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More "Button" Quotes from Famous Books



... Bryant helped him to button the curtains on the hood of the car, found an instant when he could press Ruth's hand unobserved and murmur a word in her ear, and stated that if the rain did not last he would run down (he had picked up a second-hand Ford in Kennard) to ...
— The Iron Furrow • George C. Shedd

... this?" repeated the Tisch, pushing the button and disclosing Henry's miniature with the legend "To my ...
— Secret Memoirs: The Story of Louise, Crown Princess • Henry W. Fischer

... button and the image was stationary. A tiny black spot had appeared near one edge of the satellite's disk and this now spread rapidly like a blot of spilled ink. Then it stretched out into a wriggling line that quickly streaked its way across the equator, completely ...
— Creatures of Vibration • Harl Vincent

... factor; What education is; What the real teacher is; A hypnotist; Untying knots; Too much kindness; The button illustration; The chariot race; Physically sound; Character; Well educated; Professional preparation; Experience; Choosing a teacher; A "scoop"; What makes the difference; A question ...
— Rural Life and the Rural School • Joseph Kennedy

... the telephone, crossed to the wall and pressed a button. The cigar stump held firmly between his teeth, he stood on the rug before the hearth, facing the door. Presently it opened and ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer

... a young Duke rather. Two shillings, and that a severe price; a charitable price. Here is half-a-crown; give me sixpence. I was not a minor. Farewell! I go to the little Pomfret. She is a sweet flower, and I intend to wear her in my button-hole. Good-bye, Lady Afy!' ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli

... of Pen, was it? He gets on with his Latin too. And, Isa, he has fastened a half-franc to his button-hole, for the sake of the beloved image, and no power on earth can persuade him out of being so ridiculous. I was base enough to say that it wouldn't please the Queen of Spain! And he responded, he 'chose her to know that ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning

... right," said Mr. Denton, touching an electric button and sending the boy who answered to the department for ...
— For Gold or Soul? - The Story of a Great Department Store • Lurana W. Sheldon

... this stratagem succeed even beyond his own expectations. But now, hearing of a vessel bound to Philadelphia, on board of which were many Quakers, being cast away on the coast of Ireland, he laid aside his gown, cassock, and band, clothes himself in a plain suit, pulls the button from his hat, and flaps it on every side; his countenance was now demure, his language unadorned with any flowers of speech, and the words You and Sir, he seemed to hold in abomination; his hat was moved to none, for, ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Bampfylde Moore Carew • Unknown

... a walk in the Tuileries, not thinking any more of my female extortioner, when a small man, with his hat cocked on one side of his head and a large nosegay in his button-hole, and sporting a long sword, swaggered up to me and informed me, without any further explanation, that he had a ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... shan't forget Mackenzie in a hurry! It was the funniest thing I've ever seen in my life. Talk of people looking sour! He might have been eating sloes. Cook's taken it personally, I'm afraid. I asked her for some whitening this morning to clean my regimental button, and she scowled and wouldn't let me ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil

... and soon had everything ready. But suddenly she remembered that she had left a very nice pair of button-hole scissors in Mrs. Montague's boudoir on the day they left for ...
— True Love's Reward • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon

... at all to her mother's question, but with her lashes still downcast, continued to button her gloves; and Hayden stood, miserably uncomfortable for a moment, and then was forced to doubt the correctness of his swift, unpleasant impression; for Mrs. Oldham observed in her ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow

... Washington. Whatever the matter in hand, his mind always moved with lightning rapidity to positive views. He was never without a clear purpose, and he had the skill and the temper to manage men. He knew how to conciliate opponents, to impress the thoughtful, to threaten the timid, to button-hole and flatter and cajole. He breathed freely the heated air of lobbies and committee rooms. Fast as his reputation grew, his actual importance in legislation grew faster still. At the beginning of his second term he was appointed chairman ...
— Stephen Arnold Douglas • William Garrott Brown

... pleasant-spoken young officer led the way to a lift, and, touching a button, the three descended from the top of the mountain ...
— Punch Among the Planets • Various

... I hadn't been so particular about that mending," she thought ruefully. "It was a shameful waste of time to do it at the studio. I was so particular to have everything done up to the last notch that there isn't a single letter to write, or button to sew on, or—or—anything. I simply can't sit down like a tame tabby this first exciting afternoon, when all sorts of wonderful things may be going to ...
— Miss Pat at Artemis Lodge • Pemberton Ginther

... an opportunity to witness the actual firing of a torpedo at an enemy vessel at close range. Directly in front of the Dewey's commander, just above the electric rudder button, glowed four little light bulbs in bright red—-one for each of the torpedo tubes in the bow bulkhead. When they were lighted thus it indicated that every chamber was loaded. As soon as a torpedo was discharged the bulb corresponding ...
— The Brighton Boys with the Submarine Fleet • James R. Driscoll

... that Marshalsea pavement, in the shades of evening, did Mr Pancks, of all mankind, fly over the head and shoulders of Mr Rugg of Pentonville, General Agent, Accountant, and Recoverer of Debts. Alighting on his feet, he took Clennam by the button-hole, led him behind the pump, and pantingly produced from his pocket a bundle of papers. Mr Rugg, also, pantingly produced from his ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens

... endeavour to manage it better than that big stupid the Emperor of Russia, who went riding full gallop in search of a fall. There is an addle-pate for you. What a simpleton! He is nothing but a Russian corporal, occupied with a boot-heel and a gaiter button. What an idea to arrive in London on the eve of the Polish ball! Do you think I would go to England on the eve of the anniversary of Waterloo? What is the use of running deliberately into trouble? Nations do not derange their ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo

... glimpsed the white arm falling and knew the thing had loosed its grip, the light died. Bremilu, starting at the sudden discharge close to his ear, had pressed the ivory button. ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England

... no comment. The captain fidgeted with a button of his coat. He turned toward the door, stopped, cleared his throat, hesitated, and then ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln

... Even to outline it to you would take too much time. Light, heat, motive power in incredible degrees and under such control as has never been known: these were to be the agencies at his call. The push of a button, the turn of a screw—oh, he was to be master of such power as no monarch ever wielded! Riches—pshaw! Riches were the least of it. He could create them, practically. But they would be superfluous. Power: unlimited, absolute power was his goal. With his end achieved he ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams

... brogues[484],—Tartan hose which came up only near to his knees, and left them bare,—a purple camblet kilt[485],—a black waistcoat,—a short green cloth coat bound with gold cord,—a yellowish bushy wig,—a large blue bonnet with a gold thread button. I never saw a figure that gave a more perfect representation of a Highland gentleman. I wished much to have a picture of him just as he was. I found him frank and polite, in the true sense of ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell

... had bade wi' her near forty year, Fine acquaint wi' her weel-soopled jaw, Sae he lowsed his tap button for ease till his wame, Wi' a gant at the wag-at-the-wa'. "Weel Isie," says he, "an' it's me that should ken, That's the ae place ye niver hae cramp. The lamp's bidin' here: if he's seekin' a sicht O' yer tongue he can pull't ...
— The Auld Doctor and other Poems and Songs in Scots • David Rorie

... of a machine," the alleged farmer explained, following Ned as he walked about the great planes. "See here! No cranking at all! You just get into the seat, which will carry two nicely, and push this button. That releases a spring which whirls the propellers until the spark is made, ...
— Boy Scouts in an Airship • G. Harvey Ralphson

... Cibber, "I find you know [knew?] Mr. Dryden?" "Know him? O Lord! I was as well acquainted with him as if he had been my own brother." "Then you can tell me some anecdotes of him?" "O yes, a thousand! Why we used to meet him continually at a club at Button's. I remember as well as if it were but yesterday, that when he came into the room in winter time, he used to go and sit by the fire in one corner; and in summer time he would always go and sit in the window." "Thus, Sir," said Johnson, "what with the corner of the fire ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... topics, and the different systems of our two famous ministers, Sully and Colbert; on errors which were daily committed in France, in points essential to the prosperity of the Empire; and on the reform he himself would make at Vienna. Holding M. Campan by the button, he spent more than an hour, talking vehemently, and without the slightest reserve, about the French Government. My father-in-law and myself maintained profound silence, as much from astonishment as from respect; and when we were alone we agreed ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan

... felling, hemming, and making of button holes are taught; in the intermediate, cutting and making plain garments; in the higher grade the girls cut and make dresses. Instruction is given in making garments from old clothes and also in mending—two important accomplishments ...
— The American Missionary - Volume 50, No. 4, April 1896 • Various

... toward the end of the season superb trophies for the competition of both men and women, with the promise of others in succeeding years. In short, he gave the society whose favor he coveted to understand that it had merely "to press the button" and he would ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant

... side of the lift and pressed a button. The doors closed, and there was a grunting click of heavy machinery settling into a ...
— Arsene Lupin • Edgar Jepson

... along. Apparently the Brons intend to sow their seed among the stars. And with families. I'll wager that your lists are not worth a darning needle. Something will be left behind. A slice of some bride's wedding cake. Little Nordo's favorite toy. Papa's best pocket-knife. Mama's button-box." The strong little man made a wry face. "Bah, this is no trip for families. They want too much. They are never satisfied. With warriors it is much different. They can take things as they are and grumble a bit—or if they grumble too much, Gunnar ...
— Hunters Out of Space • Joseph Everidge Kelleam

... a curious, tense gaze which was fixed on the third button of Brent's shirt. "What about Steve Gary?" asked Pete, and even Brent, old hand as he was, felt the sinister significance in that slow question. The Spider's letter had said to "give him a try-out," which might have meant almost anything to ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs

... into chairs and gazed about us in awe. No hotel had ever affected any of us like this before. At first we talked in whispers; then as our courage revived, we became critical. Then somebody thought of having a "Scoot"; tremulously he pressed the button for the waiter. The waiter came and they had two "Scoots" each. Then somebody made a funny remark and one of us laughed out loud. Suddenly the laugher stopped and said, "I feel as if I ought not to laugh; I feel that nobody ever laughed in this ...
— On the Fringe of the Great Fight • George G. Nasmith

... suggested to the Mandarin Li Keen that the bestowal of the Crystal Button would only be a fit and graceful reward for his indefatigable efforts to uphold the dignity of the sublime Emperor; but to all such persons the Mandarin has sternly replied that such a proposal would more ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah

... Commander Carpenter ordered her to remain as she was, with her bows against Vindictive's quarter, pressing the latter ship into the Mole. Normally, Daffodil's boilers develop eighty pounds' pressure of steam per inch; but now, for this particular task, Artificer Engineer Button, in charge of them maintained a hundred and sixty pounds for the whole period that she was holding Vindictive to the Mole. Her casualties, owing to her position during the fight, were small—one man killed and eight wounded, ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various

... 'joy and peace in believing.' As long as, and not a moment longer than, you are exercising the Christian act of trust, will you be experiencing the Christian blessedness of 'joy and peace.' Unscrew the pipe, and in an instant the water ceases to flow. Touch the button and switch off, and out goes the light. Some Christian people fancy they can live upon past faith. You will get no present joy and peace out of past faith. The rain of this day twelve months will not moisten the parched ground of to-day. Yesterday's religion ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren

... which so dazzled me in Tuscany: these wenches are prohibited such ornaments it seems. A muslin handkerchief, folded in a most becoming manner, and starched exactly enough to make it wear clean four days, is the head-dress of Lucchese lasses; it is put on turban-wise, and they button their gowns close, with long sleeves a la Savoyarde; but it is made often of a stiff brocaded silk, and green lapels, with cuffs of the same colour; nor do they wear any hats at all, to defend them from a sun which does undoubtedly mature the fig and ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi

... everywhere, on the walls, round the porch, over the very gateway. Fred was leaning against the gate, in his brown velveteen coat and slouched hat, looking so handsome and picturesque, poor fellow! He had a Gloire de Dijon in his button-hole. I remember I wondered vaguely how he had had the heart to ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... he found that the sounds ceased suspiciously. Whoever was there was listening, too. It was easy, by the light streaming from above, to find the button and turn on the electricity in the lower hall, whereupon the movement up-stairs began again. Some one came out of a room and peered downward. He himself went to the foot of the stairs, looking up. ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King

... cloak of crimson lined with white satin, covering the left shoulder and fastened on the right-hand side by a double clasp of diamonds; a black velvet cap, surmounted by two aigrets, a diamond loop, and for button, the most celebrated of the crown jewels, ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand

... and swung up the walk to the door. Bounding up the steps he reached forth his hand to touch the annunciator button when he caught sight of something standing on the porch beside the door—something that brought a gasp of amazement from his lips and actually caused him ...
— The Corner House Girls Growing Up - What Happened First, What Came Next. And How It Ended • Grace Brooks Hill

... Turn up your nose at a doctor, indeed, Harry!—pshaw, good English style that! Doctor! my aunt married a Doctor of Divinity—excellent man—wore a wig, and was made a dean! So long as Rickeybockey is not a doctor of physic, I don't care a button. If he's that, indeed, it would be suspicious; because, you see, those foreign doctors of physic are quacks, and tell fortunes, and go about on ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various

... So do I! Well, then, Tom,"—and here Mark was seized with a tendency to St. Vitus's dance, and began overhauling every button on his coat, twitching up his black gloves, till (as undertakers' gloves are generally meant to do) they burst in half-a-dozen places; taking off his hat, wiping his head fiercely, and putting the hat on again behind before; till ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley

... spikes were wanting to the iron railings. When the telegram came I was sitting in my study writing a discussion on the atomic theory of Krelli of Balmoral. I at once changed the Woking jacket in which I was writing for evening dress—which wanted, I remember, a button—and hastened to the Park. I did not tell my wife anything about it. I did not care to have her with me. In all such adventures I find her more useful as a sentimental figure in the background—I, of course, allow no sentiment in ...
— The War of the Wenuses • C. L. Graves and E. V. Lucas

... this rapidity, Mrs. Gaunt, who stood at some distance, had not time to observe the button on the glove, or she would ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various

... out, if they can, What honour is, on their wild plan— Is not, to take it in their way, And this we sure may dare to say Without incurring an offence, Courage, law, honesty, or sense): Men, who, all spirit, life, and soul Neat butchers of a button-hole, 910 Having more skill, believe it true That they must have more courage too: Men who, without a place or name, Their fortunes speechless as their fame, Would by the sword new fortunes carve, And rather die in fight than starve At coronations, a vast field, Which food ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill

... been provided together with chemical apparatus, by means of which fresh supplies of oxygen and nitrogen might be obtained for our consumption during the flight through space, Mr. Edison touched a polished button, thus causing the generation of the required electrical charge on the exterior of the car, and immediately we began ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putman Serviss

... to the naked eye as a pair of particularly fat laundry drawers hung out to dry and ballooned in extension—if mayhap you've ever seen the sight of them in that state:—just held together by a narrow neck of thread or button, and stretching away like a corpulent frog in the act of swimming on the wind. His comparison touches the sentiment of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... been advertising, writing, canvassing, and button-holing in England, had kept a newspaper on foot, and was able to point to powerful friends in Parliament and in London mercantile circles. By giving scrip supposed to represent plots and farms in its New Zealand territory, it secured numbers of settlers, ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves

... Case, and by degrees, as that swells, the skin cleaves, and at length falls off, with its thorny top and all (which is a part of it) and leaves the seed Case to ripen, and by degrees, to shatter out its seed at a place underneath this cap, B, which before the seed is ripe, appears like a flat barr'd button, without any hole in the middle; but as it ripens, the button grows bigger, and a hole appears in the middle of it, E, out of which, in all probability, the seed falls: For as it ripens by a provision of Nature, that end of this Case turns downward after the same manner ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke

... rude garments from strings made of native flax. These early products were made by the process of working the fibres by hand into a string or thread. The use of a simple spindle, composed of a stone like a large button, with a stick run through a hole in the centre, facilitated the making of thread and the construction of rude looms. It was but a step from these to the spinning-wheels and looms of the Middle Ages. When the Spaniards discovered ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar

... library and hall and drawing-room. Doctor Quimby's horse and buggy stood by one of the hitching posts and the Colton motor car was drawn up by the main entrance. From the open windows of the servants' quarters came the sounds of excited voices. I hastened to the front door. Before I could push the button of the electric bell the door was opened. Johnson, the butler, peered out at me. Most of ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln

... me?" Sylvie Argenter asked one day, when she had walked over to the shop with a small basket, in which to put brown bread, little fine rolls for her mother, and some sugar cookies. Ray and Dot were both there. Dot was sitting with her sewing, putting in finishing stitches, button-holes, and the like. She was behind the counter, ready to mind the calls. Ray had come in to see what was wanting of ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney

... poor spinsters of the Minerva press can scarcely support life by their labours, so completely are they driven out of the market by the Lady Charlottes and the Lady Bettys; and a rhyming peer is as common as a Birmingham button. It would take ten Horace Walpoles at least to do justice to the living ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 282, November 10, 1827 • Various

... joining them, and was left alone again with his thoughts. Then he was conscious the other women had remained in the apartment. They had come into the inner room, and Mrs. Feversham, having found an electric button, flooded the interior with light. On the balcony a blue bulb glowed. Tisdale turned a little more and, leaning on the casement, waited for them to come ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson

... accustomed to hear in the cemetery. Almost shocked, she turned round. Klingemann was standing before her, in an attitude of greeting, holding in his hand his straw hat, which was fixed by a ribbon to his coat button. He ...
— Bertha Garlan • Arthur Schnitzler

... scheme. He said nothing, but he sought for and found her hand beneath the apron. She did not resist. He reflected "Can she resist? She cannot." Her hand was in a living swoon. Her hand was his; it was admittedly his. She could never deny it, now. He touched the button of the glove, and undid it. Then, moving her passive hand, he brought both his to it, and with infinitely delicate and considerate gestures he slowly drew off the glove, and he held her hand ungloved. She did not stir nor speak. Nothing so marvellous as ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett

... pressed the button of an electric torch which he carried. He directed the disk of white light fully upon the face ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer

... every stage of dressing and undressing. Viola Vincent fluttered up to her (it is difficult to flutter in a gymnasium suit, and only Viola's supremely butterfly quality enabled her to do it), a charming vision of pale blue, with a profusion of tiny brass buttons twinkling wherever a button could be put. ...
— Peggy • Laura E. Richards

... in the barracks, following the noblest of occupations as soldiers for the supreme War Lord. The army represented admitted perfection. Foreign observers were united in naively attesting its impeccableness. It was ready to the last shoe button, to the last twist of its waxed mustache. But ready for what? Few outside of Germany appeared to think of asking. The army was taken to be simply Teuton life and of no more ulterior significance ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry

... was dim, a carefully manufactured twilight. It is strange how many things, and how slight, stir, control, influence in one direction or another, the emotions. Light and the absence of light can divert a heart as easily as the pressing of a button can give a warship to the sea. Twilight and music can change a beast into a man, a man into an angel, for the moment. Long after that evening was dead, both Julian and Doctor Levillier anxiously, and in their different ways analytically, considered it. They submitted it to a secret process of probing, ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens

... noticed with some grim amusement, standing among the brokers and speculators of Carondelet street, the baker, Reisen. He was earnestly conversing with and bending over a small, alert fellow, in a rakish beaver and very smart coat, with the blue flowers of modesty bunched saucily in one button-hole. ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable

