Murder by poison was, in fact, an obsession with this man, although he was sufficiently sane and sordid to select victims whose deaths would bring him pecuniary advantage.
But what added to Miss Baker's miserable embarrassment on this occasion was the fact that the old Englishman should meet her thus, carrying a sordid market-basket full of sordid fish and cabbage.
Maria came out of her dementia, and in a few days the household settled itself again to its sordid regime and Maria went about her duties as usual.
He gazed about him wildly; nothing, nothing but the sordidjunk shop and the rust-corroded tins.
Like Polk Street, it was an accommodation street, but running through a much poorer and moresordid quarter.
Why are we not free to face the humble destiny which more sordid spirits would shrink from?
The cold maxims of worldly prudence, thesordid calculations of worldly interests affect me not.
And if she didn't chance to "let" steadily, out she went to pauperdom and some other poor, sordid old adventurer tried in her place.
An extraordinary bitterness possessed me at this invasion of the stupendous beautiful business of love by sordid necessity.
You have a sordid soul," she said, and walked away.
Bare facts that clothed themselves with sordid details in the minds of the listeners.
Taken at their face value, the recorded stories of that early time would leave one to infer that the common people, whose industry supported this superstructure of sordid mastery, could have survived only by oversight.
The individual attack is, for the most part, butsordid reading.
One fancies the merchant conversant with a higher and less sordidclass of persons and details than the master spinner, and vineyards more agreeable objects than dying-houses and treddles.
There are other reasons accounting in a degree for its inferiority to Bordeaux in appearance, and the sordid impression which it leaves on the mind.
No effort was omitted of base and disgusting mockery, of sordid and unblushing calumny, which could vilify and degrade whatever the people had been most accustomed to love and venerate.
I told a "story" that would have melted the heart of any mug; but it didn't melt the heart of that sordid money-grasper of a shack.
To rob was manly; to beg was sordid and despicable.
From Berlin comes thereupon, at great length, sordid description by Grumkow, of that initiatory Hotham Dinner, April Third, with fearful details of the blazing favor Hotham is in.
We are all tempted, and the easier and more prosperous we are, the more we are tempted, to fall into that sordid and shallow frame of mind.
Beside the sordid accumulation of gain to which his life was devoted the priest's mission among crowded alleys and fever-stricken lanes seemed luminous and grand.
Flesh of stem and pileus lavender when young but soon fading to a sordid white, thick on disk, abruptly thin towards margin, soon cavernous from grubs.
The gills are radial, somewhat branching, and coming together again, sordid white or tan-color.
We want a more equal, more thorough, more harmonious development, and there is nothing to hinder the men of this country from it, except their own supineness, or sordid views.
What horrid monsters were these men Who lur'd thee to their fatal den; That den, whose deeds as yet untold, Were done for sake of sordid gold.
What was said and what was agreed upon in this conference was so sordid and mean that we prefer not to recount it.
The popular voice, stimulated by the most sordid methods, was now raised against Whitney throughout all the cotton States.
He had no desire to hear the recital of the sordid details.
How shall such a man escape the imputation of sordid and selfish motives?
The agent in this sordid iniquity must be human; must be influenced by the ordinary motives; must be capable of remorse or of error; must have moments of repentance or of negligence.
I threatened to abandon you, merely because I would employ every means of preventing your destruction; but my revenge is not so sordid as to multiply unnecessary evils on your head.
It is unjust to demand, it is sordid to retain, praise that is not merited either by our present conduct or our past.
Even Hazleton, with his sordid gangs of Eastsiders nudging each other on a dirty bench, can't deny it," bristled Kenny.
While thy kind dictates we pursue, Our souls delighted share, Too high forsordid minds to know, Who on themselves alone bestow Their wishes and their care.
Far from mortal cares retreating, Sordid hopes, and vain desires, Here our willing footsteps meeting, Every heart to heaven aspires.
He was free from the sordid squabbles or anxious watching and privation which fall to the lot of so many of the best.
They are presented, picture after sordid picture, without a glimmer of understanding or real insight, though he sometimes shows smug sympathy for a few he claims to have reformed by something he calls "cultural therapy".
They even have Mahomet, whom nevertheless they hate as a false and sordid legislator.
All the uneasy and sordid services about these halls are performed by their slaves; but the dressing and cooking their meat, and the ordering their tables, belong only to the women, all those of every family taking it by turns.
It is thought a sign of a sluggish and sordid mind not to preserve carefully one's natural beauty; but it is likewise infamous among them to use paint.
How all sordid thoughts disappear, vanishing on the far shores of forgetfulness like the pale tints that grow dim and melt along the sky-line!
Those lips seem to say "do not live in the mean valleys of earthly ambition, but strive to gain higher conceptions of life with truer, nobler aims, that soar above the sordid world until you attain that benign look of the Great Stone Face.
How sordid the striving for fame and power appear, which as quickly fade as did that of "Old Blood and Thunder" and "Old Stoney Phiz!
