Hovel

“ A flood of golden light flames through the twilight, is cast upon the walls of the hovel, on the shoulder of the stranger bearing the dying man, touches with its warmth those humble objects, and those poor creatures, and the whole takes on a new gentleness, a divine glory. ”

“ I can hardly describe the misery of the hovel and its surroundings, the haggard mother and poor squalid brat, scarcely better clad than when it entered the world,—the all-wretchedest of homes—with earth for flooring, a few stones in the middle to support the fire, above which hung a piece of hooked wood to support a caldron,—a small hole opening in the roof to let out the smoke, which had covered the wooden walls with soot like the inside of a chimney ”

“ An old woman, seated in the hut at a spinning-wheel, answered his request by calling to her daughter, and immediately from an inner room came a maiden so lovely and charming, so white-skinned and golden-haired, that the King was transfixed by astonishment at seeing so beautiful a sight in the wretched hovel. ”

“ The neat farm-houses of America, with all their accessories bespeaking prosperity and thrift, are not met with here; but, instead, a bleak, untidy hovel obtrudes itself on your sight, or your eyes, turning from it, rest on a ruined tower or once proud château tumbling into decay. ”

“ This hovel however, joined a cottage of a neat and pleasant appearance, but after my late dearly bought experience, I dared not enter it. My place of refuge was constructed of wood, but so low that I could with difficulty sit upright in it. No wood, however, was placed on the earth, which formed the floor, but it was dry; and although the wind entered it by innumerable chinks, I found it an agreeable asylum from the snow and rain. ”

“ The most shiftless, unlovely hovel, poised ready to return to its original chemical elements, is embowered in a mosaic of color, which in a northern garden would be worth a king's ransom—or to be strictly modern, should I not say a labor foreman's or a comrade's ransom! ”

“ We remember at another time living in an agricultural district in the low country, in a hovel that was open along the ridge of the roof from gable to gable, so that as we lay a-bed we could tell the hours of the night by the stars that were passing overhead across the chasm. ”

“ Civilised and sophisticated men have solemnly played at being peasants. Hence quaintness, arts and crafts, cottage architecture, and all the rest of it. In the suburbs of our cities you may see, reduplicated in endless rows, studiedly quaint imitations and adaptations of the village hovel. Poverty, ignorance, and a limited range of materials produced the hovel, which possesses undoubtedly, in suitable surroundings, its own 'as it were titanic' charm. ”

“ For I’ve read in many a novel that, unless they’ve souls that grovel,
Folks prefer in fact a hovel to your dreary marble halls:
To sit, happy married lovers; ”

“ Entering a hovel, you will find it to contain but one room, formed by the four mud walls; and in these places, upon the mud floor, the families of the peasant live. Men, women, boys, and girls live and sleep together, and herd with the wallowing pig. ”

“ So soon as the hovel we inhabited, which had enabled us to make observations upon the direction and strength of the wind rather than secured us any accommodation for sleep, had been in some degree restored to its original condition, we availed ourselves of the slight improvement in the weather, to examine a tolerably numerous collection of very beautifully bound books, which were found stowed away in one of the recesses for books running into the four partitions, and had in all probability much to dread from the rain-water trickling through the covering of the roof. ”

“ If my description has been intelligible, you will perceive, now, that a square, flat-roofed hovel, neatly frescoed, with its wall-tops gallantly bastioned and turreted with dried camel-refuse, gives to a landscape a feature that is exceedingly festive and picturesque, especially if one is careful to remember to stick in a cat wherever, about the premises, there is room for a cat to sit. ”

“ Peep into these hovels, and every woman and girl child will be sitting listlessly on the stone floor, or busily at work with head and ears tightly wrapped up, their sparkling eyes and pleasant faces alone showing. ”

“ The men in the clay-built hovels on the flat have to take to flight to some higher ground above the reach of the innundation, on some sheltered rock out of the flashing of the rain and the force of the tempest. He who is built upon the true foundation knows that his house is above the water-level, and he does not need to be in a hurry. ”