... in subdued tones. We are not quite ourselves. There is always a peculiar feeling when one hears through the doors a murmur as of the sea from the lecture-theatre. In the course of thirty years I have not grown accustomed to this feeling, and I experience it every morning. I nervously button up my coat, ask Nikolay unnecessary questions, lose my temper.... It is just as though I were frightened; it is not timidity, though, but something different which I can neither describe nor find a ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... thou may look, lass,' said he, 'but a'd thought better on thee. It's like last week thy last sweetheart were drowned; but thou's not one to waste time i' rememberin' them as is gone—if, indeed, thou iver cared a button for yon ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. II • Elizabeth Gaskell

... guests, "a fop in a gay coat," a coxcomb wearing the bright vestment of the hunter, albeit in the hour of chase he only hunted gates and gaps; and upon the white satin lining of his "pink" there was a tiny button-hole bouquet, such as Mab might have held with her fairy fingers at the time of her coronation; and in collar, if in nothing else, he resembled the immortal Shakespeare; and his bosom was broad and snowy as the swan's; and his pumps were glossy as the ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie

... said, "Yes, a button—a marble;" but he did not; he only rose slowly, and his late quadrupedal aspect was emphasised ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn

... beasts—or even people—to be destroyed, but the task is so difficult that it is seldom attempted. Because it is free from sickness and death is one reason why Oz is a fairyland, but it is doubtful whether those who come to Oz from the outside world, as Dorothy and Button-Bright and Trot and Cap'n Bill and the Wizard did, will live forever or cannot be injured. Even Ozma is not sure about this, and so the guests of Ozma from other lands are always carefully protected from any danger, so as to be ...
— The Magic of Oz • L. Frank Baum

... flicked off as Brandon pushed the pre-ejection lever into the lock position severing all connections between the ship and the pilot's capsule. Brandon had a strange, detached feeling as he pushed the ejection button. ...
— The Quantum Jump • Robert Wicks

... was now completing his thirty-first trip, and getting madder and madder about it every minute. I saw him only with his clothes on; but I should say, speaking offhand, that he had at least fourteen rattles and a button. His poison sacs hung 'way down. Others may have taken them for dewlaps, but I knew better; ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb

... the first time the horror of loneliness. I thought of the poor little man's notebook that I had seen. I thought of his fearless and lovable ways—of his pathetic little tweed cap, of the missing button of his jacket, of the bungling darns on his frayed sleeve. It seemed to me that heaven could mean nothing more than to roll creaking along country roads, in Parnassus, with the Professor beside me on the seat. ...
— Parnassus on Wheels • Christopher Morley

... elderberries, beechmast, and other wild berries and fruit. (9/8. Prof. O. Heer 'Die Pflanzen der Pfahlbauten' 1866 aus dem Neujahr. Naturforsch. Geselschaft' 1866; and Dr. H. Christ in Rutimeyer's 'Die Fauna der Pfahlbauten' 1861 s. 226.) Jemmy Button, a Fuegian on board the 'Beagle,' remarked to me that the poor and acid black-currants of Tierra del Fuego were too ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin

... up his little old face and turned up his button of a nose, and gave a long whistle. You might not believe it, seeing he lived in a coal cellar, but really he liked tidiness and always played his pranks upon disorderly ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes

... health he seemed to be already a doomed man. He was anxious chiefly to give me an opportunity to comprehend the nature and magnitude of his business. As I was about to leave, he took hold of my coat button and said: "When you see the President, you give my love to him, and say to him that I am for him and that I always have been for him." Still holding me by the button, he said: "Who buys the carpets for ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 2 • George S. Boutwell

... their coats of arms, symbolical of the "medicine" of the wearer; adopted, no doubt, from like silly fancies to those which put the crest upon the carriage, on the lackey's button, or the brass seal stamp of ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid

... importance with me, was pursued often for its own sake, and became, though always with a sense of organic relation to the biography, continuous in itself." If a "hasty person" be one who thinks eleven years rather long to have his button held by a biographer ere he begin his next sentence, I take to myself the sting of Mr. Masson's covert sarcasm. I confess with shame a pusillanimity that is apt to flag if a "to be continued" do not redeem its promise before the lapse of a quinquennium. I could scarce await the "Autocrat" ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell

... vessel, and another stalwart son of Mars took charge of the doctor. After walking a few steps up the street we all stepped into an empty carriage without saying as much as "by your leave," Thorwald touched a button, and we were off. ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan

... amount of explanation conveys the idea unless they learn to read. Machinery is equally inexplicable, and money nearly as much so until they see it in actual use. They are familiar with barter alone; and in the centre of the country, where gold is totally unknown, if a button and sovereign were left to their choice, they would prefer the former on account of ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone

... protect it.[224] As have the neighboring settlements, this station has yielded a great many arrows, hatchets, scrapers, and harpoons. We give an illustration of a curious marrow spoon, and of a round object which seems to have been a button (Fig. 84), as they mark ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac

... judge is apt to be no less a tool of the boss than any other public officer elected by the suffrages of a political party. He is merely less obviously so. There are a few men in Wall Street who can press a button and call for almost any judge they want—and he will come— and adjourn court if necessary to do so—with his silk hat in his hands. And if any young aspirant for legal honors who reads these fugitive memoirs believes that the road to the supreme bench leads via Blackstone, ...
— The Confessions of Artemas Quibble • Arthur Train

... with goblins was fruitless. One night a dark and hostile throng emerged from the wood and moved toward the blockhouse, where twenty musketeers were keeping guard. "If you be ghosts or devils I will foil you," cried the captain, and tearing a silver button from his doublet he rammed it into his gun and fired on the advancing host. Even as the smoke of his musket was blown on the wind, so did the beleaguering army vanish, the silver bullet proving that they were not of human kind. The night was wearing on when a cry went ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner

... kind, different from any I ever saw; the wood is very brittle, and easily split; there is a very little variety of sorts, having seen but two. The leaves of one are long and narrow; and the seed (of which I got a few) is in the shape of a button, and has a very agreeable smell. The leaves of the other are like the bay, and it has a seed like the white thorn, with an agreeable spicy taste and smell. Out of the trees we cut down for fire-wood, ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World, Volume 1 • James Cook

... proceeded from interested motives. When Monsieur, misled by his favourites, did something which was neither just nor expedient, I used to say to him, "Out of complaisance to the Chevalier de Lorraine, you put your good sense into your pocket, and button it up so tight that it ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... a dozen small button mushrooms, or half a dozen large ones; parsley and chives, of each enough to make a teaspoonful when finely chopped; of lean ham a tablespoonful, and one small shallot. Fry gently in a tablespoonful of butter, but do not let them brown. Stir these into half a pint of white sauce, simmer three ...
— Choice Cookery • Catherine Owen

... "I worked this out, so let me tell it." He turned to Benson. "Maybe I'm tougher than the rest of them, or maybe I'm not as deeply conditioned. For one thing, I'm tone-deaf. Well, here's the way it is. Gregory can set the machine to function automatically. You stand where he shows you, press the button he shows you, and fifteen seconds later it'll take you forward in time five seconds and about a kilometer in space, to The Guide's office. He'll be at his desk now. You'll have forty-five seconds to do the job, from ...
— Hunter Patrol • Henry Beam Piper and John J. McGuire

... that we had beaten him, and by the grim determination of those underground men of ours, whose skin was the color of the chalk in which they worked, who coughed in the dampness of the caves, and who packed high explosives at the shaft-heads—hundreds of tons of it—for the moment when a button should be touched far away, and an electric current would pass down a wire, and the enemy and his works would be blown ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs

... "Here, kid, button your blouse up again," ordered Private Hyman. "You ain't called upon to fight that bully. Hooper, if you're spoiling for fight I'll do my best to be kind ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys in the Ranks - or, Two Recruits in the United States Army • H. Irving Hancock

... that would blow up the whole house. He was wearing finer clothes than she had ever seen him in before—a frock coat, quite new but fitting him badly, so that it was buttoned too tightly across his stomach and loose across the back. He had a white flower in his button-hole, and a rather soiled white handkerchief protruded from his breast-pocket. One leg of his dark grey trousers had been creased in two places, and there were little spots of blood on his high white ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole

... Then a black trunk became detached from the rest, apparently straight in front. He did not mean to let go, although he might be crushed between the horse's shoulder and the tree, and drew as close as possible to the animal. Something brushed his coat, he felt a button torn off, but the tree was passed. He knew where he was now, and thrusting hard against the horse urged the animal towards the other side of the road. The log ran into soft snow and slowed; there was more room here and the steepest ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss

... he, in the squeaky tones of a eunuch, shaking the young fellow by a button of his coat which he had laid hold of. "Do you want to know my opinion? Well, all your newspapers are of no use whatsoever. Come now, let us put a supposititious case. I am the father of a family, am I not? Good. I go to the cafe for a game at dominoes? ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger

... when we woke this morning, and it was not very late when we retired. We had neither of us slept well the night before, and it had been a hot, suffocating day for travelling, so that we were very tired when we got in. What useful things hair-pins are! I have always found them excellent bodkins, button-hooks, wedges for misfitting windows, &c., but until to-day had never realized what a capital comb they would make, ...
— A Lady's Life on a Farm in Manitoba • Mrs. Cecil Hall

... notice in the grander contrast of his pose and stature, is an old shirt of woolen blue, with a white nap at the button-holes, and upon his knees of black cloth he twirls, as if for relaxation, between his powerful manacles, a soiled white handkerchief—if from his mother, we conjecture, a gift to a bloodhound from his dam. His heavy handcuffs make his broad ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend

... to do if possible. It did seem to Edna as if she could not stand it, and she went down to supper with very red eyes. Louis tried to comfort her and promised to play buttons with her that evening, a specially favorite amusement of the little girl when Aunt Elizabeth allowed her button bag to be used, and all sorts of plays were invented by using the buttons. But even this prospect had lost its charm. "I wish I were a man," exclaimed Louis, suddenly, "I'd ...
— A Dear Little Girl • Amy E. Blanchard

... for some time he had considered what answer he should make to it. To deny was impossible. It would be easy to convict him of a fib, for the fact of the question being asked was sufficient to say there was proof that the button was his. He must, then, confess the truth, grave ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... romping games under the trees—hunt the slipper, and button, and Copenhagen. Mrs. Barnard and two other women had come over to see the festivity, and they sat at a little distance with Mrs. Berry, awkwardly disposed against the trunks of trees, with their feet tucked under their skirts to keep ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... Ellen, "and I got so tired of it I hated to see it, but when I opened my eyes I couldn't help looking at it, and watching all the little ins and outs in the crack till I was as sick of it as could be. And that button, too, that fastens the door, and the little round mark the button has made, and thinking how far the button went round. And then if I looked towards the windows I would go right to counting the panes, first up and down and then across; and I didn't want to count them, but I couldn't help it; and ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner

... official aspect. Over the doorway was nailed a huge, prehistoric-looking buffalo-skull, bleached white with the years—the time-honoured insignia of the R.N.W.M.P. being a buffalo-head, which is also stamped on the regimental badge and button. ...
— The Luck of the Mounted - A Tale of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • Ralph S. Kendall

... him on the river bank, and as we talked the handle of my parasol touched the bottom button of ...
— Nonsense Novels • Stephen Leacock

... the compressor lock at the Chief's home later, Stark rubbed the diamond against the sleeve of his tunic. He fumbled with his breathing globe and then pushed the button that activated the door. The tele-guard beyond the opening door scanned him rapidly. As he stepped forward, a red light above the tele-guard flashed on and the ...
— Blind Spot • Bascom Jones

... stones, [22] which we told you before, the high priest bare on his shoulders, which were sardonyxes, [and I think it needless to describe their nature, they being known to every body,] the one of them shined out when God was present at their sacrifices; I mean that which was in the nature of a button on his right shoulder, bright rays darting out thence, and being seen even by those that were most remote; which splendor yet was not before natural to the stone. This has appeared a wonderful thing to such as have not so far indulged themselves in philosophy, as to despise Divine ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus

... first time the horror of loneliness. I thought of the poor little man's notebook that I had seen. I thought of his fearless and lovable ways—of his pathetic little tweed cap, of the missing button of his jacket, of the bungling darns on his frayed sleeve. It seemed to me that heaven could mean nothing more than to roll creaking along country roads, in Parnassus, with the Professor beside me on the seat. What if I had known him only—how ...
— Parnassus on Wheels • Christopher Morley

... by;—Harry Brierly flirted, danced, added lustre to the brilliant Senatorial receptions, and diligently "buzzed" and "button-holed" Congressmen in the interest of the Columbus River scheme; meantime Senator Dilworthy labored hard in the same interest—and in others of equal national importance. Harry wrote frequently to Sellers, and always encouragingly; and from these letters it was easy ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... instant, the control console was blurred. Lanko waited, then as the panel returned to focus, he walked back to it. He snapped the drive switch on and pushed the drive to maximum. Nothing happened. He punched the emergency power button, and waited an instant. There was no result. He ...
— The Players • Everett B. Cole

... long face and narrow chin. He had beautiful white teeth; as he laughed these were seen set in a jaw that contracted very much toward the front. He was tall and slim, and he wore with elegance the evening dress which Class Day custom prescribes for the Seniors; in his button-hole he ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... said that she would "make a good actress." Now was the moment to prove that he had judged her truly! She began to unfasten one of her long gray gloves. A button was loose. She must give it a few stitches to-morrow. Strange that there should be room for such a thought in her mind. But she ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson

... this will be best; for I can button the cape over the lower part of my face. Don't I look ...
— Clarissa, Volume 5 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson

... holding the bee in her mandibles by the antennae, clinging as she climbs to the vertical polished surface with all six feet. She gains the summit of the glass, stays for a little while in the flask-like cavity of the terminal button or handle, returns to the ground, and resumes her circuit of the glass and her climbing, relinquishing the bee only after an obstinate attempt to escape with it. The persistence with which the Philanthus retains her clasp upon the encumbering burden shows plainly that the game would go straight ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre

... prison suit. I maliciously remarked to Mr. Ramsey that he looked like a gentleman out yachting; but somehow he was unable to see himself in that light. My own clothes were sadly defective. The biggest shirt-collar they had would not button round my throat, and the longest stock was so inadequate that a special one had to be made for me. Nor would the biggest coat fasten across my chest. A broad expanse of waistcoat yawned between the ...
— Prisoner for Blasphemy • G. W. [George William] Foote

... Knight of the Lion Heart, as in days of yore you dubbed me, has not forgotten the button-hole bouquets you used to make as child hostess; it is not aesthetic, as from your fingers; this is only from the basket ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny

... situation had pickled on you and you'd had to fight your way out as best you could. They'd tell you about it, their eyes gleaming, sometimes a slightest trickle of spittle at the sides of their mouths. They usually wanted an autograph, or a souvenir such as a uniform button. ...
— Mercenary • Dallas McCord Reynolds

... beguiled Ignatius McSorley, Jr., to leave his mother's door, and go swimming in the river, promising faithfully to "button up his back"—Ignatius being a wise child who knew his limitations—and when Tommy Watson forgot that promise and basely deserted Ignatius to catch on the back of a buggy that came along the river road, leaving his unhappy friend clad in one ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung

... often dispensed in the primitive patriarchal way, seated on the "stoep" before the door, under the shade of a great button-wood tree, but all visits of form and state were received with something of court ceremony in the best parlor, where Antony the Trumpeter officiated as high chamberlain. On public occasions he appeared with great pomp of equipage, and always rode to church in ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving

... can—remember—how to unbutton—a boy!" said the man, with his pleasant deliberation, as he began on the button that was always catching itself on Diego's hair. Diego cheerfully extended little arms and legs in turn for the disrobing process. Presently a small heap of garments lay on the floor, and the children were quite delicious in baggy blue ...
— Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories • Kathleen Norris

... on his arm opened a pair of black shoe-button eyes and blinked up at him, and Dal absently stroked the tiny creature with a finger. The fuzz-ball quivered happily and clung closer to Dal's side as he started up the long ramp to the observation platform. Automatic doors swung open as he reached the top, ...
— Star Surgeon • Alan Nourse

... he said, and hope rose in the heart of each heated Principle. "It's really absurdly simple. All the Pilot has to do is to touch a button, and at his will, VARY the area of the Surface, the Angle of Incidence, and the Camber! And there you are—Maximum Climb or Maximum Speed as required! How does that ...
— The Aeroplane Speaks - Fifth Edition • H. Barber

... chair, as if for some serious talk. Brand could not help being struck by the brisk, vivacious, energetic look of this man; and on this morning he was even more than usually smartly dressed. Was it his daughter who had put that flower in his button-hole? ...
— Sunrise • William Black

... do, Mike," he said, laughing. "So go on with your private war; it's no button off my pants ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert Chambers

... line of depositors on the street, which reached around the corner from one of the trust companies, I thought. I was making a note of an order to send into the outside office there on the left, and had just pushed this button here under the table to call a boy to carry it. Mr. Parker had just received a letter by special delivery, and seemed considerably puzzled over it. No, I don't know what it was about. Of a sudden I saw him start in his chair, rise up unsteadily, clap his hand on the back of his head, stagger across ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds

... will put you next him." Mr. Bowring touched a button on his desk and presently an office boy—a mop of auburn curls, a pert face and gangling legs in knickerbockers—hurried up with a ...
— The Great God Success • John Graham (David Graham Phillips)

... the envelopes of his personal correspondence and had read the contents the colonel pushed another button. The little man who had been waiting in the corridor slipped edgewise in at the door. He was thin and elderly and his knob of a head, set well down on his pinched shoulders, had peering eyes on each side of that beak of a nose. ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day

... trod, And unscorch'd preserved her fame. By that test if you were tried, Ugly names might be defied; Though devouring fire's a glutton, Through the trial you might go 'On the light fantastic toe,' Nor for plough-shares care a BUTTON. ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb

... his smile, the amiability of which seemed breaking from under clouds of grief, and still more so from the mute appeal to sympathy in the empty sleeve of his right arm, which was looped to the breast-button of his coat. His eyes were large and soft. He had no beard or whisker, and only delicate moustaches. The sorrow, quiet but profound, the amiable smile and the lost arm, were appealing details which at once arrested attention and excited ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.

