to be pushed away with your legs before you can walk, mud that squelches and squeals as you tread on it, and gurgles and chuckles as you lift your heavy swollen boot out of its embrace. Snow and mud!' 'One of our best servants has been killed, and my sergeant has died of wounds. I have just written to his wife. At such times one feels sick and weary of this world silliness, this mud and death called war. ”

“ There I sat working away with a will, when I heard the drumming of hoofs, and a horse with a girl in the saddle came whizzing round the turn almost upon me. Just there the rain had made a puddle of thick sticky mud, the mud-pie variety. As the horse went by at full gallop, a fine, fat, mud pie rose, soared through the air, and landed in the middle of my painting. ”

“ Now, while Panapee goes for his book, I must tell you that Mudge is a blue and barbarous country in the southwestern part of the Munchkin country of Oz. It is a hot, dry, desert land and the Mudgers themselves are a short-tempered, long-legged tribe of troublemakers. They live in blue, striped tents and, if it were not for their bright blue whiskers, you would take them for Arabs, as they wear sweeping white robes and turbans to protect themselves from the heat and desert sands. ”

“ Mud is the synonym of shame, and is little, ugly, and infamous. To die in a butt of Malmsey like Clarence,—very well; but in a sewer like d'Escoubleau is horrible. To struggle in it is hideous, for at the same time as a man is dying, he is dabbling. There is enough darkness for it to be Hell, and enough mud for it to be merely a slough, and the dying man does not know whether he is about to become a spectre or a frog. Everywhere else the sepulchre is sinister, but here it is deformed.
The depth of the fontis varied, as did the length and density, according to the nature of the subsoil. ”

“ All your friends at any rate will think so, let the story be told as it may. It was a misfortune that this lady whom you had taken into your establishment should have proved not to be the gentleman's wife. When I am taking a walk through the fields and get one of my feet deeper than usual into the mud, I always endeavour to bear it as well as I may before the eyes of those who meet me rather than make futile efforts to get rid of the dirt and look as though nothing had happened. The dirt, when it is rubbed and smudged and scraped is more palpably dirt than the honest mud. ”

“ She caught the old ayah by her skinny arm, and, in a voice choked with emotion, said—
“What do you mean, Mehal? If there is danger, does it not threaten my mamma and sister as well as me?”
“Yes, but there is greater safety indoors; for every white man who shows himself, there are a hundred bullets waiting to pierce his heart.”
Flora uttered a scream, and she clutched the skinny arm tighter, as if in that weak old woman she saw her only refuge.
“Oh, Zeemit,” she cried, “if this is true, what will become of Walter?” ”

“ You've got mud in your hair, and mud on your eyeglass—you ought to look in a mirror!"
"Listen, mon petit, it is not necessary to speak of it, because if one looks around himself here, he always ends up by finding someone very unhappy——"
"Very true, lieutenant, because instead of being in a lot of mud we could easily find ourselves up to our necks in something a whole lot worse!"
That night I am in the home of M. and Mme. Louis at Verdun.
The good woman has a great wood fire going—May God bless her! ”

“ All ranks stood to continuously, up to their waists in mud, frozen stiff and half drowned, while my brave little rogues of poilus, mark you, slept in their dug-outs, and the only man on duty was the lad who was touching the fireworks off. O friend of mine, there is much innocent fun to be got out of the Boche if you'll only give him a chance! ”

“ Many of the ladies sobbed piteously, and as though their dear hearts would break. Then as one enthusiastic, wild shout of God-speed rose from thousands and thousands of voices, the train steamed away and was lost to view.
After a long and fatiguing journey the base of the mountain in which Avernus was situated was reached. Here a party of Indians and mules were engaged, and not without considerable difficulty the fish vessel, the stores and instruments were landed on the shore of the lake. Preparations were at once commenced for the descent into the unknown depths of the lake of mystery. ”

“ Silence reigned again—only the splash of the oars was heard and the beating of the water against the skins. Nothing broke the monotony; the river wound its way slowly in and out round mud banks; the country as far as one could see was unbroken, endless mud; the water one drank and washed in and floated on was diluted mud; the occasional village on the banks was built of mud, the inhabitants were mud colour; the very sky gave one a feeling of mud. ”