“ An old hunter no longer, clad in dirty buckskin, and dwelling in a hovel, but a respectable-looking citizen of the semi-planter type, habited in decent broadcloth, wearing clean linen, living in a neat farm-house, surrounded by fenced fields, and kept by black domestics. ”

“ In another camp old houses have been remodeled, giving practical demonstration of what can be done in the way of making a hovel into a pretty home by the intelligent use of a little lattice-work, a little paint, and a few vines and flowers. ”

“ No food, no firing, and the wind drove the snow through the unthatched house. To have stayed was certain death, so they wandered out into the night and were taken into the house where I saw them on condition that they consented to the four walls of their hut being {133} pulled down and used to heat the hovel in which they had taken refuge. ”

“ The view of the lights belonging to these hovels at night, scattered over the dark sides of the mountain, sometimes peeping forth from a barranca, and at others shining bright upon a little platform, so elevated and inaccessible that you can hardly suppose it to be the abode of any human being, is exceedingly singular. ”

“ The only dwellings are the old, whitewashed stone cottages, with thatched roofs, on the brown straw of which grow various weeds and mosses, brightening it with green patches, and sprouting along the ridgepole,—the homeliest hovels that ever mortals lived in, and which they share with pigs and cows at one end. ”

“ Some perambulated the mountains, seeking gold in the rivers; some forged shoes for horses and chains for dogs; others—more marauders than pilgrims—crept about, ferreting everywhere, and everywhere thieved and pilfered. A few of them, weary of shifting and fixing their tents continually, came to a stand and hollowed out hovels, square huts of four to six feet, underground, and covered with a roof of green branches, the ridge of which, set across two stakes, in the form of a Y, rose scarcely more than two feet above the soil. ”

“ The daughter, who is half-witted, goes out washing and scrubbing, while the old lady has to saw and split all the wood necessary to keep their hovel warm, it being situated in an exposed place on the edge of the common. ”

“ Descending the mountain, on which we had paused for a few minutes to feast our eyes and satisfy our curiosity, we arrived at a small hamlet, or rather a group of two or three hovels, as romantically situated as it is possible for the imagination of man to conceive. ”

“ I have lived in hovels that were invariably flooded in wet weather by the overflowings of neighbouring swamps, and through whose roofs I could tell the hour at night, by marking from my bed the stars that were passing over the openings along the ridge: I have resided in other dwellings of rather higher pretensions, in which I have been awakened during every heavier night-shower by the rain-drops splashing upon my face where I lay a-bed. ”

“ Here and there we see some wretched hovels; I am told that those on the heights are dens without windows, and from which the smoke escapes through a hole in the roof. Many of the old men are blind. What an unpropitious abode for man! ”

“ Most of them had been used to living in the most miserable hovels, in the midst of vermin and every kind of filthiness, or to sleep in the streets, and under the hedges, half naked and exposed to all the inclemencies of the seasons. ”

“ Having dispatched these important matters at the stable, we left our horses in charge of the servants and walked towards the cabins, which were not more than a few hundred paces distant. These hovels, with their appurtenances, formed an exceedingly picturesque landscape. They were scattered, with out order, over the slope of a gentle hill; and many of them were embowered under old and majestic trees. The rudeness of their construction rather enhanced the attractiveness of the scene. ”

“ Wherever the ground swelled into anything like a reasonable eminence, the stronghold of a baron might be observed perched on the summit, while the circumjacent hollow would exhibit its irregularly-clustered hovels, overlooked by the more massive and enduring residence of the rural magnate. ”

“ On the other side three hovels sloped down, closely packed together; zinc pipes ran everywhere, growing like vines, ramifying like the stalks of a hollow vine along the walls, windows gaped on rusty leaden hinges. Dim courts of wretched hovels could be seen ”