... to speak of home while he was there. I believe the theory was that the sight of his punishment did them good. They called him "Plain-Buttons" because, while he always chose to wear a regulation army uniform, he was not permitted to wear the army button, for the reason that it bore either the initials or the insignia of the country ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers

... the button he wanted, and was triumphant. He wanted others. He wanted to go on rummaging; but she snatched the box from his hands, and, hurt in her vanity, she began ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland

... which have never been subjected to the plough, in grounds partly inundated a great portion of the year, luxuriating in company with the Northern Cypress, over an undergrowth of Dutch Myrtles and Button-bushes, we find the singular Tupelo-tree. This tree is the opposite of the Ash in all its characteristics. There is no regularity in any part of its growth, and no tree in the forest sports in such a variety of grotesque and fantastic shapes. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various

... features, look out upon you from amid the bundles of clothes and piles of all kinds of articles which darken the doors and windows of their shops. Scarce have you crossed the threshold of the Ghetto when you are seized by the button, dragged helplessly into a small hole stuffed with every imaginable sort of merchandise, and invited to buy a dozen things at once. No sooner have you been let go than you are seized by another and another. The women were seated in the doors of their shops and dwellings, plying busily ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie

... the cabin of logs, Ben Bolt, At the edge of the pathless wood, And the button-ball tree with its motley limbs, Which nigh by the door step stood? The cabin to ruin has gone, Ben Bolt, The tree you would seek in vain; And where once the lords of the forest waved, Grow grass ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various

... newspaper publication, while the pyramids of dusty folio are left to stand in solitary proud neglect. The cursory railroad spirit is abroad: we abhor that old painful ploughing through axle-deep ruts: the friend who will skate with us, is welcomer than he who holds us freezing by the button; and the teacher, who suggestively bounds in his balloon on the tops of a chain of arguments, is more popular in lecturing than he of the old school, who must duteously and laboriously struggle up and ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... nice man, who has seen through me all the time and who hasn't been taken in by me, as the world has; and I shall say to him, 'By the way, here is a small fire and a few laurel leaves; please warm your hands at the one and wear the others in your button-hole.' That is the proper way in which a woman should treat fame—merely as a decoration for the ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler

... thought themselves; some insignificant relic might turn up—a shred of clothing or so forth. Such things were occasionally picked up on Nepenthe; nobody knew to whom they belonged. The Cave of Mercury, on being searched, yielded nothing but a trouser button, apparently of English manufacture. Enquiries were also made as to when the ill-starred gentleman had last been seen, and where. Finally, the judge drew up a list, a fairly long list, of all the suspicious characters on the place with a view to placing them under lock and key, in expectation ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas

... aukward country fellow, when he comes into company better than himself, is exceedingly disconcerted. He knows not what to do with his hands or his hat, but either puts one of them in his pocket, and dangles the other by his side: or perhaps twirls his hat on his fingers, or perhaps fumbles with the button. If spoken to he is in a much worse situation; he answers with the utmost difficulty, and nearly stammers; whereas a gentleman who is acquainted with life, enters a room with gracefulness and a modest assurance; addresses even persons he does not know, in ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore

... ground and fundamental of all (1 John 2:22,23, 4:2-4; 2 John 9,10). For by this doctrine, and by this only, the man is made a Christian; and he that has not this doctrine, his profession is not worth a button. You must know that sometimes the church in the wilderness has but little light, but the diminution of her light is not then so much in or as to substantials, as it is as to circumstantial things; she has then the substantials with her, in her darkest day, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... imagine—with a description of my way of life in the deep quietude of an Old Manse. And now—because, beyond my deserts, I was happy enough to find a listener or two on the former occasion—I again seize the public by the button, and talk of my three years' experience in a Custom-House. The example of the famous "P. P., Clerk of this Parish," was never more faithfully followed. The truth seems to be, however, that when he casts his leaves forth upon the wind, the ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... he went up to the bed and tried to move it; but it was fixed to the wall, and had not been moved for more than half a century, apparently. Then the brigadier stooped, and made his uniform crack. A button had ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant

... jar tightly with a cork that has been dipped in melted rosin, and put it away in a dry place. Tomatas pickled in this manner keep perfectly well and retain their colour. For this purpose use the small round button tomatas. ...
— Directions for Cookery, in its Various Branches • Eliza Leslie

... pho-to-graphed, and I thought my time had come. You see, I had never heard the word before. There was no escape, as I was kept tied, and the next morning my master took me under his big coat in the cable-cars. I could just peep through one of the button-holes, and all at once I uttered a loud whine. You should have seen how the passengers stared at my master, who I know looked embarrassed, as he gave me a tremendous squeeze. We soon got out, and I was ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf; a Practical Plan of Character Building, Volume I (of 17) - Fun and Thought for Little Folk • Various

... the beach and jump on the backs of boys, who carry us dry-shod to the boat. We are rowed to the steamer, and presently descend to the storeroom, which smells of calico, soap, tobacco and cheese. Anything may be bought here, from a collar-button to a tin of meat, from perfumery to a shirt, anything,—and sometimes even the very thing one wants. We provide for the necessities of life for the next month or two, hand over our mail and end our visit with a drink. Then the whistle ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser

... jerked forward by a hurried and inefficient machine. About half of them were women, with broken straw hats, pallid faces, and untidy hair. All were dazed and bewildered, having been snatched away in carriages or motors from the making of match-boxes, or button-holes, or cheap furniture, or from the public house, or, since it was Saturday evening, from bed. Most of them seemed to be trying, in the unfamiliar surroundings, to be sure of the name for which, as they had been ...
— Human Nature In Politics - Third Edition • Graham Wallas

... the lobby of my apartment and dug into the mailbox of another party, thus identifying myself as the man in three eight four. Then I punched the elevator button for the Fourth and leaned back against the elevator and let my mind wander up ...
— Stop Look and Dig • George O. Smith

... he said, "I am an abbe, it is true, but I am so against my will. I never had a vocation for the bands; my cassock is fastened by one button only, and I am always ready to become a musketeer once more. This morning, being ignorant that I should have the honor of seeing your majesty, I encumbered myself with this dress, but you will find me none the less ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... centuries at his back." My companion's eyes traveled from the soft padded shoes to the little red button on the top of the black skull cap. "Even his costume is ...
— The Lure of San Francisco - A Romance Amid Old Landmarks • Elizabeth Gray Potter and Mabel Thayer Gray

... the under-lip is lengthened, Like a trunk or proboscis, Ending by a kind of button, Fringed ...
— Mother Truth's Melodies - Common Sense For Children • Mrs. E. P. Miller

... and undid the button. There was a second shirt underneath, and to that on the left breast were pinned two ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy

... of his like had ever been seen in Bursley before. One of the striking things about him was the complex way in which he secured himself by means of glittering chains. A chain stretched across his waistcoat, passing through a special button-hole, without a button, in the middle. To this cable were firmly linked a watch at one end and a pencil-case at the other; the chain also served as a protection against a thief who might attempt to snatch the fancy waistcoat entire. Then ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett

... back to her with a suddenly sobering effect and she hastened on her way up the street, pausing at last at No. 57. She mounted the steps reluctantly, and with a nervous, spasmodic intake of the breath pressed the bell-button. ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler

... are smart or bold enough to steal nowadays; their intercourse with the whites along the railroad has, in a measure, relieved them of those aboriginal traits of character that would incite them to steal a brass button off their pale-faced brother's coat, or screw a nut off his bicycle; but they have learned to beg; the noble Piute of to-day is an incorrigible mendicant. Gathering up my tools from among them, the monkey-wrench seems to have found favor in the eyes of a wrinkled-faced brave, who, ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens

... for me!" said my father merrily, when he received his. "Willie generally cuts me off with a sprig for my button-hole." ...
— The Story of the White-Rock Cove • Anonymous

... a button I got from the coat of one of the men. That may serve to identify him if he is one of our men. I haven't had a chance ...
— The Circus Boys Across The Continent • Edgar B. P. Darlington

... us down the thickly carpeted corridor leading the way to a large apartment, or rather a suite of rooms, as handsomely furnished as any in other hotels. He switched on the lights and left us, with the remark, "When you want the waiter or anything, just press the button." ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve

... late Emperor of the French was informed, on the eve of the Franco-German War, that not so much as a gaiter button would be found wanting if hostilities were at once commenced, soon all France found itself, with him, fatally deceived. But when the Transvaal Burghers boasted that they were "ready to give the British such a licking as they had never ...
— With the Guards' Brigade from Bloemfontein to Koomati Poort and Back • Edward P. Lowry

... Mackaye. Oh! there is in the intellectual workman's heart, as in all others, the root of Pharisaism—the lust after self-glorifying superiority, on the ground of "genius." We too are men; frail, selfish, proud as others. The days are past, thank God, when the "gentlemen button-makers," used to insist on a separate tap-room from the mere "button-makers," on the ground of earning a few more shillings per week. But we are not yet thorough democrats, my brothers; we do not yet utterly believe our own loud doctrine of equality; nor shall we till—But I must not anticipate ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al

... of their packing was completed and they were ready to call it a day, the phone buzzed. Cameron hesitated, determined to let it go unanswered, then punched the button ...
— Cubs of the Wolf • Raymond F. Jones

... was mortally wounded, and of which wounds he died on the said hill, immediately or soon thereafter, where his dead body remained concealed for sometime, and was afterwards found, together with a hat, having a silver button on it, with the letters A. R. D. marked on it. LIKEAS, soon after the said Arthur Davies was murdered, each of the said two panels, being persons of bad fame and character, and who were habite and repute thieves, ...
— Trial of Duncan Terig, alias Clerk, and Alexander Bane Macdonald • Sir Walter Scott

... one would care to store in fond memory's album. Be that as it may, here was this mirror, and swinging down the course suddenly I beheld myself in it. Clad in a chastely simple one-piece garment, with my face all a blistered crimson and my fingers interlaced together about where the third button of the waistcoat, counting from the bottom up, would have been had I been wearing any waistcoat, I reminded myself of a badly scorched citizen escaping in a scantily dressed condition from a burning homestead bringing with him the chief family treasure clasped in his arms. ...
— One Third Off • Irvin S. Cobb

... the wild castor oil beans. We were greatly disappointed in not finding the latter suitable food; likewise some of the prickly pear bushes, which gave us only a few pears about the size of our small button pear; the outside has thorns, which if applied to the fingers or lips, will remain there, and cause a severe smarting similar to the nettle; the inside a spungy substance, full of juice and seeds, which are red and a little tartish—had they been there in abundance, we should not have suffered ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms

... well away from the camp. A fleck of green showed through the amethyst foliage before him—the lake! Shann wriggled through a last bush barrier and stood to look out over that surface. A sleek brown head bobbed up. Shann put fingers to his mouth and whistled. The head turned, black button eyes regarded him, short legs began to churn water. To his gratification the ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton

... ceremony was performed in the evening, and immediately afterwards the newly-married couple received the compliments and congratulations of their friends. Jane was attended, on the occasion, by six of her young companions; and as many young men, with white favours in their button-holes, were very busy all the evening, playing masters of ceremonies, escorting all the ladies as they arrived, from the door to the spot where the bride was stationed. Jane looked surpassingly beautiful; ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper

... Toplady seldom rose much before midday, it was not the mere luxury of repose that kept her in her chamber. As a rule, she awoke from refreshing sleep at eight o'clock. A touch on the electric button near her hand summoned a maid, who appeared with tea, the morning's post, and a mass of printed matter: newspapers, reviews, magazines, volumes, which had arrived by various channels since noon on the previous day. Apparatus of perfected ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing

... which is often harder to bear than something much more dangerous—'I am His,' and to live Christ, and to say by conduct 'I am His,' 'Whosoever shall confess Me before men, him will I also confess before My Father, and whosoever shall deny Me, him will I also deny.' Do not button your coats over your uniform. Do not take the cockade out of your hats when you go amongst 'the other side.' Live Jesus, and, when advisable, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren

... when he was awakened by hearing a rattling on the window of his room. The reason he was able to fix the time so accurately was because as soon as he awakened he pressed a little electric button, and it illuminated the face of a small clock on his bureau. The hands pointed to five ...
— Tom Swift Among The Diamond Makers - or The Secret of Phantom Mountain • Victor Appleton

... remained in room Number 420, and during the evening were visited by several strangers, including a plain-clothes officer from the New Orleans Police Head-quarters. Little Hummel, dining in Long Acre Square in the glare of Broadway, was pressing some invisible button that transmitted the power of his influence even to the police government of a city two ...
— True Stories of Crime From the District Attorney's Office • Arthur Train

... are of one grand Host; immeasurable; marching ever forward since the beginnings of the World. The enormous, all-conquering, flame-crowned Host, noble every soldier in it; sacred, and alone noble. Let him who is not of it hide himself; let him tremble for himself. Stars at every button cannot make him noble; sheaves of Bath-garters, nor bushels of Georges; nor any other contrivance but manfully enlisting in it, valiantly taking place and step in it. O Heavens, will he not bethink himself; he too is so needed in the Host! It were so blessed, thrice-blessed, ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle

... enough of it, Mr. Irons went on with his buttoning, and his lady gradually came to. This time, however, she was effectually frightened—too much so even to resort to hysterics, for she was not quite sure that when he had buttoned the last button of his left legging he might not resume operations, ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... he says they have a million, and he can show the documents to prove it. She went up him as though he was a fence post, and a dog after her, and he flew around as though his linen was on fire, and yelled until his wife came down to see what was the matter. By unbuttoning the top button the cat was coaxed out, under protest however, and after a light was lit there was seen about the maddest man in the world. He took a candle and went down after the doughnuts, and after running his hand into a jar of preserved ...
— Peck's Compendium of Fun • George W. Peck

... other systems of manipulative treatment confine themselves almost entirely to the correction of bony and other connective tissue lesions, to "pressing the button," as it is called, neurotherapy, besides this, aims at other ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr

... the door, he gave a modest knock with his horn ink-bottle, which he carried hanging to his button. The door was opened ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid

... carried forwards for an inch and a half, its edge is turned perpendicularly downwards, and the urethra and skin flap are divided, the cavernous bodies and dorsal integument being then cut perpendicularly upwards where the knife was originally entered for transfixion. A button-hole is afterwards made in the lower flap, though which the corpus spongiosum and urethra protrude, while the flap itself is turned upwards, and attached dorsally and laterally, so as to cover in the ...
— A Manual of the Operations of Surgery - For the Use of Senior Students, House Surgeons, and Junior Practitioners • Joseph Bell

... of these guys. One was a hell of a looking fellow: his face was piebald, with purple spots. His skin was bleached and withered, and one eye looked like a pearl collar button! They called him Professor, too, Professor Gurlone. Well, he takes out this damn cricket thing and it was sort of reddish purple but alive, and as long as your forearm. This professor guy says his son had taken an ordinary cricket and made it ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various

... betook himself to gazing about. He noted the great double windows, with sashes of bronze; the bronze fire-proof doors; the bronze electric candles and chandeliers, from which the room was flooded with a soft radiance at the touch of a button; the "duchesse" and "marquise" chairs, with upholstery matching the walls; the huge leather "slumber-couch," with adjustable lamp at its head. When one opened the door of the dressing-room closet, it was automatically ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair

... sleeves, have only parallel seams, and these are only tacked or basted, as the garments, when washed, are taken to pieces, and each piece, after being very slightly stiffened, is stretched upon a board to dry. There is no underclothing, with its bands, frills, gussets, and button-holes; the poorer women wear none, and those above them wear, like Yuki, an under-dress of a frothy-looking silk crepe, as simply made as the upper one. There are circulating libraries here, as in most villages, and in the evening both Yuki and Haru read love stories, or accounts of ancient ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird

... unaware to what degree success followed intestinal operations generally during the campaign. I saw only one case in which the small intestine had been treated by excision and the insertion of a Murphy's button in which a cure followed: this case was in the Scottish Royal Red Cross hospital under the care of Mr. Luke. I heard of two cases in which the large intestine was successfully sutured, and of one other in which recovery followed the removal of a considerable ...
— Surgical Experiences in South Africa, 1899-1900 • George Henry Makins

... to be outdone in kindness, so, when they played "Button, button, who's got the button?" and it was her turn to go round, she said, "Hold fast all I give you," with such a friendly smile at Tommy, that he was not surprised to find the horse-hair ring in his hand instead of the button. He only smiled back at her then, but when ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott

... of the comfort of cozy little homes. Give me a hotel where I am treated as though I were a Somebody. Where I have but to press a button and a liveried servant comes running as though I were Mary, Queen of England, or Clara Kimball Young. And plenty of hot water for baths and lots of enormous towels and, as soon as one's butter is gone, another piece, and fresh butter at that. Pitchers of ...
— Vignettes of San Francisco • Almira Bailey

... against the fence it was that she vainly struck the match and flung it away. I looked in her face. She was really a person prematurely born; but, as it seemed to me, already an old woman. I credited her with thirty years. A dirty hue of face; small, dull, tipsy eyes; a button-like nose; curved moist lips with drooping corners, and a short wisp of harsh hair escaping from beneath her kerchief; a long flat figure, stumpy hands and feet. I paused opposite her. She stared at me, and burst into a laugh, ...
— What To Do? - thoughts evoked by the census of Moscow • Count Lyof N. Tolstoi

... all better than I am, and yet you never try to make me feel it; but I do all the same. And I love you three and Queen Mab; and I love the place; and I should like to live here always. But outside of that," he added quickly, "I don't care a button for anything." ...
— Soldiers of the Queen • Harold Avery

... farmin'. I did not stay a child long, I been grown ever since I was fourteen. My father lived till I was eleven, and I thought since I was the oldest boy I could take his place of bossin', but my mother would take me down a button hole lower whenever I got ...
— Slave Narratives: Arkansas Narratives - Arkansas Narratives, Part 6 • Works Projects Administration

... room was dim, a carefully manufactured twilight. It is strange how many things, and how slight, stir, control, influence in one direction or another, the emotions. Light and the absence of light can divert a heart as easily as the pressing of a button can give a warship to the sea. Twilight and music can change a beast into a man, a man into an angel, for the moment. Long after that evening was dead, both Julian and Doctor Levillier anxiously, and in their different ways analytically, considered it. They submitted it to a secret ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens

... My bonny brave lads!" he would murmur aloud, with just a touch of his parents' accent, and press a button which discharged an ancient brass cannon mounted at the edge of the cliff. Whenever he saw one of his ships in the offing—and he could identify his ships as far as he could see them—he ordered the gardener ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne

... came home just in time to scramble into his evening dress-suit for a dinner at the Fletchers'. He needed not to fear delay either from that shirt-button at the back, refractory or on the last thread, or from any other and more insidious trap for the hurrying male. Milly looked after him in a way which, if the makers of traditions concerning wives were not up to their necks in falsehood, must have inspired devotion in the heart ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods

... by the waist and place together the first two suspender buttons, one on the left and the other on the right. This will make the fold preserve the natural crease and dispose of the extra material, button and buttonhole tab at the waist. Trousers carefully folded will only need pressing about twice a year. Hose should be well shaken, and unless perfectly clean, thrown in the soiled-linen basket. Evening ...
— The Complete Bachelor - Manners for Men • Walter Germain

... them—for a justice dealer is never without opponents. As a rule these persons were the victims of his various avalanches of wrath, those to whom at one time or another he had meted out punishment and denounced as cowards. For the disapproval of these cravens Hal Harling did not care a button. He much preferred they should be numbered among his enemies rather than his friends and he said so frankly. Nevertheless, his mother, timid by nature and of a peace-loving disposition, shook ...
— Carl and the Cotton Gin • Sara Ware Bassett

... consciences for it, the business is theirs, not ours. I call this facing the devil with a vengeance. We have their coats; no matter who made 'em,—we have 'em, I say, and we will wear 'em; and not a button, tag, or tassel, shall any ...
— Citation and Examination of William Shakspeare • Walter Savage Landor

... at his wife with a glance of loving distress. "You wouldn't really care a button. I know you ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant

... an orderly little person, and at her work that afternoon she stopped frequently to sew on a button here, to mend a rip in this garment or to whip a frayed edge that might mar an otherwise dainty belonging. Singing softly over her task, a timid knock at her door wakened the girl ...
— Betty Gordon in Washington • Alice B. Emerson

... off, with its thorny top and all (which is a part of it) and leaves the seed Case to ripen, and by degrees, to shatter out its seed at a place underneath this cap, B, which before the seed is ripe, appears like a flat barr'd button, without any hole in the middle; but as it ripens, the button grows bigger, and a hole appears in the middle of it, E, out of which, in all probability, the seed falls: For as it ripens by a provision of Nature, that end of this Case turns downward after ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke

