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Closely following in the wake of the utensil flew the janitor, a bulky, unwholesome man, suspenderless and sordid, panic-stricken and breathless. A frowsy, fat woman with flying hair followed the missile. The janitor's foot slipped on the tiled floor, he fell in a heap with an exclamation of despair. The woman pounced upon him and seized his hair. The man bellowed lustily.

The intoxication of excitement, the sordid thirst for fame and power, the sordid fear of defeat, may have its place; but there, too, stand high resolve, and stern determination, pure love of country, the immortal longing for glory, ideal aspiration, god-like self-sacrifice, loyalty to soul, to man, to the Highest.

This was Barrel Alley, the habitat of Jimmy Mattenburg and Sweet Caporal and the McNulty twins. Barrel Alley was the slum neighborhood of Bridgeboro and it was not very large. But it was large enough. Pee-wee explored the crooked, muddy, sordid street, gazing wistfully here and there for possible recruits. But no human material was to be seen.

Already I had exhausted my small bills and when I tried to cash one for a hundred dollars the ticket agent in the station eyed me with suspicion. That night we slept in a single bed, Hawkins and I, in a cheap lodging-house that is, he slept a sordid, drunken sleep, while I lay tossing and cursing my fate until, burning with fever, I rose and drained part of the water in the pitcher.

She was a hard, calculating, sordid old bourgeoisie, but when he refused the little dot she would have settled upon Hélène, he knew that he had won her friendship and that she would give him no trouble. She was not a mother-in-law to be ashamed of, for her manners were coldly correct, her education in youth had evidently been adequate, and in her obese way she was imposing.

M. Longnon is almost ready to identify Catherine as the niece of Pierre; Regnier as the nephew of Etienne, and Colin as the son of Nicolas. Without going so far, it must be owned that the approximation of names is significant. As we go on to see the part played by each of these persons in the sordid melodrama of the poet's life, we shall come to regard it as even more notable.

Up here all vestiges of a sordid humanity disappear. The Loafer is alone with the south-west wind and the blue sky. Only a carolling of larks and a tinkling from distant flocks break the brooding noonday stillness; above, the wind-hover hangs motionless, a black dot on the blue.

I felt that this grey monstrous London of ours, with its myriads of people, its sordid sinners, and its splendid sins, as you once phrased it, must have something in store for me. I fancied a thousand things. The mere danger gave me a sense of delight.

I shot Tibbs. I think the idea of suicide was carried out rather neatly. Of course when once we got on the coast the rest was simple. I had bargained that all on board should die; but that stone of yours upset my plans. I also bargained that there should be no plunder. No one can say we are pirates. We have acted from principle, not from any sordid motive."

The world's a fine place for those who go out to take it; there's lots of unknown stuff' in it yet. I'll fill your lap, my pretty, so full of treasures that you shan't know yourself. A man wasn't meant to sit at home...." Throughout this letter for all its real passion one could feel how the man was holding to his purpose the rather sordid purpose of this venture.