“ They live almost like wild beasts, and appear to be half savage.
Their miserable hovels are generally without window or chimney, and utterly destitute of furniture, even sometimes of any approach to a bed, or any cooking utensil. ”

“ These alquerías—warrens we may translate the word—consist of den-like hovels straggling without order or huddled together according as the rock-formation may dictate—some half-piled one on another, others separate. Many are mere holes in the earth—lairs, shapeless as nature left their walls, but roofed over with branches and grass held in place by schistose slabs that serve for slates. Hardly, in some cases, can one distinguish human dwellings from surrounding bush, earth, or rock. ”

“ Perhaps the huts or hovels—built sometimes of mud, sometimes of mud and brick, and always more or less fallen or falling into decay—inhabited by the pitmen and other workmen of the place, are the saddest sight of all. ”

“ The hovels of the peasantry, built of mud or pebbles, are of the same colour as the soil, the walled towns are easily confounded with the rock near them, and even in the midst of cultivated fields we may imagine ourselves in a desert. ”

“ All the hovels have nearly the same form and dimensions, and all agree in being filthily dirty. They resemble a cow-shed with one end open, but having a partition a little way within, with a square hole in it, making a small gloomy chamber. In this the inhabitants keep all their property, and when the weather is cold they sleep there. They eat, however, and pass their time in the open part in front. My guides having finished their pipes, we continued our walk. The path led through the same undulating country, the whole uniformly clothed as before with fern. ”

“ Wherever is love and loyalty, great purposes, and lofty souls, even though in a hovel or a mine, there is Fairyland." ”

“ Here and there up against the sky-line appear long dark coppices, and half-hidden in a hollow, a purely agricultural hamlet nestles, its presence being only made apparent by the slender spire or grey tower peeping over the hedges. On a morning when the wind is marshalling the clouds in echelon across the sky, and belts of shadow go a-hunting across the swelling hill-sides, the scenery wears the aspect illustrated here; the sunny, smiling landscape I always expect on chalk uplands. ”

“ In one place the steep side of the hill rises higher than the rest, and is covered from top to bottom in the green of the thickly crowded trees. Here there is everything together, maples, pear-trees, low-growing willows, brooms, birch-trees, firs and mountain ash entwined with hops; here ... glimpses of red roofs of farm buildings, the tops of the huts hidden behind them, the upper part of a mansion, and above all this mass of trees and roofs, an old-fashioned church lifts its five flashing cupolas. ”

“ Below us was a hollow, not unlike a huge kettle, hollowed out of the surrounding mass of earth; and at the bottom of it a little valley, where the green meadow was divided by a small rivulet, that ran in serpentine windings, its banks graced with the most inviting walks; behind a small winding, there is just seen a house where one of the most distinguished inhabitants of this happy vale, a great philosopher, lives retired, dedicating almost all his time to his favourite studies. ”

“ It sits on the grass at the bottom of a wooded hollow, and the glades of a superb old park go wandering upward, away from it. When I came out in front of the house from a short and steep but stately avenue, I said to myself that here surely we had arrived at the furthest limits of what old, ivy-smothered brick-work, and weather-beaten gables, and mullioned casements, and clustered, mossy roofs, can accomplish for the eye. It is impossible to imagine a more perfect picture. ”

“ The valley narrows, and presently you see strange masses of stone peering from the fir-wood on the right, more and more numerous, till at length the rock prevails, and the trees grow only in gaps and clefts. The masses present astonishing varieties of the columnar form, some tall and upright, others broken and leaning; and looking across the intervening breadth of meadow, you can imagine doorways, porticos, colonnades, and grotesque sculptures. ”

“ All round and far up behind the house towered a vast amphitheatre of mountains clothed in every spur and gorge with wood or terraced orchard, and crested by towered villages almost to their tossing peaks, uplifted, bare, and beautiful, with amethyst veining and delicate snow-streaks, into the intense velvety blue sky. ”