... taken up his location just now, it was close to the button which governed the two electric lights ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts on a Tour - The Mystery of Rattlesnake Mountain • George A. Warren

... interview with Sir Tobias, he found Terry standing in the hall, doing up the last button of her gloves. James, of the velvet-plush manners, lost no time in proffering him his hat and cane, and in flinging the front-door wide. He did it with the air of a sentimentalist who was aiding and abetting an elopement. Tabs had ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson

... that formed the interior of the car, and where stores of compressed air had been provided together with chemical apparatus, by means of which fresh supplies of oxygen and nitrogen might be obtained for our consumption during the flight through space, Mr. Edison touched a polished button, thus causing the generation of the required electrical charge on the exterior of the car, and immediately we ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putnam Serviss

... pint of fine young button mushrooms, let them stew gently in a white veal gravy seasoned with salt, pepper, a blade of mace, and if approved, the grated peel of half a lemon, it should be thickened with flour and the yolk of an egg stirred in it, just before serving; ...
— The Jewish Manual • Judith Cohen Montefiore

... the boys, the captain lumbered towards them, waving a dirty piece of paper. "Read that," he roared, "just brought in by that copper-faced, shoe-button-eyed son of ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely

... Whitelocke's last audience, he was habited in a plain suit of very fine English cloth of musk-colour, the buttons of gold, enamelled, and in each button a ruby, and rich points and ribbons of gold; his gentlemen were in their richest clothes; his pages and lacqueys, above twenty, in their liveries. In the afternoon two of the Ricks-Senators, with the master of the ceremonies, came ...
— A Journal of the Swedish Embassy in the Years 1653 and 1654, Vol II. • Bulstrode Whitelocke

... off in that way. He retorts the Latin adage upon you-Nihil humani a me alienum puto. He has got possession of a subject which is of universal and paramount interest (not 'a fee-grief, due to some single breast'), and on that plea may hold you by the button as long as he chooses. His delight is to harangue on what nowise regards himself: how then can you refuse to listen to what as little amuses you? Time and tide wait for no man. The business of the state admits of no delay. The question ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt

... went round to the other side and slid in under the wheel. There was soft music playing somewhere, and a magnificent sunset appeared ahead of them as Malone pushed a button on the dashboard and the red Cadillac started off down the wide, empty, wonderfully paved street into the sunset, while ...
— The Impossibles • Gordon Randall Garrett

... wild plan— Is not, to take it in their way, And this we sure may dare to say Without incurring an offence, Courage, law, honesty, or sense): Men, who, all spirit, life, and soul Neat butchers of a button-hole, 910 Having more skill, believe it true That they must have more courage too: Men who, without a place or name, Their fortunes speechless as their fame, Would by the sword new fortunes carve, And rather die in fight than starve At coronations, a vast ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill

... Drake, "that the individual who treated us to such a close scrutiny is a very important official indeed. He is one of the members—the chief, in fact—of the Naval Council, also a four-button mandarin, entitled to wear the insignia of the golden peacock. And he is also the captain of the battleship Ting-yuen, the flagship of the Chinese northern fleet, which flies the flag of the celebrated Admiral Ting himself. Last, but by no means least, ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood

... banked at a steep angle and ran back. It banked again. The pilot stared carefully. He reached forward and pushed a button. There was a tiny impact underfoot. Another steep banking turn, and Joe saw a puff of ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster

... Bacco! Signor Andrea," exclaimed the other, stopping short at the foot of the ladder, and seizing his companion by a button, afraid he would desert him in the midst of a strange delusion, "you would not trifle in such a matter with an old friend; one who has known you from childhood? Fancy that ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper

... clothed one, and truth can only be arrived at by the most drastic stripping off of unreal appearances that cover it. The Professor will not linger upon the consideration of the lord's star or the clown's button, which are all that most men care to see: he will get down to the essential lord and the essential clown. And this will be more than an interesting literary occupation to him, or it will not long be that. Truth and God are one, and the devil is the prince of lies. This ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman

... been taught sewing by Frances, made coarse shirts for the common people and the army. For these she received half-a-crown a dozen. They had to be hemmed, stitched, provided with collars and wristbands, buttons, and button holes; and at the most, when at work twelve and fifteen hours a day, she rarely succeeded in turning out more than fourteen or sixteen shirts a week—an excessive amount of toil that brought her in about ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue

... sir, unless you are in a hurry," cried Mr. Sharpe, catching Alfred by the button, "which (when so large an estate, to which you might eventually succeed, is in question) you are too much a man of business to be—in one word, then, for I won't detain you another moment, and I throw myself open, ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth

... restoratives, soon brought him to consciousness. Seeing he was not dead, his companions now dressed his wounds as well as they could, under the circumstances. It was soon perceived that they were not of a very dangerous order. One bullet had struck a button and glanced off, leaving only a bruise on the breast; the other had penetrated the chest, but not in a fatal direction. The fall from his horse had stunned Hadley; there was also a mark on the side of his head, ...
— Eveline Mandeville - The Horse Thief Rival • Alvin Addison

... said Rose. "The yellow shoe buttons are like the grains of corn the chickens eat. One button did come off and a rooster picked it up and swallowed it." Rose was ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Grandma Bell's • Laura Lee Hope

... mislead the party vot has gone to stop the artillery, and they vill get on another road and not come back for two or three days. The Yankee chaps vid their rifles 'ave gone vid the green vons, and now the colonel don't care an old button for the rest. An attack vill be made to-night at one o'clock, but don't tell ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes

... fire and ice was to be created, and to sustain itself in a harsh world, he had never taken the time to think out; but he was content to hold his view without analysing it, since he knew it was that of all the carefully-brushed, white-waistcoated, button-hole-flowered gentlemen who succeeded each other in the club box, exchanged friendly greetings with him, and turned their opera-glasses critically on the circle of ladies who were the product of the system. In matters intellectual and artistic Newland Archer ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton

... together, fix together, bind up together together; embody, reembody^; roll into one. attach, fix, affix, saddle on, fasten, bind, secure, clinch, twist, make fast &c adj.; tie, pinion, string, strap, sew, lace, tat, stitch, tack, knit, button, buckle, hitch, lash, truss, bandage, braid, splice, swathe, gird, tether, moor, picket, harness, chain; fetter &c (restrain) 751; lock, latch, belay, brace, hook, grapple, leash, couple, accouple^, link, yoke, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... tried as the sensitive material, but finally abandoned in favour of a small cake or wafer of compressed lamp-black, obtained from the smoke of burning oil, such as benzolene or rigolene. This was the celebrated 'carbon button,' which on being placed between two platinum discs by way of contact, and traversed by the electric current, was found to vary in resistance under the pressure of the sound waves. The voice was concentrated upon it by means of a mouthpiece ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro

... associations among the lower Irish Catholics, organised in opposition to Orangeism, the name being derived from a green ribbon worn as a badge in a button-hole by the members; they were most active ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... she had not recognized him; worn by hard work, perhaps by anxieties, bronzed—and with his face hidden by a black beard which gave him a manly and energetic appearance. It was certainly he, with a thin red ribbon at his button-hole, which he had not when he went away, and which showed the importance of the works he had executed and of great perils he had faced. Pierre, trembling and motionless, was silent; the sound of his voice choked with emotion had frightened him. He had expected a cold reception, but this scared ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... I don't mind telling 'ee I've been through a fire of temptation. You know why I jumped into that boat: it vexed you a bit, I dare say. And strickly speakin', mind you"—Billy took his friend by the button-hole—"strickly speakin' I'd the right on my side. 'Let the best man win' was our agreement. But you needn' to fret yourself: I ben't the man to take an advantage of an old friend, fair though it be. Man, I ha'n't ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... is ready to begin, the stage-manager pushes a button to signal the olio up or raises it himself—if, that drop [1] is worked from the stage—and on the last cue he pushes another button to signal the curtain down, or lowers it himself, as the case may be. He keeps time on the various acts and sees that the performers are ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page

... boot used by the Fins.] or skins—he had this name, because he made komags. Komag-Nils was a little fellow, with untidy yellow hair, which hung over his eyes, and a face as round as a moon, on which the nose looked like a little button; when he laughed, his wide thin-lipped mouth and large jaws gave him almost the expression of a death's-head. His small, watery eyes blinked at you mysteriously, but showed plainly that he was not wanting in common sense. It was he, in fact, who could tell the greatest number of stories, ...
— The Visionary - Pictures From Nordland • Jonas Lie

... level and arranged blasting charges. Awhile after he reappeared with his companions, looking somewhat pale and anxious, and shouted to us to get back. Following our retreat to a certain distance, unwinding a wire as he came, presently he stopped and pressed the button of a battery which he held in his hand. There was a muffled explosion and a tremor of the soil like to that of an earthquake, while from the mouth of the shaft stones leapt into ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard

... the incandescent sheet of flame and the guide may be made as short as desired, and the motion of the gaseous mass be directed by a simple button placed in the center of the burner; thus giving the form shown by Fig. 5, which, however, differs from the previous figure in the fact that the inverted flame is directed outward instead ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 561, October 2, 1886 • Various

... Jenny Lind what she thought of the lady, but shut her lips firmly and began her work. She did not sing that morning. She did not even look up to smile and nod to Jenny Lind, but kept her eyes on her dishes, her lips pressed into an indignant red button. ...
— Mary Rose of Mifflin • Frances R. Sterrett

... Tartarin was alone in his study thinking sad thoughts, when the Commandant appeared, somberly dressed and gloved, with every button fastened "Tartarin!" said the former captain, with authority, "Tartarin, you must go!" and he stood, upright and rigid in the doorway, the very embodiment ...
— Tartarin de Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet

... be removed from toys that are given to babies, such as the whistle from rubber animals, the button eyes of wool kittens and dogs, and ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler

... minion of the sort hired in legion strength by banks and insurance companies to implement payroll packages in RPG and other such unspeakable horrors. In its native habitat, the code grinder often removes the suit jacket to reveal an underplumage consisting of button-down shirt (starch optional) and a tie. In times of dire stress, the sleeves (if long) may be rolled up and the tie loosened about half an inch. It seldom helps. The {code grinder}'s milieu is about as far from ...
— THE JARGON FILE, VERSION 2.9.10

... When customers were rude, when Mr. John or Mr. Robert was overbearing, this idea enabled David to rise above their ill-temper, and he would smile and say to himself: "If they knew the meaning of the blue rosette in my button-hole, how differently they would treat me! How easily with a word could I ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis

... apparently, for this one. Directly she appears on the scene they go at her like flies at a honey pot. There's the doctor, and the fourth brass-button man—er, I beg his pardon, the fourth 'officer,'—and Swaynston, and yourself, and Heaven knows how many more. And one gets hold of a cushion—which she doesn't want; another a wrap—of which the same holds good; ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford

... slight chance and that we must take quickly. Raising my strange Martian rifle to my shoulder I sighted and touched the button which controlled the trigger; there was a sharp explosion as the missile reached its goal, and the charging chieftain pitched ...
— A Princess of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... rather the limited, on which I shall send you, does not leave until eleven. I'll send for your pass now." And, pressing a button, he ordered the clerk who responded ...
— Bob Chester's Grit - From Ranch to Riches • Frank V. Webster

... Tired Hedonists, of course. It is a club to which I belong. We are supposed to wear faded roses in our button-holes when we meet, and to have a sort of cult for Domitian. I am afraid you are not eligible. You are too ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde

... but "acting straight," that was full of a fine dominance. That he should be carefully dressed was but a detail in the exactitude which was the main element in his character; while his daily custom of wearing in his button-hole a dark-red carnation, a token of some never-explained memory of his dead wife, indicated a capacity for sober romance which she did not ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King

... said Mr. Dooley, with a wave of his hand. "I wonder how it come out to-day. Here's th' pa-aper. Let me see. McKinley at Canton. Still there. He niver cared to wandher fr'm his own fireside. Collar-button men f'r th' goold standard. Statues iv Heidelback, Ickleheimer an' Company to be erected in Washington. Another Vanderbilt weddin'. That sounds like goluf, but it ain't. Newport society livin' in Mrs. Potther Pammer's cellar. Green-goods ...
— Mr. Dooley in Peace and in War • Finley Peter Dunne

... anybody else that wants the job. Uncle Sammy won't hop on to my collar button, because of the fine send-off my friend the inspector'll give. And somebody will get orry-eyed up in town, and come down to find what's loose. He'll take the bags ...
— The Mascot of Sweet Briar Gulch • Henry Wallace Phillips

... of mind as yet, but once more set about considering how I might be able to keep above water. I could easily slide up the staff without taking out a single button; but once up, how could I remain there? I should certainly come slipping down again. Oh! that there was only a notch—a knot—a nail—if I only had a knife to make a nick; but knot, notch, nail, knife, nick—all were alike denied me. Stay! I was wrong, decidedly wrong. ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid

... electric button under the lead shall touch anything solid, or even anything fluid, this bell ...
— The Great Stone of Sardis • Frank R. Stockton

... I receive letters from all quarters, some from known friends, some from those who write like friends, on various subjects. What am I to do? Am I to button myself up in Jesuitical reserve, rudely declining any answer, or answering in terms so unmeaning, as only to prove my distrust? Must I withdraw myself from all interchange of sentiment with the world? I cannot do this. ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... strangest sleeves, too—made to button to the elbow and full of slits that seemed to have been mended underneath with blue silk. There was a regular pattern of these silk-mended slits about the body of the coat, ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren

... last—and it was in Barcelona, so late as 1803, that I last had the honour of conversing with him—a white rich stuff dress frock coat, of the cut and fashion of Louis XIV., which, being without any collar, had buttons and button-holes from the neck to the bottom of the skirt, and was padded and stiffened with buckram. The cuffs were very large, of a different colour, and turned up to the elbows. The whole was lined with white satin, which, from its being very much moth-eaten, appeared as if ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... there, and a band of fresh knights were about him, and Agrican in vain attempted to rally his troops. The Paladin kept him constantly in his front, forcing him to attend to nobody else. The Tartar king, who cared not a button for Galafron and all his army,[1] provided he could but rid himself of this terrible knight (whom he guessed at, but did not know), bethought him of a stratagem. He turned his horse, and made a show of flying in despair. Orlando dashed after him, as he desired; and Agrican fled till he reached ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt

... wound which disabled one of his hands, had the misfortune, in firing off a toy cannon in one of the narrow wynds of Edinburgh, to kill on the spot David Knox, one of the attendants of the Court of Session; a button, or some other hard substance, having been accidentally inserted with his cartridge. Scott was one of his counsel when he was arraigned for murder, and had occasion to draw up a written argument or information for the prisoner, from which ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart

... name. I am not sure if this happened, for my son soon was sent elsewhere; and he has long since gone to the Better Land. But Lord Carlisle's kindness was all the same. At the ball I remember Lord Carlisle's diamonds hanging like a string of glass chandelier drops at his button-hole with a Shakespeare favour, and jingling perilously for chippings as he danced: for size ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... nodded. After a moment, he thumbed a button on his chair arm. "Inform Lord Senesin that he is requested to appear for a Royal Audience in forty-five minutes," he ...
— The Unnecessary Man • Gordon Randall Garrett

... citizen he is, one who remembers the Sawbath, and on weekdays concentrates his faculties on his occupation as a tailor and clothier. I did not seek the interview, which arose from a business call not altogether unconnected with a missing button, but his opinions and his information are well worth recording. Mr. McGregor said, "I thrust my opinions on none, but I have a right to my opinions, and I do not affect concealment. The great defect of the ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)

... his Provang (which was a flexible whalebone from two to three feet long, with a small linen or silk button at the end, which was to be introduced into the stomach to produce the effect of an emetic), the reader may find some account in Wood's Athen. (Bliss's edit., vol. iii. p. 509.), and this is not the place to speak of them except as they had to do with coffee; on that point ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 35, June 29, 1850 • Various

... his godfather, Francis Fielde, who is mentioned in the Elia essay "My First Play," a property called Button Snap, near Puckeridge, in Hertfordshire, consisting of a small cottage and about an acre of ground. In 1815 he sold it for L50, and the foregoing letter is an intimation of the transaction to his tenant. ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas

... fear nothing. It has seen hard service, but I have had it thoroughly cleaned. It is not the regulation uniform, perhaps, since it has the South Carolina State button, but in everything else it ...
— Who Goes There? • Blackwood Ketcham Benson

... readily," he said, and pressed a button. His secretary responded. "Telephone our Consul-General in New York to ascertain immediately from the railroad officials the hospital to which Madame Durrand, who broke her ankle and wrist in the Pennsylvania Station, at ten o'clock on ...
— The Cab of the Sleeping Horse • John Reed Scott

... forget Mackenzie in a hurry! It was the funniest thing I've ever seen in my life. Talk of people looking sour! He might have been eating sloes. Cook's taken it personally, I'm afraid. I asked her for some whitening this morning to clean my regimental button, and she scowled and wouldn't let me have any—nasty, stingy ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil

... have tea at once, shall we, and then go out? There's lots more to do. We must pick great boughs of laburnum and beech for all the big vases. Gardeners are no good at that; nor are you, dear, for that matter. You tell them to pick boughs, and they pick button-holes." ...
— Daisy's Aunt • E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson

... Bachelor's Button is not exactly named by Shakespeare, it is believed to be alluded to in this passage; and the supposed allusion is to a rustic divination by means of the flowers, carried in the pocket by men and under the apron by women, ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe

... motives. When Monsieur, misled by his favourites, did something which was neither just nor expedient, I used to say to him, "Out of complaisance to the Chevalier de Lorraine, you put your good sense into your pocket, and button it up so tight that it cannot ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... its time: old-fashioned rather, with soft, grey whiskers belonging to an earlier day. A black tail-coat adorned it, and the neck-tie was crooked in the turned-down collar. The watch-chain went from the waist-coat button to one pocket only, instead of right across, and one finger wore a heavy signet-ring that bore the family crest. It was obviously the figure of an overworked official in the Civil Service who had returned from its daily routine in London to the evening routine of its family in the country, ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood

... the existing radar defense net in the Albuquerque-Los Alamos area. At each radar site we proposed that a long focal-length camera be synchronized to the turning radar antenna, so that any time the operator saw a target he could press a button and photograph the portion of the sky exactly where the radar said a UFO was located. These cameras would actually be astronomical telescopes, so that even the smallest light or object ...
— The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects • Edward Ruppelt

... the thread wound upon the bone of a dead person. Remain quite still and hidden, and when the thread comes down, take out the bone and put in its place a spindle besmeared with honey, with a fig in the place of the little button. Then as soon as the women draw up the spindles and taste the honey, they ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile

... thick, containing a stick of magnesium attached to a tightly rolled silk parachute twenty feet in diameter when expanded. The whole weighed 32 pounds. On being dropped from the plane by pressing a button, the rush of air set spinning a pinwheel at the bottom which ignited the magnesium stick and detonated a charge of black powder sufficient to throw off the case and release the parachute. The burning flare gave off ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson

... to know about his lessons and how he managed to amuse himself. And as the days got longer the three would coax him into the garden to look at their flowers coming up, and one day Betty boldly offered him an auricula for his button-hole. And though he seemed a little doubtful at first as to whether such an ornament would become a grave and sober person like himself, yet he let her put it in for him, and after that there was never ...
— Two Maiden Aunts • Mary H. Debenham

