Budding

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ While returning to the house and preparing for church I entered into a solemn agreement with Budge, who was usually recognized as the head of this fraternal partnership. Budge contracted, for himself and brother, to make no attempts to enter my room; to refrain from fighting; to raise loose dirt only with a shovel, and to convey it to its destination by means other than their own hats and aprons; to pick no flowers; to open no water-faucets; to refer all disagreements to the cook, as arbitrator, and to build no houses of the new books which I had stacked upon the library table. ”

“ 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. ”

“ When they crack the whip the mud flies off, and so clever are they at this form of slinging that they rarely miss the bird at which they aim. When the water has all gone from the fields, the long stalks that have been left standing are burned. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But if a drop of liquid mud falls amidst the element from above, disturbing its purity, then, while the plume unfolds to its utmost capacity, does the animal commence a slow revolution, the body also passing around within the tube. ”

“ 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! ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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! ”

“ Then they dragged themselves up on the bank and started what looked like a cartoon of a mud-slinging campaign. To an idle passerby a group of full grown human beings with their heads and often their bodies completely poulticed in black mud would have been an amusing sight. ”

“ While a visitor was being let in at the front-door I rushed out, and had the most glorious roll in the mud. Felt more like my old self then.
9:45. Visited the family again. Shrieks of horror on seeing me caked in mud. But all agreed that I was not to be scolded to-day as I was a hero (over the man!) . ”

“ He thinned away and thinned away until he was a soap-bubble, except that he kept his shape. You could see the bushes through him as clearly as you see things through a soap-bubble, and all over him played and flashed the delicate iridescent colors of the bubble, and along with them was that thing shaped like a window-sash which you always see on the globe of the bubble. You have seen a bubble strike the carpet and lightly bound along two or three times before it bursts. ”

“ And does not mud itself, which is offensive and noxious when swallowed or smelt, serve as cooling to the touch in hot weather, and as a cure for wounds from fire? What can be nastier than dung, or more worthless than ashes? ”

“ 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. ”

“ But if the bubble stands the shock of a bigger drop, and outlives the chances of a child, of a careless nurse, of drowning in a pail of water, of being over-laid by a sleepy servant, or such little accidents, then the young man dances like a bubble empty and gay, and shines like a dove’s neck, or the image of a rainbow, which hath no substance, and whose very imagery and colours are phantastical ”

“ With the mud he capped this over, forming a little arched roof.
"To keep it from blowing away," surmised Trendon.
"No; to make it blow down instead of blowing up."
"Oh, rot!" returned the downright surgeon. "That pound of dirt won't make the shadow of a feather's difference."
"Won't it!" retorted the other. "Curious thing about high explosives. A mud-cap will hold down the force as well as a ton of rock. Wait and see what happens to the rock beneath." ”

“ Our road after this, till six o'clock in the evening, lay through the most exquisite forests, but with terrible footing for the mules—thick, pudding-like, wet mud, and loose, slippery stones, corduroys of hard mud striping some of the most difficult places, where only a surefooted mule can tread. ”

“ For the bristly coat which covers its body is a kind of filter, which strains out the mud from the water which passes to the gills; and it soon becomes so choked with mud that you cannot see what the animal is really like at all. ”

“ I always purr when mistress brushes me, to let her know that I like it; and Budge likes it so well, he keeps turning himself so the brush will strike him at every point. I believe the brushing and the good food we get make us have such soft and glossy coats, and such fine bushy tails.
One day after Budge had been thoroughly groomed he concluded that he would go on an exploring tour, and, being so nice and clean, he was permitted to go wherever he pleased. ”

“ One knows that the rain of the rainbow may be gathered at one's feet in a mud-puddle, but the fleeting spectrum of the bow is not a thing of life. Yet one would as soon think of digging up a rainbow in the mud as a swallow. ”

“ He reached it at last after more than two hours of such effort as would have left an ordinary man spent and dying in the sticky mud, yet he was less than halfway across the marsh. Greasy with slime and mud was his smooth, brown hide, and greasy with slime and mud was his beloved Enfield that had shone so brightly in the first rays of the rising sun. ”

“ A short distance before we reached the lake we caught sight of two buffaloes that were having a good time wallowing in a large puddle of mud and water. That is one of the buffalo's amusements: nothing delights him more than a wallow in the mud; and the more he can cause the stuff to adhere to his skin the better he seems to be satisfied. ”

“ It is difficult to say which would be worse--a fall from the stool by daylight into the embers of a wood fire, or the shuddering slimy waking about midnight, after a nod more vigorous than the rest, to find oneself plunged in eight cold inches of soft mud. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Once in the mud a man would sink well up to his waist. He would sink no farther, probably, for the saltings are not quicksands, but he would be held in a grip as firm as steel, and, unless rescued, would remain until the "cruel, crawling foam" crept up and engulfed him. ”

“ A mud-house is being built near by, and between the cooking and attending to passing travelers, two women are digging the earth and filling up the baskets, while the men are mixing the mud, filling in the oblong wooden trough, and thus building the wall. At my elbow a man—old and grizzled and dirty—is turning back roll upon roll of his wadded garments, and ridding it of as many as he can find of the insects with which it is infested. ”

“ The Psammead reached out a hairy arm from its basket and pointed to a heap of mud at the edge of the water.
'What do you call that?' it said; and as it spoke the heap of mud slid into the river just as a slab of damp mixed mortar will slip from a bricklayer's trowel. ”

“ Whizz-bangs and H.E. descend from on high displacing much porridge-like soil. Men hurrying to and fro day and night, disturb and mash up much earth in these ditches. And, no matter how or why, there is mud; mud unspeakable and past all computation. Consider it quietly for a moment, and you will feel as we do about duck-walks—I trust the inventor has been given a dukedom—and realise the pressing importance of various material details leading up to that all-important strafing of Boches. ”

“ He stumbled a little further, where the mud began to get softer and deeper, but struggling up again, went hopping on towards the river.
I shouted to him, but he never looked back. At every few yards he would sink down almost to his knees in the black mud, but wrenching himself free would flounder forward. Then, still some distance from the river, he fell upon his face, and did not rise again. I saw his arms beating feebler and feebler as he sank till at last the oily slime closed over him, and I could detect nothing but a faint heaving underneath the mud. ”

“ In some places the mud is swept nearly clean away, and then you go splashing along, while always in a curious, echoing, musical way, comes the sound of running water, dripping water, plashing water, seeming always to be playing one melancholy strange tune, sad and sweet, and peculiar. ”

“ There is always a grain of truth in a calumny: when plenty of mud is thrown some of it sticks, not because of the quantity of the mud, but because there is sure to be an adhesive sympathy with some part of the object of the attack. ”

“ A box of mud is a palace compared with the Moor Woman’s brewery. Every barrel there has an odor that almost takes away one’s senses; and the barrels stand close to each other; and wherever there is a little opening among them, through which one might push one’s way, the passage becomes impracticable from the number of damp toads and fat snakes who sit out their time there. Among this company did Inge fall! and she shuddered and became stark and stiff.
She continued fastened to the loaf and the loaf drew her down as an amber button draws a fragment of straw. ”