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"I did think," said Patty, in a disgusted tone, "that we could get settled in the house in time to eat our Christmas dinner there, but it doesn't look a bit like it. I was over there this afternoon, and such a hopeless-looking mess of papering and painting and plumbing I never saw in my life. I don't believe it will ever be done!"
Built entirely of wood, and held together by scraps of ropes and cord, a more hopeless-looking machine cannot exist; and drivers and bullocks alike share in the general woodenness and impassibility of the structure.
"Here, Sam," cried Yan, "I'll bet this is a baffler for you." Sam turned the stick over, selected a hopeless-looking spot, one as yet not touched by the axe, set the stick on end, poured a cup of water on the place, then, when that had soaked in, he struck with all his force a single straight blow at the line where the grain spread to embrace the knot.
The teams drag on again like a "wounded snake that dies at sundown," if a wounded snake that dies at sundown could revive sufficiently next morning to drag on again until another sun goes down. Hopeless-looking swagmen are met with during the afternoon, and one carrier he of the sanded leg lends them tobacco; his mates contribute "bits o'" tea, flour, and sugar. Sundown and the bullocks done up.
I estimated that at least twenty boys and girls of this company were under fifteen; one little boy sitting on the floor hard at work was almost crying with a headache. The men were smoking cigarettes here, as in other places, and this added to the poisonous condition of the air. The majority of these people could not speak English. Taken altogether, they were a hopeless-looking lot.
There was a stroke in him swift as lightning, well aimed mostly, and of a respectable weight withal, which shattered asunder a whole world of impediments for him by assiduous repetition of it for fifty years. There hardly ever came to sovereign power a young man of twenty under more distressing, hopeless-looking circumstances.
We knew by instinct that there was a piece of beef in the larger one. Small, hopeless-looking man standing with his back to the fire, with his hands behind him, watching the train; also, a damp, sorry-looking dingo warming itself and shivering by the fire. The rain had held up for a while. We saw two or three similar camps further on, forming a temporary suburb of Byrock.
There hardly ever came to sovereign power a young man of twenty under more distressing, hopeless-looking circumstances. Political significance Brandenburg had none; a mere Protestant appendage dragged about by a Papist Kaiser. His Father's Prime-Minister, as we have seen, was in the interest of his enemies; not Brandenburg's servant, but Austria's.
The four miles, over heavy, dirty roads, were covered in fair time, though many of the men became very exhausted, and at the end of the march I found myself carrying four rifles, while other officers carried packs in addition to their own kit. The train was composed of the usual hopeless-looking Russian cattle-trucks for the men, with tiers of planks for resting and sleeping on.
Perhaps there is not in all the world a more hopeless-looking race, with their lagging lower lips, their dull grey eyes, their dosy, helpless, exanimate expression, suggesting that the body is half asleep and the spirit no more than half awake.
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