... boards began to whiten with the holystoning. Not a grease-mark or spot of dirt was to be seen. All was polished off with hand-scrapers. On Sundays the ropes on the poop were all neatly coiled, man-of-war fashion—not a bight out of place. The brasswork was kept as bright as a gilt button. ...
— A Boy's Voyage Round the World • The Son of Samuel Smiles

... his auricular deficiencies. The hand holding the revolver wobbled a bit; nevertheless, the little black hole at which the dazed robber stared as if fascinated was amazingly steadfast in its regard for the second or perhaps the third button of his coat. "It's a rather complicated arrangement," he went on to explain, "but very simple once you get it adjusted to the ear. It took me some time to get used to wearing this steel band over the top of my head. I never have tried to put it on with one hand before. Amazing ...
— Yollop • George Barr McCutcheon

... the elder walked bid fair to bring them face to face within an hour. The boy whom we now introduce was evidently a sailor. He wore blue trousers, a blue vest with little brass buttons, a blue jacket with bigger brass buttons, and a blue cap with a brass button on either side—each brass button, on coat, cap, and vest, having an anchor of, (apparently), burnished gold in the centre of it. He had clear blue eyes, brown curly hair, and an easy, offhand swagger, which last was the result of a sea-faring ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne

... time had come. You see, I had never heard the word before. There was no escape, as I was kept tied, and the next morning my master took me under his big coat in the cable-cars. I could just peep through one of the button-holes, and all at once I uttered a loud whine. You should have seen how the passengers stared at my master, who I know looked embarrassed, as he gave me a tremendous squeeze. We soon got out, and ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf; a Practical Plan of Character Building, Volume I (of 17) - Fun and Thought for Little Folk • Various

... smiling, "because you were so fortunate as to set out first. But had I been so happy as to have preceded you, the message and present with which I was honored would have been faithfully delivered, and I hope your ladyship will permit me to do it now," said he, rising, and taking Euphemia's rose from his button, as he approached the countess; "Miss Euphemia Dundas had done me the honor to make me the bearer of sweets to the sweet; and thus I surrender my trust." He bowed, and put the flower into Lady Tinemouth's hand, who smiled and thanked ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter

... by words being independent of their sense, they vary from age to age and from people to people, the formulas remaining identical. Certain transitory images are attached to certain words: the word is merely as it were the button of an electric bell that ...
— The Crowd • Gustave le Bon

... BAIN disappeared for some days. Getting coached up in Parliamentary practice. Back to-night and made maiden speech. Quite delightful; button-holed House as it were; informed Members he was sent there with a mandate; incidentally mentioned that he was a Magistrate in several counties; waved his arm in defiance of School Board and sat down, after declaiming, with much animation, a new and original peroration. "Gentlemen," ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, July 11, 1891 • Various

... the vault ostensibly to get into your own box, use these to open box 1044. There's a little electronic gadget in each box 1044. When you want immediate service on anything you put into the box, press the red button on the mechanism. Go back a few hours later and it will have been attended to. So now, when you get into the bank, put a note there listing your hotel room number and also your new deposit key number. Come back in a couple of hours and you'll ...
— Man of Many Minds • E. Everett Evans

... coat, and then another took a fancy to his vest. The one who took his coat gave him in exchange a very ragged, greasy, and altogether disgusting cavalry jacket, much too short, and not large enough to button. The carriage was almost torn in pieces in the search for treasure. Swords and bayonets were thrust through the panelling; the cushions were ripped open, the cover torn off, and every possible hiding-place examined. Then thinking it must be about his person, they compelled him to take off his boots ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee

... of over-hearing what he said. Whether he had observed me to be more attentive than ordinary, I cannot tell, but he had not stood by me above a Quarter of a Minute, but he turned short upon me on a sudden, and catching me by a Button of my Coat, attacked me very abruptly after the ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... Skirts button from point of basque to feet just before we see them, in the seventeenth century, parting down the front and separating to show a petticoat. In Queen Elizabeth's time the acme of this style was reached by Spanish women as we see in Velasquez's portraits. Gradually the ...
— Woman as Decoration • Emily Burbank

... heavy shutters on the street side of the room were closed and barred and the shades on the garden front were drawn, shutting out what dim rays the departed sun had left the night. The Swami apparently had no need of greater light, for, neglecting the electric button near the door, he groped quietly about, struck a match and lighted a single candle, with which he returned to the hallway and opened the garden door, standing for a moment with the taper flickering in the rush of cold air that poured in from outside. When he stepped back and ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter

... me. They can't aim; They only set their own rent sails on fire.— But if they could, I would not hide a button To save ten lives like mine. I have no cause To prize it, I assure 'ee.—Ah, look there, One of the women hit,—and badly, too. Poor wench! Let some ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy

... a few flowers, which she threw to Lucan through the window, with a burst of laughter. He fastened them in his button-hole, making the gesture of a man who understands nothing of what is going on, but who has ...
— Led Astray and The Sphinx - Two Novellas In One Volume • Octave Feuillet

... His chief companions were Steele, Budgell, Philips, Carey, Davenant, and colonel Brett. With one or other of these he always breakfasted. He studied all morning; then dined at a tavern; and went afterwards to Button's. ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson

... M. Edouard Detaille's "Le Reve," which won him so much applause a few years ago. M. Detaille is an irreproachable realist, and may do what he likes in the way of the materially impossible with impunity. Sleeping soldiers, without a gaiter-button lacking, bivouacking on the ground amid stacked arms whose bayonets would prick; above them in the heavens the clash of contending ghostly armies—wraiths born of the sleepers' dreams. That we are in touch with. No one would object to it except under penalty of being scouted as pitiably ...
— French Art - Classic and Contemporary Painting and Sculpture • W. C. Brownell

... is a false position. I have sometimes thought I saw in the faces of such men as you that you felt the whole experience as unreal, a mere masquerade; as I myself might feel it if, by some fantastic luck in the old fantastic civilisation of China, I were raised from the Yellow Button to the Coral Button, or from the Coral Button to the Peacock's Feather. Precisely because these things would be grotesque, I might hardly feel them as incongruous. Precisely because they meant nothing ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward

... for him. I gaed ower the links; for my man had the profitless habit at that time, whilk he's gien up for a mair profitless still, o' stravaguin' aboot upo' the seashore, wi' 's han's in 's pooches, and his chin reposin' upo' the third button o' 's waistcoat—all which bears hard upo' what the laird says aboot's jealousy. The mune was jist risin' by the time I wan to the shore, but I saw no sign o' man or woman alang that dreary coast. I was jist turnin' to come ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald

... stand in a circle with their hands in front of them, palms together. The one who has been selected to be "It" takes a position in the center of the circle, with his hands in a similar position. A button is held between his hands. He goes around the circle and places his hand over those of various individuals, dropping the button into the hands of one. He continues about the circle, still making the motions of ...
— School, Church, and Home Games • George O. Draper

... of cap worn in the time of Napoleon the First. Over there in France, these caps were long out of fashion. But in our village there was still one to be found—only one, and it belonged to "Reb" Henzel. The cap was long and narrow. It had a slit and a button in front, and at the back two tassels. I always wanted these tassels. If the cap had fallen into my hands for two minutes—only two, the ...
— Jewish Children • Sholem Naumovich Rabinovich

... swiftly selected an outfit that was not half bad for ready-to-wear garments. There was a black morning-coat, snug at the waist, moderately broad at the shoulders, closing with two buttons, its skirt sharply cut away from the lower button and reaching to the bend of the knee. The lapels were, of course, soft-rolled and joined the collar with a triangular notch. It is a coat of immense character when properly worn, and I was delighted to observe in the trying ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson

... station there was an enormous crowd. Roosevelt's young kinsmen kept very close to him and wedged their way to an automobile. With the greatest difficulty his car slowly proceeded to the Congress Hotel. Never was there such a furor of welcome. Everybody wore a Roosevelt button. Everybody cheered for "Teddy." Here and there they passed State delegations bearing banners and mottoes. Rough Riders, who had come in their well-worn uniforms, added to the Rooseveltian exultation. Whoever judged by this demonstration must think it impossible that ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer

... till darkness came on, but they found Not a button, or feather, or mark, By which they could tell that they stood on the ground Where the Baker ...
— The Hunting of the Snark - an Agony, in Eight Fits • Lewis Carroll

... matter is correct, but the manner leaves much to be desired. Question number two is—Which thread would you use to affix (a) a shirt, (b) a boot, (c) a waistcoat button?" ...
— Betty Trevor • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey

... but indeed the poor woman had not erred designedly; for Mrs Slipslop asked for a clergyman, and she had unhappily mistaken Adams for a person travelling to a neighbouring fair with the thimble and button, or some other such operation; for he marched in a swinging great but short white coat with black buttons, a short wig, and a hat which, so far from having a black hatband, had nothing ...
— Joseph Andrews Vol. 1 • Henry Fielding

... an individual of the species that sat demurely at table, taking his place with the other guests; like them he would spread out his napkin, and stick one corner of it into his button-hole just as they did, and he was exceedingly dexterous in the use of his knife, fork, and spoon. Spectators were not a little surprised to see him go to a bed made for him, tie up his head in a pocket-handkerchief, place it sideways on a pillow, tuck himself carefully ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien

... you were going to buy the store out," said the waiting girl, impatiently pressing the self starter button ...
— The Girl Scouts at Sea Crest - The Wig Wag Rescue • Lillian Garis

... her head in such a way that both of them then reclined opposite to each other. But Tai-yue, upon turning up her eyes and looking, espied on Pao-yue's cheek on the left side of his face, a spot of blood about the size of a button, and speedily bending her body, she drew near to him, and rubbing it with her hand, she scrutinised it closely. "Whose nail," she went on to inquire, ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin

... pick up my men—and to get my uniform." When telling the story, Dawson again and again described to me his uniform, with which I happened by family association to be intimately acquainted. He did not spare me a badge or a button. I am convinced that no girl wore her first ball-dress with half the palpitating pride with which Dawson surveyed himself in his captain's kit. When I chaffed him gently, and hinted that the stars of a captain were cheaply come by in these days, he had one retort ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone

... skin cleaves, and at length falls off, with its thorny top and all (which is a part of it) and leaves the seed Case to ripen, and by degrees, to shatter out its seed at a place underneath this cap, B, which before the seed is ripe, appears like a flat barr'd button, without any hole in the middle; but as it ripens, the button grows bigger, and a hole appears in the middle of it, E, out of which, in all probability, the seed falls: For as it ripens by a provision of Nature, that end of this Case turns downward after the same manner as ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke

... of Millbank Penitentiary. With the rights or wrongs of such an event I have simply nothing to do. I abandoned the Tichborne Trial at an early stage in a condition of utter bewilderment; and directly an old gentleman sought to button-hole me, and argue that he must be the man, or he couldn't be the man, I made off, or changed the conversation as rapidly as ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies

... and wait for me." As she spoke Mrs. Whitney crossed the broad hall and, passing the Colonial staircase, entered the elevator. The automatic car carried her to the first bedroom floor but, changing her mind, she did not open the door; instead she pressed the electric button marked "Attic." Her slight feeling of irritation aroused by not being met downstairs by any member of her family was increased by stepping from the ...
— I Spy • Natalie Sumner Lincoln

... amusement, standing among the brokers and speculators of Carondelet street, the baker, Reisen. He was earnestly conversing with and bending over a small, alert fellow, in a rakish beaver and very smart coat, with the blue flowers of modesty bunched saucily in one button-hole. ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable

... is said, to bind the princess Elizabeth apprentice to a button-maker: the duke of Gloucester was to be taught some other mechanical employment. But the former soon died; of grief, as is supposed, for her father's tragical end: the latter was, by ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume

... that I have struck some of the boldest and most successful Strokes of any Man in Great Britain. I was the first that struck the Long Pocket about two Years since: I was likewise the Author of the Frosted Button, which when I saw the Town came readily into, being resolved to strike while the Iron was hot, I produced much about the same time the Scallop Flap, the knotted Cravat, and made a fair Push for the ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... she came forward to his side and fell to fingering the top button of his coat caressingly; "would you mind it so very much not to call ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray

... sharing the anxiety of certain women that one knows are on their way to a hospital and who half mad with impatience are clutching the fatal telegram in one hand, while with the fingers of the other they thrum on one cheek or nervously catch at a button or ...
— With Those Who Wait • Frances Wilson Huard

... me elaborately. There was a gauge in front which allowed one to sight the steepness of the slope by mere inspection; and according as the gauge marked one, two, three, or four, as its gradient on the scale, the rider pressed a button on the handle-bar with his left hand once, twice, thrice, or four times, so that the gearing adapted itself without an effort to the rise in the surface. Besides, there were devices for rigidity and compensation. Altogether, it was a most apt and ingenious piece of ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen

... glove, fastening with the steel button, was gladly taken up by the chiefs, nor did they betray the Governor's confidence. His invasion of Moshesh, in this relation, was quite an exploit, for the old fellow was stern and wily. Sir George had brought about the cease fire, in a quarrel between ...
— The Romance of a Pro-Consul - Being The Personal Life And Memoirs Of The Right Hon. Sir - George Grey, K.C.B. • James Milne

... work she will be given to do will be finishing the underside of dresses, felling and binding, sewing on buttons, pulling out basting threads, and working button-holes. After this, the younger workers begin to specialize in skirt-making, waist-draping and waist-finishing. The designing and cutting are the work of a head dressmaker. There are also sleeve makers and their helpers, embroiderers, and collar makers. One ...
— The Canadian Girl at Work - A Book of Vocational Guidance • Marjory MacMurchy

... Warn one who does not like to soak To wear abroad a good thick cloak. Our man was therefore well bedight With double mantle, strong and tight. 'This fellow,' said the wind, 'has meant To guard from every ill event; But little does he wot that I Can blow him such a blast That, not a button fast, His cloak shall cleave the sky. Come, here's a pleasant game, Sir Sun! Wilt play?' Said Phoebus, 'Done! We'll bet between us here Which first will take the gear From off this cavalier. Begin, and shut away. The brightness of my ray.' 'Enough.' Our blower, on the bet, Swell'd out his pursy ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine

... cried the other, stumping after him, and with his horny hand catching him by a horn button, "my name is Thomas ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville

... the fruits ripen before the blossoms had fallen off. This inconsiderate haste nearly proved fatal to the creation of the Legion of Honour, a project which ripened in his mind as soon as he beheld the orders glittering at the button-holes of the Foreign Ministers. He would frequently exclaim, "This is well! These are the things ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne

... barleymow there, fat as mutton, Then held her master by the button: "Master, my heart and soul are wrung—till They can't abide that dirty dunghill: Master, you know I make your beer— You boast of me at Christmas cheer; Then why insult me and disgrace me, And next to that vile dunghill place me? By Jove! it ...
— Fables of John Gay - (Somewhat Altered) • John Gay

... seeming somehow younger than his own clothes, which were not only shabby but antiquated; clothes common enough in texture, yet carried in an uncommon fashion. He wore what was presumably a light waterproof, perhaps through having come off the sea; but it was held at the throat by one button, and hung, sleeves and all, more like a cloak than a coat. He rested one bony hand on a black stick; under the shadow of his broad hat his black hair hung down in a tuft or two. His face, which was swarthy, but rather handsome ...
— The Trees of Pride • G.K. Chesterton

... garden-paths In my stiff, brocaded gown. The squills and daffodils Will give place to pillared roses, and to asters, and to snow. I shall go Up and down In my gown. Gorgeously arrayed, Boned and stayed. And the softness of my body will be guarded from embrace By each button, hook, and lace. For the man who should loose me is dead, Fighting with the Duke in Flanders, In a pattern called a war. Christ! What are ...
— The Second Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse

... establishments have succeeded wonderfully. Peaches and water melons now were in full season; the natives brought baskets full of them to our door every day, which they exchanged with us for the merest trifles, such as a fish-hook, or a button. ...
— A Narrative of a Nine Months' Residence in New Zealand in 1827 • Augustus Earle

... my way not once or twice, but thrice; and now you die! Ha! Ha!" Reaching for a spoon, Susie stabbed Meeteetse Ed on the second china button of ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart

... this chill that made Terry button his coat closer about him and tremble a little as he entered the shadow. The great trunks shut out the world in a scattered wall. There was a narrow opening here among the trees at the very center. The three were in a sort of gorge of which the solemn spruce trees ...
— Black Jack • Max Brand

... recognized him, and said, "Let me put you up to a wrinkle. When they ring you up sharp for chapel, don't you lose any time about your absolutions, - washing, you know; but just jump into a pair of bags and Wellingtons; clap a top-coat on you, and button it up to the chin, and there you are, ready dressed in the twinkling of ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede

... pictures only a hasty glance and proceeded, in a business-like manner, to carry a straight chair to the cabinet. On the top shelf sat the old cloth dog. Its shoe-button eyes looked glazed with sleep, but its ears were quite alert. Very cautiously the Crown Prince unlocked the door, stepped precariously to the lower shelf of the cabinet, hung there by one royal hand, and lifted ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... was in conversation with somebody. Mr. Crickwater, after three gay but futile attempts to tell Gamble that they were from the same State in the North, leaned against a wall with anguish in his every furtive glance, hopelessly button-holed by Leggett. ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable

... weight of the final product of an assay, the less, as a rule, is the percentage error. The distinction between absolute and percentage error, often overlooked, is important. If 0.5 gram of silver be cupelled with 20 grams of lead, there may be obtained a button of 0.495 gram; the absolute loss is 0.005 gram, and this equals 1 per cent. of the silver present. Similarly, cupelling 0.1 gram, the resulting button may be 0.098; the absolute loss is only 0.002 gram, but this equals 2 ...
— A Textbook of Assaying: For the Use of Those Connected with Mines. • Cornelius Beringer and John Jacob Beringer

... waiting for my pass-port to go to Russia. If there is anything you want to know about pass-ports just apply to me. With all confidence, I sailed down to the Consulate and was met by a pair of legs attached to a huge mustache and the funniest little button of a head you ever saw. I think the Lord must have laughed when he got through making that man! He was horribly bored with life in general, and me in particular. He motioned me wearily to a chair beside a table, and, handing me a paper, ...
— Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little

... quarters is certainly an unpleasant looking beast; his neck, moving rapidly in all directions, surmounted by a small head, with bright wicked-looking eyes, reminds one of a snake. He has a fancy for anything bright, and will make for a button on your coat if it happens to gleam. I asked the age of ostriches, but could obtain no information. They look wiry enough ...
— Six Letters From the Colonies • Robert Seaton

... doggie sheds his coat, Elaine, have you forgotten? What is it goes around a button? I thought you knew that simple thing, But ideas in your head take wing. Elaine, have you forgotten? The answer ...
— At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern • Myrtle Reed

... catch to open that pocket in which lay a small but powerful electric flashlight, an instrument without which no far-flying aviator finds himself. After a moment's fumbling, his yet stiffened fingers encountered the cylindrical flash and, with a low cry of satisfaction, he drew it forth to press the button. ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various

... bellows, stirs or mends the fire as there is occasion, heats the iron, and forges every part of the nail: in forging the head, too, he is obliged to change his tools. The different operations into which the making of a pin, or of a metal button, is subdivided, are all of them much more simple, and the dexterity of the person, of whose life it has been the sole business to perform them, is usually much greater. The rapidity with which some of the operations ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith

... over Tom's unexpected exit from her little world, Emma Dean's brisk step sounded outside. The door swung open. Emma gave a soft exclamation as she saw the room in darkness. Pressing the button at the side of the door, she flooded the room with light, only to behold Grace standing in the middle of the floor, still wearing her outdoor wraps, an open letter in ...
— Grace Harlowe's Problem • Jessie Graham Flower

... Robert of Button (1262-1274) fought in the battle of Northampton against the king. The king, coming to assault the town, "espied amongst his enemies' ensigns on the wall the ensign of the Abbey of Peterburgh, whereat ...
— The Cathedral Church of Peterborough - A Description Of Its Fabric And A Brief History Of The Episcopal See • W.D. Sweeting

... Cathcart and his staff riding near the Queen's carriage through an ever-increasing crowd. The Queen was greatly interested in the rows of mill-workers between whom she passed, "dressed in their best, ranged along the streets, with white rosettes in their button-holes"—that patient, easily pleased crowd, which has an aspect half comical, half pathetic. Her Majesty admired the intelligent expression of both men and women, but was painfully struck with their puniness and paleness. In the Peel Park the visitors were greeted by a great demonstration, ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, (Victoria) Vol II • Sarah Tytler

... the gong, which continues as long as the push button is pressed. [The writer intends that which shall refer to the entire preceding clause, but the reference is intercepted ...
— The Century Handbook of Writing • Garland Greever

... The buttons!—oh, for a pen of steam to write upon those buttons! They, indeed, are the aristocracy—the yellow turbans, the sun, moon, and stars of the woollen system! They have nothing in common with the coat—they are on it, and that's all—they have no further communion—they decline the button-holes, and eschew all right to labour for their living—they announce themselves as "the last new fashion"—they sparkle for a week, retire to their silver paper, make way for the new comers, and, years after, like the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

... intelligence. Every person here, either military or civil, wore a mark of their attachment to the Orange party and the old constitution; the former by an orange cockade, the latter, by a bit of ribbon of that colour, either at the breast, button-hole, or sleeve. ...
— An Historical Journal of the Transactions at Port Jackson and Norfolk Island • John Hunter

... were about to land, in fact, two shots, both barrels—and they cheered. We rambled up over the island, the workers greeted us all, and Herr Mack stopped to speak to his folk. We found daisies and corn marigolds and put them in our button-holes; ...
— Pan • Knut Hamsun

... quilts, over-hand work. The next grade has put together four outsides (running). The upper classes have made fifty pillow-cases, twelve sheets, forty aprons, hemstitched three tray cloths, outlined one tidy and made three night-dresses. Darning, button-hole making and hem-stitching were taught in one class. The girls in another room have tied six comfortables. The boys in the carpenter shop are doing excellent work, and they like it very much. One class of ...
— The American Missionary, Vol. 43, No. 7, July, 1889 • Various

... into the pulpit. We sit on what is known as the "Amen side," with our thumb in our button-hole, and watch the process of the chief steward, who is unlimbering his tuning-fork. He obtains the pitch of the tune by rapping the pew with this, or, if his teeth be sound, which is rare, touches the prongs with his incisors. Then his head—whose baldness, we imagine, arises ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend

... buckles, and other trifling articles of apparel which he had worn, were treasured up as precious relics by those who had fought under him at Sedgemoor. Old men who long survived him desired, when they were dying, that these trinkets might be buried with them. One button of gold thread which narrowly escaped this fate may still be seen at a house which overlooks the field of battle. Nay, such was the devotion of the people to their unhappy favourite that, in the face of the strongest evidence by which the ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... these churches. The church on our right, which is about the same size and of the same architectural character as the other, though not quite so showy, is the "second" Congregational Church, commonly called the North Church—that in which Mr. Button now ministers. This church originated in the "great awakening" in 1740, was formed in 1742, and has a history of more than a century in duration. It arose from dissatisfaction with the ministry of a Mr. Noyes, a contemporary of Jonathan Edwards, but one who had no sympathy in Edwards's views ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies

... and a hope of gain, thereby suspending for the time those emotions in him which had excited my curiosity. Clearly he had unstinted visions of lucrative patronage, dreams, probably, of a piece of coloured ribbon for his button-hole, and a right to try to induce people to call him "Chevalier." He made Coralie a present, handsome enough. I respected the conscientiousness of this act; my friendship was an unlooked-for profit, a bonus on the marriage, and he gave his ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope

... with the mammals, he found their number greatly increasing on his hands. Button, like Raleigh, though a professed naturalist, and a writer of admirable genius, had no very distinct notions of species. He was inclined to question whether even the ass might not be merely a degraded horse; and confounded many of the mammals ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller

... hold on by your throat, by your throat, As of old in the terrible tale; But he grapples you tight by the coat, by the coat, Till its buttons and button-holes fail. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various

... to do right even when one is well, happy, and in his own home. Think, then, how hard a task the men in prison found it when they became members of the new league! The day a man joined, he had given to him a white button with a blue star and in the middle of the star was "Look Up and Hope." He promised to ...
— Modern Americans - A Biographical School Reader for the Upper Grades • Chester Sanford

... and mutual relations of the chains. The timber found here is pitch-pine, shrub oaks, cedar, &c., indicative of the poverty of the soil; in the uplands of the rest of the state, hickory, post-oak, and white oaks, &c., are the prevailing growth; and in river-bottoms, the cotton-tree, sycamore, or button-wood, maple, ash, walnut, &c., predominate. The south-eastern corner of the state, below Cape Girardeau, and east of the Black River, is a portion of the immense inundated region which borders the Arkansas. A considerable part of this tract is indeed above the reach of the floods, but ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat

... bullet-pierced, and threadbare. Somebody had given him a large hunk of bread, which he had put within the lining of his tunic; it bulged out in front like a paunch. An officer stopped to question him, and while the cross- examination was proceeding a curio-hunting soldier came up behind and cut a button off the tunic. We learnt that the lad was twenty-one years of age, and that he had been called up in December 1914. Before assisting in the conquest of France he was employed in a paper factory. He tried to exhibit gloom, but it was ...
— Over There • Arnold Bennett

... with a red geranium in his button-hole, looked cheerfully conscious of his own splendour; and his wife's little wrinkled face beamed with ...
— Soap-Bubble Stories - For Children • Fanny Barry

... MS. on vellum, of the Canterbury Tales, in the possession of the Duke of Sutherland, and reproduced as a frontispiece to “Illustrations of the lives of Gower and Chaucer,” by H. J. Todd, F.S.A., 1810, shows the anelace hanging from a button on the breast of his surcoat. It was usually worn at the girdle, except in the case of ecclesiastics. M. Paris mentions Petrus de Rivallis as “gestans anelacium ad lumbare, quod clericum non decebat.” The present writer possesses what he believes is an anelace, which was found among the ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter

... The blackthorn bloom began to faintly show the tiniest white studs, and the boys in great triumph brought in the first blue thrush's eggs. Nature would go on though under the thumb of the north wind. Poor folk came out of the towns to gather ivy leaves for sale in the streets to make button-holes. Many people think the ivy leaf has a pleasant shape; it was used of old time among the Greeks and Romans to decorate the person at joyous festivals. The ivy is frequently mentioned in the classic poets. Not so with the countrywomen in the villages to-day, ground down in constant ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies

... common talk that old Jim Norton, for obvious reasons, was displeased with Joe's matrimonial plans, but Mrs. Robinson professed to believe that the wife and daughter were really the ones disappointed. Now Esther began twisting a button of ...
— Different Girls • Various

... backwards, showing part of the inside of the burr. If the ears are placed low on the skull they give an appleheaded appearance to the dog. If the ear falls in front, hiding the interior, as is the case with a Fox-terrier, it is said to "button," and this type is highly objectionable. Unfortunately, within the last few years the "button" and "semi-tulip" ear have been rather prevalent amongst the specimens on ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton

... the grand duke Michel, uncle of Alexander II., that he was a most rigid disciplinarian. His great delight was in parades, and he never overlooked the least irregularity. Not a button, not a moustache even, escaped his notice, and whoever was not en regle was certain to be punished. He is reported to ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox

... buzzed. He pressed the answer button. A voice said, "Sir, the space-liner Vestis reports breakout from overdrive. Now driving ...
— Talents, Incorporated • William Fitzgerald Jenkins

... the world, but you are going to have the whipped cream," she said, as she felt for the electric push-button in the floor with one small, ...
— The Wishing-Ring Man • Margaret Widdemer

... hand touches something cold; her fingers close round it, and she draws it out. Her head swims, she clutches the table with her other hand to keep from falling—perhaps, after all, it is only a button. She collects herself, and peeps slyly into ...
— Harper's Young People, February 24, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... had his wife in his hand and that she resigned herself to the situation with suffering had until now aided the wine to cast over him a faint reflection of the jovial condescension which formerly had shone like the sun from every button of his clothes. Today the reflection was unusually faint—perhaps because her eye had not sought the ground when it met his glance. He put a few indifferent questions, and then said: "You have been ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various

... engulfed now. I drew a deep breath and surrendered myself. The tall, energetic figure of Anna Mihailovna, the lady to whose practical business gifts and unlimited capacity for compelling her friends to surrender their last bow and button in her service we owed the existence of our Red Cross unit, was to be seen like a splendid flag waving its followers on to glory and devotion. We were devoted, all of us. Even I, whose second departure to the war this was, had after the feeblest resistance ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole

... I am in camp after being "rough-housed on the rattlers" for 1 day and 2 nites; I was so shook-up that I'm like a loose button on an overcoat—no wheres ...
— Love Letters of a Rookie to Julie • Barney Stone

... used, does not simply mean errors of commission, but means errors of omission as well. If a man, in firing a gun, fails to press the button or trigger when his sights are on, he makes an error just as truly as the man does who presses the button or trigger when ...
— The Navy as a Fighting Machine • Bradley A. Fiske

... to us in the morning, wearing, besides his green cloak, a white cap with a green glass button, denoting his rank; he informed us that he had written to his superior officer at Kambajong, explaining his motives for conducting us across the frontier, and he drew from his breast a long letter, written on Daphne* [Most of the paper used in Tibet ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker

... leastways not to start with; but, as it went on, these two men were forced to do something that brought them within reach o' the law. We'll put it that, when the thing was done, the one o' this pair felt it heavy upon his mind, but t'other didn' care no more than a brass button; an' the one that took it serious—as you might say— lost sight o' the other for years, an' meantime picked up with a little religion, an' made oath with hisself that all the profits o' the job (for there were profits) should come into ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)

... from her chair and touched the electric button at the chimney. "You think that nothing but death can kill a fancy, and yet nobody marries their first love, and lots of women have second husbands." The man showed himself at the door, and she said to him in a rapid aside: "Turn up the lights in the drawing-room, James," and ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells

... time longer, but by degrees we both, at the same time, observed, that an alteration began to take place. My master attributed this to his altered fortunes, and I placed it to the score of my decayed appearance—the threadbare cloth and tarnished button came in, I was sure, for their full share of neglect, and he at last fell into the same opinion. To describe all the variety of treatment that we experienced would be a tedious and unpleasant task,—but I was the more convinced that I had at least as much to do with it as my master, from ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 262, July 7, 1827 • Various

... severely at her watch, which is a queer little gold disk about the size of a waistcoat button, swinging under her chin by a thin golden chain. Titania's methods of winding, setting and regulating that watch have always been a mystery to me. She frequently knows what the right time is, but how she ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley

... steps, his face like a stone wall for all the emotion it recorded. At his heels came the older man. Curly struck a match, found an electric bulb above his head, and turned the button. Instantly the darkness was driven ...
— Crooked Trails and Straight • William MacLeod Raine

... An entirely modern electric button was installed there, beneath a now merely ornamental knocker in grotesque gargoyle form. I pressed it, peering through the iron latticework at the stately court. The answer was prompt. Down the steps of the hotel came a white-headed majordomo, gorgeously ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti

... Uncle Tucker with a slight rift in the gloom. "They are some women in the world, if a man was to seal up his trouble in a termater-can and swoller it, would get a button-hook and a can-opener to go after him to get it out. You belong ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess

... way. No, no, Chris; I shall find some nice man, who has seen through me all the time and who hasn't been taken in by me, as the world has; and I shall say to him, 'By the way, here is a small fire and a few laurel leaves; please warm your hands at the one and wear the others in your button-hole.' That is the proper way in which a woman should treat fame—merely as a decoration for the man whom ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler

... benefit of country gentlemen, into "Shutting Galery." These little indications serve to remind the stranger that he is now in the land of the "duello," where each "captain of compliments" is reputed for "the very butcher of a silk button," and "fights as you sing prick-song,—rests me his minim rest, one, two, and the third in ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power

... proportion to the sense of duty which animates the several Armies. Where the spirit of duty and self-sacrifice is low the troops are unready and inefficient; where, as in Prussia, these qualities, by the training of a whole century, have become instinctive, troops really are ready to the last button, and might be poured down upon any one of her neighbours with such rapidity that the very first collision must suffice to ensure ultimate success—a success by no means certain if the enemy, whoever ...
— On War • Carl von Clausewitz

... painful thrill ran through his frame. He had found the brothers; they stood in the middle of the room, proud and radiant, with silken badges on their shoulders, and lilies-of-the-valley in their button-holes, looking at the row of girls dressed in white, who ornamented the walls, with a ...
— Dame Care • Hermann Sudermann

... am now master, I, a barber, and that a missed stroke, A slice too deep, cuts off the round, cheerful head That lies before me (he is thinking of a woman, Books, business) from his body, As though it were a loose button on a vest— I am overcome. Then the feeling came over me... this animal. Is there. The animal... both my knees knock. And like a small boy tearing paper Without knowing why, And like students who kill gas lamps, And like children who turn so red When they tear the wings ...
— The Verse of Alfred Lichtenstein • Alfred Lichtenstein

... to become the very button on Fortune's cap. No wonder that the Abbe Raynal pronounced it to be the boulevard of the New World, or that the Spanish historian called it the fairest emerald in the crown of Ferdinand and Isabella. ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou

... parents know the value of it; for though I have met more learned book-worms in the world, especially a great hulking, clumsy, blear-eyed old doctor, whom they called Johnson, and who lived in a court off Fleet Street, in London, yet I pretty soon silenced him in an argument (at 'Button's Coffeehouse'); and in that, and in poetry, and what I call natural philosophy, or the science of life, and in riding, music, leaping, the small-sword, the knowledge of a horse, or a main of cocks, and the manners of an accomplished gentleman and a man of fashion, I may say for ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray

... sudden decease of a tailor, was, as he let his wife understand, and requested her to perceive, quite out of the question. So he dressed himself carefully, and though peremptory with his wife concerning his linen, and requiring natural services from her in the button department, and a casual expression of contentment as to his ultimate make-up, he left her that day without any final injunctions to occupy her mind, and she was at liberty to weep if she pleased, a privilege she did not enjoy undisturbed when he was present; for ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... thought that most likely Nanny was right, so I looked down on the floor with the candle, and there I picked up a pensioner's button. ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat

... twenty-five feet, I ventured across it. If I could only reach the edge of that sloping rock before they took fright what a wonderful picture I'd get! Slowly, inch by inch I crept toward them. My eyes were glued to the finder, my finger trembled at the button, all at once, I stepped out, on nothing! Boy and camera turned over in midair and alighted, amid a shower of cones, in the top of a ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills

... laughter, humming a little song to himself, stooped to pick a couple of tender spring flowers from the border beside the grave, and after slipping them into a button-hole of his many caped overcoat, stood looking out over the stretch of land and sea, where Scarthey rose like a dream against the sparkle of the water and the ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle

... she exclaimed. "Button my gloves, Teresina. I shall not go after all, not even to please you, dearest friend. What a place of torture this world is! How right we are to try and get a comfortable stall in the next! Go away, San ...
— The Children of the King • F. Marion Crawford

... been decided yet," replied the commander. He touched a button, summoning an orderly. "Take these young gentlemen forward and see that they want no comfort. They are our guests!" ...
— Boy Scouts in the North Sea - The Mystery of a Sub • G. Harvey Ralphson

... began to faintly show the tiniest white studs, and the boys in great triumph brought in the first blue thrush's eggs. Nature would go on though under the thumb of the north wind. Poor folk came out of the towns to gather ivy leaves for sale in the streets to make button-holes. Many people think the ivy leaf has a pleasant shape; it was used of old time among the Greeks and Romans to decorate the person at joyous festivals. The ivy is frequently mentioned in the classic poets. Not so with the countrywomen in the villages to-day, ground ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies

... companion of her youth, so changed that she had not recognized him; worn by hard work, perhaps by anxieties, bronzed—and with his face hidden by a black beard which gave him a manly and energetic appearance. It was certainly he, with a thin red ribbon at his button-hole, which he had not when he went away, and which showed the importance of the works he had executed and of great perils he had faced. Pierre, trembling and motionless, was silent; the sound of his voice choked with emotion had frightened him. He had expected ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... author he has vilipended. Still, we must not set down every coincidence as borrowing. Thucydides himself insists on the recurrence of the same or similar events in a history of which human nature is a constant factor. "Undo this button" is not necessarily a quotation from King Lear. "There is no way but this" was original with Macaulay, and not stolen from Shakespeare. "Never mind, general, all this has been my fault," are words attributed to General Lee after the battle of Gettysburg. This is very much ...
— The Creed of the Old South 1865-1915 • Basil L. Gildersleeve

... get up now," she said. "Mrs. Medlock said I was to carry tha' breakfast an' tea an' dinner into th' room next to this. It's been made into a nursery for thee. I'll help thee on with thy clothes if tha'll get out o' bed. If th' buttons are at th' back tha' cannot button them up tha'self." ...
— The Secret Garden • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... hole. A petticoat of many-coloured stripes fitted closely on her hips, and fell to her ankles, where two tin rings clashed together. Her somewhat flat face was yellow like her tunic. Silver bodkins of great length formed a sun behind her head. She wore a coral button on the nostril, and she stood beside the bed more erect than a Hermes, and with ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert

... invitation of Pope Clement VII. I retired from Florence, and repaired to Rome. His holiness commissioned me to execute a button for the pontifical cope, and to set into it the jewels which I had taken out of the two crowns in the Castle of St. Angelo. The design was most beautiful, and so pleased and astonished was the Pope that he employed me to make new ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton

... do," said he. "The face of the button will be 'head,' and the back of it 'tail.' And now, will ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille

... wished to accompany us came and told us before our departure that his wife would not allow him to go, and she herself came to confirm the decision. Here the women have only a small puncture in the upper lip, in which they insert a little button of tin. The perforation is made by degrees, a ring with an opening in it being attached to the lip, and the ends squeezed gradually together. The pressure on the flesh between the ends of the ring causes its absorption, and a hole is the result. Children ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone

... was very fond of his horses. Among them were "Cincinnatus," his dark bay charger; "St. Louis" and "Egypt," two carriage-horses of fine action; a buggy horse named "Julia;" Master Jesse's Shetland ponies, "Billy Button" and "Reb;" "Jeff Davis," a natural pacer; "Mary," Miss Nellie's saddle-horse; "Jennie," a brood mare, and three Hambletonian colts. Five vehicles were in the carriage house —a landau, a barouche, a light road-wagon, a top-buggy, and a pony- ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore

... constructed of wrought gold, to be placed upon a lapis lazuli background: this he made in extreme relief, using tiny tools, "working right into the arms and legs, and making all alike of equal thickness." A cope-button for Pope Clement was also quite a tour de force; as he said, "these pieces of work are often harder the smaller they are." The design showed the Almighty seated on a great diamond; around him there were "a number of jolly little angels," some in complete relief. He describes how ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison

... seemed to have fallen upon these other people passed away. The waiters resumed their tasks. The room was once more hilariously gay. Upon the threshold a newcomer was standing, a tall man in correct morning dress, with a short gray beard and a tiny red ribbon in his button-hole. He stood there smiling slightly—an unobtrusive entrance, such as might have befitted any habitue of the place. Yet all the time his eyes were travelling restlessly up and down the room. As he stood there, one could fancy there ...
— The Lost Ambassador - The Search For The Missing Delora • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... be trusted. Accidents happen so quickly that it is over before we know it and the terrible damage is done. Sometimes the trigger will catch on a coat button or a twig, and, bang! an unexpected discharge takes place and if you were careless just for an instant, it may cost some one his life. Especial care must be taken in loading and unloading a gun. It is at this time that a gun is most likely to go ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller

... thereof seemed to make any impression on Doctor John. Mrs. Riddell said that he was a born old bachelor; I suppose she based her opinion on the fact that Doctor John was always a quiet, bookish fellow, who didn't care a button for society, and had never been guilty of a flirtation in his life. I knew Doctor John's heart far better than Martha Riddell could know anybody's; and I knew there was nothing of the old bachelor in his nature. He just had to wait for the right woman, that was all, not being able to ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... interval they stood motionless. They came to life when Harleston, reaching up, pushed the electric button. ...
— The Cab of the Sleeping Horse • John Reed Scott

... ahead at one place, out of which emerged several men in crimson robes, bearing banners, clearing the way and shouting out the name and dignities of a mandarin who was approaching. An ornamented chair, borne aloft, came into view, on which his lordship, an official of the third or fourth button, sat in state, followed by two servants on ponies, the only species of horseflesh we have seen in Canton. It is with considerable difficulty that even these small animals get through, and their use is confined to escorting ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie

... the tree was the size of a man's body, and he dismounted, nodding his head up and down with much satisfaction. Standing close to the tree, he pulled out his knife, cut out a square of the bark as high as the first button of his coat and moving around the trunk cut out several more ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.

... anything but "acting straight," that was full of a fine dominance. That he should be carefully dressed was but a detail in the exactitude which was the main element in his character; while his daily custom of wearing in his button-hole a dark-red carnation, a token of some never-explained memory of his dead wife, indicated a capacity for sober romance which ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King

... to run wild, and start up the coast on their tangled course of a hundred miles of deserted loveliness, and it was in the very heart of this delightful confusion that we pitched our tents for a summer holiday. A veritable wilderness of islands lay about us: from the mere round button of a rock that bore a single fir, to the mountainous stretch of a square mile, densely wooded, and bounded by precipitous cliffs; so close together often that a strip of water ran between no wider than a country lane, or, again, ...
— Three More John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood

... subject was given slight space in the curriculum, and for the children and {245} teachers there was available only a limited literature, and it was of an inadequate character. A working plan was at once developed whereby literature, coloured pictures of birds, and the Audubon button should be supplied to all the pupils in a school who enrolled themselves as members of an Audubon Class. Each member was required to pay a nominal fee, which, however, was much less than the cost of producing the material ...
— The Bird Study Book • Thomas Gilbert Pearson

... lass, and mak a clean fireside, Put on the muckle pot; Gie little Kate her button gown And Jock his Sunday coat; And mak their shoon as black as slaes, Their hose as white as snaw; It's a' to please my ain gudeman, For he's been ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various

... brass handle of a poker, a pot that had held cold-cream, a smoked pearl button off her winter coat, and ...
— The Story of the Amulet • E. Nesbit

... it on a peg; then sits down in the presidential chair at the head of the table, which is at the end farthest from the door. He puts a peg into his switchboard; turns the pointer on the dial; puts another peg in; and presses a button. Immediately the silvery screen vanishes; and in its place appears, in reverse from right to left, another office similarly furnished, with a thin, unamiable man similarly dressed, but in duller colors, turning over some documents at the table. His gold fillet is hanging up on a similar ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw

... details of man's garments, the button as a feature of clothes has never been fully done justice to. It is a sustaining thing we know, something we can hang to, fasten to, and even tie to. That properly placed buttons contribute to our mental poise and therefore ...
— What Dress Makes of Us • Dorothy Quigley

... have struck the right place," he said. "Now I wonder if you could fix a pin or something in this button shank. It's ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss

... flicker on her smooth cheek; even in the gloom of the carriage he could see that the dark amber of her eyes brimmed over with amusement, and the dimple deepened entrancingly. "How could I forget it? Didn't I wear my first long dress to that dinner- party—oh, and my six-button gloves?'' ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland

... proof of the Princess's power," said Mrs. Bhaer, after he had watched Mrs. Jo sew on a button with an air of scorn for the whole system of fashionable education. "Jack is so unwilling to be classed with Stuffy and Ned, as distasteful to Bess, that he came to me a little while ago, and asked me to touch his warts ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott

... young lady could not bring herself to like him, or however it came to pass, one way or another, that sprig of willow inevitably to be mounted by hero or heroine upon such equivocal occasions was placed by the honest town by no means in her breast, but altogether in his button-hole. ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... in vain that you speak to me in so sweet a voice. I am frightened even at the rattle of the beads about my neck: take them off, and let us talk on other things. What was it that dropped on the floor as you were speaking? It seemed to shake the room, though it sounded like a pin or button. ...
— English Satires • Various

... creature imaginable, ugly even to perfection. One eye had been gouged out, a knife-scar extended from his ear down across his mouth, and he was Herculean in physical proportions. I am a large man, but once when I gave him an overcoat he tried vainly to button it over his vast frontal protuberance, looking at me and ...
— Trail Tales • James David Gillilan

... had done his best to travesty the real man into a make-believe Roman. At the period when England produced its greatest poets, we find exactly the reverse of this, and we are thankful that the man who made the monument of Lord Bacon had genius to copy every button of his dress, everything down to the rosettes on his shoes, and then to write under his statue, "Thus sat Francis Bacon"—not "Cneius Pompeius"—"Viscount Verulam." Those men had faith even ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell

... with a formidable pike. Both the combatants wear conical caps upon their heads, similar to those which we have noticed as worn by a number of the statues from Cyprus; but the cap of the right-hand personage terminates in a button, whereto is attached a long appendage, which looks like the tail of an ox." The Egyptian character of much of this design is incontestable. The ankh, the lotus blossom in the hand, the winged disk, are purely ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson

... Armstrong," said Gertrude, rising and pushing the electric button as a signal for the others to return. There was nothing for McAlister to do but depart, wondering just how much he had ...
— A Woman for Mayor - A Novel of To-day • Helen M. Winslow

... I pressed a button, and Miss Joyce came in. "Take the testimony of the man who is coming in, Miss Joyce," I directed. "Take everything we say, any of us. Can you tell ...
— Sight Unseen • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... safe. Dump all the papers and money and whatever else you find into the bags and then get out fast. Hop into the plane and take off. When you're clear of the building, turn the heaters on it. I want it melted down and the men and stuff inside with it. Don't leave even a button unmelted. Get it?" ...
— Empire • Clifford Donald Simak

... then crochet down as far as the instep, and back again, doing one less each time till there are only two stitches left. Then down as far as the instep do an edging of treble crochet, then work another edging (button-hole stitch) all round the edging of flourishing thread. Then join the foot loosely down the middle, and sew up the leg so that the part increased flaps over. For the sole of foot make a chain of fourteen stitches, work it up and down till there are thirteen ribs; in the last ...
— Little Folks - A Magazine for the Young (Date of issue unknown) • Various

... those heavy ends on the steak or running in the shoulder chops on you, and that when Willie has the croup she mustn't give the little darling a stiff hot Scotch, or try to remove the phlegm from his throat with a button-hook. ...
— Old Gorgon Graham - More Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer

... has set the fair in motion by pressing the button in Washington. Now your good wishes are to ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... over there, for instance?" pointing to a dingy-looking girl in the distance, whose face is as like a button as it well can be, and whose general appearance may be expressed by the ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown

... the genuine left hind foot. I know all about it, because when my regiment was ordered to the front, my old colored Mammy—Ma'm Judy—who nursed me, sewed one just like that, inside the lining of my coat skirt. But, Dyce, that rabbit's foot was not worth a button; for the very first battle I was in, a cannon ball killed my horse under me, and carried away my coat tail—rabbit's foot and all. Don't pin your faith to left hind feet, they are fatal frauds. You are positive, this is the handkerchief ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... in love before, Kennie?" she asked me once, twisting at a button of my coat. We were drawing near Manchester and had let the postillion drive on with the coach, while we loitered hand in hand through the forest of Arden. The azure sky was not more blue than the eyes which lifted shyly to mine, nor the twinkling stars which would soon gaze ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine

... the big woods, and in the book called "Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue in the Big Woods," which is just before this one, you may read of the adventures with Bunny's train of electric cars, and of the fun Sue had with her electrical Teddy bear, which could flash its eyes when a button was pressed in his back—or rather, her back, for Sue had named her Teddy bear Sallie Malinda, insisting that it ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue on an Auto Tour • Laura Lee Hope

... rapidly, and soon had everything ready. But suddenly she remembered that she had left a very nice pair of button-hole scissors in Mrs. Montague's boudoir on the day they ...
— True Love's Reward • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon

... said Arthur, though somehow he did not feel as wildly delighted as he should have done at hearing it so clearly demonstrated that Mildred did not care a brass button about him; but then that is human nature. Between eighteen and thirty-five, ninety per cent. of the men in the world would like to centre in themselves the affections of every young and pretty woman they know, even if there was not the ghost of a chance of their ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard

... body to join his own to his companion's salutation of the Countess, disclosed the empty right sleeve of M. de La Tour d'Azyr's blue coat. More, the near side of the coat itself turned back from the point near the throat where it was caught together by a single button, revealed the slung arm beneath in ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini

... Baron," said the Count, taking his friend by the button-hole, "I have at length settled a point in my mind which has long puzzled me; I have heard that philosophers differ as to whether the earth is round or flat, and now you will agree with me that we have proof positive that it is flat. Look round on every side—the country is as level as a billiard ...
— Voyages and Travels of Count Funnibos and Baron Stilkin • William H. G. Kingston

... shrug and went into Anna Vassflyevna's room. Nikolai Artemyevitch's kind-hearted spouse was half lying on a reclining chair, sniffing a handkerchief steeped in eau de Cologne; he himself was standing at the hearth, every button buttoned up, in a high, hard cravat, with a stiffly starched collar; his deportment had a vague suggestion of some parliamentary orator. With an orator's wave of the arm he motioned his daughter to a chair, and when she, not understanding his gesture, looked ...
— On the Eve • Ivan Turgenev

... for a pen of steam to write upon those buttons! They, indeed, are the aristocracy—the yellow turbans, the sun, moon, and stars of the woollen system! They have nothing in common with the coat—they are on it, and that's all—they have no further communion—they decline the button-holes, and eschew all right to labour for their living—they announce themselves as "the last new fashion"—they sparkle for a week, retire to their silver paper, make way for the new comers, and, years after, like the Sleeping Beauty, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

... him; and he stared at her. She could not have been more than ten years old, and wore a nightgown trimmed with lace. She had bright yellow hair, and her finger was upon the button which controlled ...
— Samuel the Seeker • Upton Sinclair

... touching him on the shoulder; "there are certain kindnesses which can never be repaid. The profit is about that which you would have made; but the interest of your money still remains to be arranged." And, saying this, he unfastened from his sleeve a diamond button, which the goldsmith himself had often valued at three thousand pistoles. "Take this," he said to the goldsmith, "in remembrance of me. And farewell; you ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas

... overcoat was fastened by a single button; his collar was greasy; he kept his hat on his head as he spoke; he wore low shoes, an open waistcoat gave glimpses of a homely shirt of coarse linen. Good-nature was not wanting in the round countenance, ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac

... me, too, I know.—There, you dear old brown suit! Forgive me, and I never will do such a mean thing again. To think of all the lovely places I have been in with you, and now that I should like to cheat you out of seeing Michael Angelo's frescoes!" and she adjusted the last button with such a comical, half-disgusted expression on her face that Betty burst into ...
— Barbara's Heritage - Young Americans Among the Old Italian Masters • Deristhe L. Hoyt

... leave, according to my plan? Wrap the muffler well around the lower part of your face, button this second overcoat closely about your neck, and enter the private carriage which I ordered for 'Mr. Lee,' waiting now at the Forty-fifth Street Side. Then drive leisurely to the West Forty-second Street ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball

... commence to be cheerful all you have to do is to press the button and hold on to something. A child can start it but nobody can stop it. Ten minutes is all that is sufficient to give a whole family melancholia or creeping dyspepsia. It has been known to be fatal at 200 yards' range. Messrs. WILKIE BARD and George Graves have already ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 12, 1916 • Various

... thinkers and great writers who afterwards concocted the "Edinburgh Review," were rising into celebrity.' Principal Robertson, the historian, had departed this life in 1793, a kindly old man. With beaming eyes underneath his frizzed and curled wig, and a trumpet tied with a black ribbon to the button-hole of his coat, for he was deaf, this most excellent of writers showed how he could be also the most zealous of diners. Old Adam Ferguson, the historian of Rome, had 'set,' also: one of the finest ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton

... my treatment. He had a wart on his nose. You know that wart. You remember how the minister told him if other peoples' business had a button hole in it, Pa could button the wart in the button-hole, as he always had his nose there. Well, I told Pa I could cure that wart with caustic, and he said he would give five dollars if I could cure it, so I took a stick ...
— Peck's Compendium of Fun • George W. Peck

... for his own machine, a powerful low-slung roadster. A single vicious jab at the starting button, and the big motor leaped into roaring life. Gordon shot out from the parking lot onto the main boulevard. A hundred yards away the sedan was fleeing ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various

... Taking a button, or some such object, in his hand, and putting both hands behind his back, the friend began to bob his head and shoulders up and down in an idiotic fashion, at the same time chanting in a sing-song monotone, "Ho yo, yo ho, hi ya yoho!" for a considerable ...
— The Walrus Hunters - A Romance of the Realms of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne

... romantic return to his mother was, however, much stressed, as in the Greig music. The sentiment that Peer "had women behind him and, therefore, could not perish" appealed strongly to the German mood, though the application of the button-moulder idea to the plight of Germany just now appeared to have been missed. Peer ought to have been a shining button on the vest of the Lord, but has missed his chance, and now is to be melted down with other buttons into something ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham

... replied Pinchas, beginning to button his frock-coat against the outer cold. If only to oust this 'Ophelia,' he must be at the ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill

... declared that she had no Prayer-Book, and was much too tired to go in at present; she would go home and rest herself, she said. And two other ladies of the party did so also, leaving Miss Dunstable to go alone;—for which, however, she did not care one button. And then one of the party, who had a nasty habit of swearing, cursed at something as he walked in close to Mark's elbow; and so they made their way up the church as the Absolution was being read, and Mark Robarts felt thoroughly ashamed of himself. If his rising in ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope

... hug, he had sought to make her more truly his only and own. "The man I marry," vowed the darling Antoinette, "must be a hero. You're just an ordinary fellow. You're better than the rest I know, and I like you awfully much. But Alexander, dear," and she gave a little twist to the top button of his coat, "I don't love you, because you have never shown yourself capable of bold deeds or brave actions. I am woman enough to worship a man who can do things of that kind. The age of chivalry is not dead. There ...
— The Mermaid of Druid Lake and Other Stories • Charles Weathers Bump

... seemed to be a little mahogany box, looked at the ball of black substance inside, closed it up, placed it against the far wall, untwisted the coil, stood back near the door and pressed the button. The result was extraordinary. The whole of the far wall was blown out and for some distance in front the ground was furrowed up by the explosion. Quest replaced the instrument in his pocket, sprang through the opening and ran for the tower house. Behind ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... I'll say any guy that drops his collar button is out o' luck. It goes plunk into the mud, seven foot down under the house. But say, Cap, how the heck do we sleep? Hang ourselves up on ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel

... this: "When he gets drunk or drinks much he is red in the face"—as if that were an extraordinary or peculiar trait in any drunken man! Another runaway is said to have had "sometimes a sly look in his eye and wears the button of his hat in front;" another to have been a liar; another to have been "somewhat impudent if crossed, and has a leering look under his eyes." Others were "awkward in manners," "somewhat morose in countenance," ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle

... Houses; Clayton-square; Mrs. Clayton; Cases-street; Parker-street; Banastre street; Tarleton-street; Leigh-street; Mr. Rose and the Poets; Mr. Meadows and his Wives; Names of old streets; Dr. Solomon; Fawcett and Preston's Foundry; Button street; Manchester-street; Iron Works; ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian

... conveyed her to Brixton, and set her down before a block of recently built flats. She ascended to the second floor, pressed the button of a bell, and was speedily confronted by a girl of the natty parlour-maid species. This time she began by giving her name, and had only a moment to wait before she was admitted to a small drawing-room, furnished with semblance of luxury. A glowing fire and the light of an amber-shaded ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing

... a pair of brogues, tartan hose which came up only near to his knees, and left them bare, a purple camblet kilt, a black waistcoat, a short green cloth coat bound with gold cord, a yellowish bushy wig, a large blue bonnet with a gold thread button. I never saw a figure that gave a more perfect representation of a Highland Gentleman. I wished much to have a picture of him just as he was. I found him frank and POLITE, in the true sense of ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell

... manner that the strands shall lay under each other. This "pigtail" forms a knot at the end of the rope. It thus draws together two ropes, as shown in No. 32, forming a "shroud" knot. In these two pigtails, the strands are crossed before finishing the ends, so that the button, a, is made with the strands, a, and b, with those ...
— Scientific American, Volume XXIV., No. 12, March 18, 1871 • Various

... wish you could peep in upon one of these gatherings. Thirty or forty young people together, all united by the missionary tie, the ladies wearing light or white muslins, with gay belts and sashes, flowers in their hair, and happy, joyous, faces; the gentlemen with a rose in their button-hole, in summer dress; windows, doors, and blinds all open; and after the business of the meeting is over, numerous happy couples promenading to and fro on the piazza. All this gives a festive look, ...
— Scenes in the Hawaiian Islands and California • Mary Evarts Anderson

... Street, the young man guided the car. Then he shot into the park. They curved eastward. They came out on Fifth Avenue, somewhere in the Seventies. They shot eastward another half-block, and then the car stopped in front of an apartment-house. The young man pressed the button on the steering-wheel. In response to the short blast of the electric horn, a uniformed man appeared. The young man alighted. The ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... here briefing you instead of sitting back on a flagship. I got you into the I-A. Now, you listen carefully: If you push the panic button on this one without cause, I will personally flay you alive. We both know the advantages of an alien contact. But if you get into a hot spot, and call for help, I'll dive this cruiser into that ...
— Missing Link • Frank Patrick Herbert

... table's-end to come to anchor in some quiet eddy where I could listen unnoticed for the word I was thirsting for, I must needs entangle the button of my coat-cuff in the delicate lace of a lady's ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde

... had started to carry out his determination to take some pictures. The first subject he selected was a serious-faced little baby, innocent of any clothing, that sat playing with a ragged dog at, the entrance of one of the beehive huts. He had just clicked the button and exclaimed: ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton

... rapidity, Mrs. Gaunt, who stood at some distance, had not time to observe the button on the glove, or she would have recognized ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various

... or the one I had seen going below on board the steamer. He wore a frock-coat and light trousers, lavender gloves, and a hat—glorious product of that identical box—in which you might see your own face. A rose was in his button-hole, his hair was brushed, his collar was white, and his chin was ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed

... waiting-room besides myself was a very dapper gentleman of what I should call lively middle age, with very upstanding gray mustaches. I took him to be a marooned motorist, also. He was well-dressed, with the added touch of an orange blossom in his button-hole, and he had a slightly roving eye. His hand-baggage was most "refined." I had noticed him looking my way at intervals, and wondered if he craved a hard-boiled egg; I could easily have spared him one! While I am certainly not in the habit of seeking ...
— The Smiling Hill-Top - And Other California Sketches • Julia M. Sloane

... &c., so that I believe the very slaves were ashamed to be seen in my company. Just before it was dark, we took up our lodging for the night at a small village, where I procured some victuals for myself and some corn for my horse, at the moderate price of a button; and was told that I should see the Niger (which the Negroes call Joliba, or the great water) early the next day. The lions are here very numerous. The gates are shut a little after sunset, and nobody allowed to go out. The thoughts of seeing ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park

... looked desolate enough, but nevertheless seemed acceptable after a tedious journey against head winds and calms. The wind was still directly out of the straits, and we had to beat backward and forward from Resolution to Button Island, and it seemed as if the straits were unapproachable. Toward night the wind blew a perfect gale, and added to the usual dangers was the risk of running upon the innumerable pieces of loose ...
— Schwatka's Search • William H. Gilder

... Caffe Florian was under the superintendence of a female chef, and the waitresses used, in the case of certain visitors, to fasten a flower in the button-hole, perhaps allusively to the name. In the Piazza itself girls would do the same thing. A good deal of hospitality is, and has ever been, dispensed at Venice in the cafes and restaurants, which do service for ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers

... and with many a giggle and a "quit that, now," they picked at each other. Old Gid, in his splint-bottomed chair, leaned back against the wall and feasted his eyes upon their antics. "Kittens," said he, "I will get you a string and a button. Ah, Lord, I ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read

... through a district where the names of the streets are French, and where an atmosphere of sleepy Catholic respectability pervades the streets. This is Chandernagor, a wee bit of territory that the French have been permitted to retain here, a rosebud in the button-hole of la belle France's national vanity. Chanderuagor is a bite of two thousand acres out of the rich cake of the lower Hooghli Valley; but it is invested with all the dignity of a governor-general's court, and is gallantly defended by a standing army of ten men. The Governor-General ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens

... of mediation or mediating influence was ready to be put into operation by any method that Germany could suggest if mine were not acceptable. In fact, mediation was ready to come into operation by any method that Germany thought possible, if only Germany would 'press the button' in the ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various

... sighed, "you have only one button left on your frock, Debby, and the string of your apron is broken. Can't you ...
— Anxious Audrey • Mabel Quiller-Couch

... fortieth year Cellini lived mostly at Rome. He was employed by Pope Clement VII., the cardinals and Roman nobles. The Pope desired to have a cope button made and a magnificent diamond set in it. This jewel had cost Julius II. thirty-six thousand ducats. Many artists sent in designs for this button, and Clement chose that by Cellini. He used the diamond as a throne, and placed a figure ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students - Painting, Sculpture, Architecture • Clara Erskine Clement

... a bit of trouble this morning," he informed me. "So I've taken the liberty of calling in the night crew for you." He pressed a button and a bunch came in and lined up as if for formal inspection. "Boys," said Walton quietly, "suppose you tell us what you know about Mr. Cornell's arrival ...
— Highways in Hiding • George Oliver Smith

... red light flashed on the master control panel. Tom's finger stabbed a button. Far out in space, the retarding rockets in the missile's nose were triggered for a brief burst, slowing its high speed. Without this, the missile would hurtle to flaming ...
— Tom Swift and the Electronic Hydrolung • Victor Appleton

... down the thickly carpeted corridor leading the way to a large apartment, or rather a suite of rooms, as handsomely furnished as any in other hotels. He switched on the lights and left us, with the remark, "When you want the waiter or anything, just press the button." ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve

... inhabited by the Shillooks, the largest and most powerful black tribe on the banks of the White Nile. They are very wealthy, and possess immense herds of cattle; are also agriculturists, fishermen, and warriors. Their huts are regularly built, looking at a distance like rows of button mushrooms. They embark boldly on the river in their raft-like canoes, formed of the excessively light ambatch-wood. The tree is of no great thickness, and tapers gradually to a point. It is thus ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston

... fighting me, I have no resource left but to fight him; but for two CIVILISED nations to go to war for the settlement of a dispute is an unreasonable and childish and silly as it would be for two gentlemen, who should differ in opinion, to step into the middle of a peaceful drawing-room, button up their coats, turn up their wristbands, and proceed to batter each other's eyes and noses, regardless of ladies, children, and valuables. War would be a contemptible farce if it were not ...
— In the Track of the Troops • R.M. Ballantyne

... sandwiches, sugar, coffee, chocolate, tinned meat, peas, corn, fruit, etc. Behind the saddle was rolled his blanket, inside his section of tent cover,—it takes six of them to make a real tent. They are arranged to button together. ...
— On the Edge of the War Zone - From the Battle of the Marne to the Entrance of the Stars and Stripes • Mildred Aldrich

... them. I have heard of such a one's paying a liard [a small copper coin worth a quarter of a cent, current in France in the fifteenth century.] to eat his bellyfull of grapes in a poor man's vineyard; and he ate as many as would have loaded a wain, and never undid a button of his jerkin—and so let him pass quietly, and keep his way, as we will keep ours.—And you, friend, if you would shun worse, walk quietly on, in the name of God, our Lady of Marmoutier, and Saint Martin of Tours, and trouble us no more about ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott

... sentences as harmonious. For two hours and a quarter, unfaltering, unfailing, Mr. G. held the unrivalled audience entranced, and sat down amid a storm of cheering, looking almost as fresh as the posy in his button-hole. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, February 25, 1893 • Various

... Au revoir. We meet at the station.' He bustled off, looking very smart with his neat clothes and a rose in his button-hole. ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan

... startled you," puffed the man, entirely winded by the six flights. "Must have pushed the wrong button in the vestibule. No ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various

... lavish luxury!) and allowed she didn't mind, if I was a mind to fetch it down to the graveyard corner some night after dusk. Every human being in Three Meadows has seen me wear it and could describe it to the last stitch and button, and every one will know where she got it. Nevertheless, in a world of foot-lickers, ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell

... came out, that Mikhalevitch had not a penny in the world. Already, on the preceding evening, Lavretzky, with compassion, had observed in him all the signs and habits of confirmed poverty; his boots were broken, a button was missing from the back of his coat, his hands were guiltless of gloves, down was visible in his hair; on his arrival, it had not occurred to him to ask for washing materials, and at supper he ate like a shark, tearing the meat apart with his hands, and cracking the bones noisily with his ...
— A Nobleman's Nest • Ivan Turgenieff

... from the buffeting he had suffered from the wind, the old man looked much less trim and taut than Sheila had ever before seen him. He had not been shaved for at least three days; a button hung by a thread upon his coat; there was a coffee stain on the bosom ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper

... company with a bottle of port, into a private apartment. No sooner did he find himself alone with Paul than, bursting into a loud laugh, Mr. Ned surveyed his comrade from head to foot through an eyeglass which he wore fastened to his button-hole by a ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... Mr. Fenwick very well—he and I used to go to school together, but bless my multiplication tables—I never thought he'd amount to anything! And so he's built an airship; and Tom is going to help him with it? Why, bless my collar button, I've a good notion to go along and see what happens. Bless my very existence, but I think ...
— Tom Swift and his Wireless Message • Victor Appleton

... poising motions, but care should always be taken to hold the chest well up. Indeed, we need have no sense of effort in standing, except in raising the chest,—and that must be as if it were pulled up outside by a button in its centre, but there must be no strain ...
— Power Through Repose • Annie Payson Call

... with all the hilarity of a rustic bridal, and, as he stumbled along, sawing away upon his fiddle till he made all crack again. Then came the happy bridegroom, drest in his Sunday suit of blue, with a large nosegay in his button-hole; and close beside him his blushing bride, with downcast eyes, clad in a white robe and slippers, and wearing a wreath of white roses in her hair. The friends and relatives brought up the procession; and a troop of village urchins came ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various

... another!" This lavishness served to stimulate cupidity, and every day the Bedawin brought in specimens from half a dozen different places. But the satisfaction was at its height when the crucible produced, after cupellation, a button of "silver" weighing some twenty grammes from the hundred grammes of what the grumbling Californian miners had called, in their wrath, "dashed black dust;"[EN109] and when a second experiment yielded twenty-eight grammes (each fifteen grains and ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton

... last I see the simple truth in a daily paper," he commented. "But, as for you, my friend, button your coat well over your heart for it's in for ...
— The Colonel of the Red Huzzars • John Reed Scott

... a California town, one of these men sufferers, mistaking me for a voter, took me by a button of my coat, and poured forth a tale of woe so long that, unable to endure it longer, I cut off the button and fled. He did not notice my departure, and two hours later, there he was holding on to the button, all alone, ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss

... how jolly it would be just to tie on my hat, button my jacket, and go off with you to America, where people can't die and leave you titles and things; but it is of no use thinking of such a thing. It would break mamma Rachael's heart; and ...
— The Old Countess; or, The Two Proposals • Ann S. Stephens

... employed by the Zoological world, and who appeared to have recommended him to Monsieur Mutuel), the old gentleman sunned himself daily when sun was to be had—of course, at the same time sunning a red ribbon at his button-hole; for was he not an ...
— Somebody's Luggage • Charles Dickens

... morning with so much work ahead of me, with so much to do and so little time to do it in, I started doing my hair. I also started thinking about that Frenchman who committed suicide after counting up the number of buttons he had to button and unbutton every morning and evening of every day of every year of his life. I tried to figure up the time I was wasting on that mop of mine. Then the Great Idea occurred ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer

... was a crisp ten-dollar bill, evidently the last of those given by the bank at the beginning of the month. There were two one-dollar bills. There was a fifty-cent piece, two quarters and a dime. A gold German twenty-mark piece, about eight inches of narrow crimson ribbon, and a glove button, completed the contents. Peter returned the American money and the glove button to the purse and handed ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford

... industrial, or political—may sit, thanks to the Morses and the Edisons, comfortably in office-coat and slippers, far removed from the battle turmoil, directing his forces with the pressure of a finger upon the appropriate electric button, or in a few words dictated to the human ear of ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde

... great difficulty. It was quite possible, I pointed out, to make a shake-up under a wire mattress, fasten the under things on with tapes, and have a blanket, sheet, and coverlet to button at the side. He would have to confide in his housekeeper, I said; and after some squabbling he agreed to that. (Afterwards it was quite delightful to see the beautifully matter-of-fact way with which the ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells

... she followed him to the front door, and detained him a moment, to fasten in the button-hole of his coat a tuberose and sprig of heliotrope, his ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson

... from the window, when, whom should I behold marching up the street, at slow time, towards the Salmon House, but the identical old soldier, cocked-hat, copper nose, great red single-breasted coat with its prodigious wide button-holes, leggings, cane, and all, just under the ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... powder, in sticks, or rubbed on fibres and sheets of silk, were tried as the sensitive material, but finally abandoned in favour of a small cake or wafer of compressed lamp-black, obtained from the smoke of burning oil, such as benzolene or rigolene. This was the celebrated 'carbon button,' which on being placed between two platinum discs by way of contact, and traversed by the electric current, was found to vary in resistance under the pressure of the sound waves. The voice was concentrated upon it by means of a ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro

... exclaimed. "Mother always did make beautiful button-holes. And here," seizing a smaller bundle and unwrapping it, "if she hasn't embroidered me two lay-over collars to go with it! Mother always seems to know what ...
— Elizabeth Hobart at Exeter Hall • Jean K. Baird

... entity of his time—of all time, possibly. Even to outline it to you would take too much time. Light, heat, motive power in incredible degrees and under such control as has never been known: these were to be the agencies at his call. The push of a button, the turn of a screw—oh, he was to be master of such power as no monarch ever wielded! Riches—pshaw! Riches were the least of it. He could create them, practically. But they would be superfluous. Power: unlimited, absolute power was his goal. With his end ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams

... forehead, and in doing so, displaced somewhat the black wig which he wore; and his eyes stared fiercely at the Major, who, in his turn, like a resolute old warrior as he was, looked at his opponent very keenly and steadily. At the end of the mutual inspection, Altamont began to button up his brass-buttoned coat, and rising up from his chair, suddenly, and to the company's astonishment, reeled towards the door, and issued from it, followed by Strong: all that the latter heard him utter was—"Captain Beak! ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray

... were followed by those of Button and of Gibbons, to whom we owe, if not new discoveries, important observations on the tides, the variation of the weather and the temperature, and on a number of ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne

... could remember the method of opening, and gave a gulp of horror at the thought that he might not. But there had been no reason to make a secret of the inside of the door, and he presently found a button and drew it; it creaked rustily, but gave, and the door with another pull opened inwards, and there was a faint glimmer of light. Then he remembered that the entrances to the tunnel at either end were exactly on the same ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson

... went to church it frequently occurred that, in the very midst of the most solemn portion of the sermon, he would feel a gentle disturbance under the lower button of his jacket, and presently, when everything was hushed, the undigested engine would give a preliminary buzz, and then reel off "Listen to the Mocking Bird," and "Thou'lt Never Cease to Love," and scales and exercises, until the clergyman would stop and glare at Henry over his ...
— Half-Hours with Great Story-Tellers • Various

... wasn't fooling. I looked at Sol, on the seat next to me; I thought I had heard him snicker. He began to fiddle with his camera without looking at me. I pushed the "talk" button and told Harrison where I was. It pleased him very much; I wasn't more than six blocks from where this big rumble was going on, he told me, and he made it very clear that I was to ...
— The Day of the Boomer Dukes • Frederik Pohl

... himself again. Then he looked for the cause and realized that the article he was reading was one he had read several months previous, when suffering most severely from the whole train of symptoms. When the familiar words had again gone into his mind, they had pressed the button for the whole physiological experience which had once before been associated with them. This is the same mechanism as that involved in Prince's case, Miss Beauchamp, who became completely dissociated at one time when a breeze swept across ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury

... were a keeper," said Tom, "to live in such a beautiful place, and wear green velveteens, and have a real dog-whistle at my button, like you." ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester

... in conversation by the button-hole. If you are obliged to detain him forcibly in order to say what you wish, you are pressing upon him what is disagreeable or unwelcome, and you commit a gross breach of ...
— Our Deportment - Or the Manners, Conduct and Dress of the Most Refined Society • John H. Young

... began to respect the braces when one saw what they carried—a trousers-button as big as a square-sail, and another behind—I am sure that one could have written 'Constantinople' in full across it in a ...
— Norse Tales and Sketches • Alexander Lange Kielland

... the white arm falling and knew the thing had loosed its grip, the light died. Bremilu, starting at the sudden discharge close to his ear, had pressed the ivory button. ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England

... to reach out your hand for the pretty bright candle, and find out that it was way across the room, instead of close by? How should you like to tire yourself out crawling way across the carpet, to pick up a pretty button or pin, and have it snatched away, as soon as you begin to enjoy it? I tell you it is enough to ruin any baby's temper. How should you like to have your mamma stay at a party till you were as hungry as ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern

... man tested. This is done by suddenly bringing some object, the letter A or B for instance, within the range of vision of the subject, who, the instant he recognizes the letter has to do some definite thing, such as to press a particular electric button. The time which elapses from the instant the letter comes in view until the subject presses the button is accurately recorded by a delicate ...
— The Principles of Scientific Management • Frederick Winslow Taylor

... girls, assisted with combs covered with paper, or the shrill notes of some expert at whistling. It often happened that the old people objected to dancing, and then the company resorted to plays, of which there was a great variety: "Button, button, who's got the button;" "Measuring Tape;" "Going to Rome;" "Ladies Slipper;" all pretty much of the same character, and much appreciated by the boys, because they afforded a ...
— Life in Canada Fifty Years Ago • Canniff Haight

... heart, as in all others, the root of Pharisaism—the lust after self-glorifying superiority, on the ground of "genius." We too are men; frail, selfish, proud as others. The days are past, thank God, when the "gentlemen button-makers," used to insist on a separate tap-room from the mere "button-makers," on the ground of earning a few more shillings per week. But we are not yet thorough democrats, my brothers; we do not yet utterly believe ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al

... you to button my glove, Molly," she said, holding out her wrist, "Rachel's so busy on my new silk, and you have nothing to do. What a fortunate child you are to be able to take your ease ...
— Elsie's children • Martha Finley

... vestibule below was a letter-box into which no letter would go, and an electric button from which no mortal finger could coax a ring. Also appertaining thereunto was a card bearing the name ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various

... regaining his breath and blinking the water from his eyes, when something caught to a sleeve button on his tunic made him stare. It was a short piece of black-and-white striped ribbon—the Order of the Iron Cross—which the German had worn in a breast button-hole of ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris

... a gurgling sound and put a jewelled hand to his throat as if he choked. He was all in green velvet, and every button of his doublet was a brilliant of price; and that gay raiment by its incongruity seemed to heighten the tragedy of ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini

... ink on her thumb, her blouse that was unbuttoned—and of the other to see her all in a glory so that her whole body, for colour and light and beautiful silence, had no equal amongst the possessions of the earth or the wonders of heaven. Here there was a button undone, there there ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole

... at left rear. He presses a button and alcove is lighted by electricity, discovering the face of a large safe. During the following scene he does not look around, being occupied with working the combination, opening the safe, putting away account books and packets of papers, and with examining other packets which ...
— Theft - A Play In Four Acts • Jack London

... ever they can thrust them, and others looking with great Attention on a piece of Paper that has nothing written in it; you may see many a smart Rhetorician turning his Hat in his Hands, moulding it into several different Cocks, examining sometimes the Lining of it, and sometimes the Button, during the whole course of his Harangue. A deaf Man would think he was Cheap'ning a Beaver, when perhaps he is talking of the Fate of the British Nation. I remember, when I was a young Man, and used to frequent Westminster-Hall, there was a Counsellor who never pleaded ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... had long been closed; from old Grub-Street traditions; from the talk of forgotten poetasters and pamphleteers who had long been lying in parish vaults; from the recollections of such men as Gilbert Walmesley, who had conversed with the wits of Button; Cibber, who had mutilated the plays of two generations of dramatists; Orrery, who had been admitted to the society of Swift; and Savage, who had rendered services of no very honorable kind to Pope. The biographer, therefore, sat down to his task with a mind full of matter. ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne

... to the Mandarin Li Keen that the bestowal of the Crystal Button would only be a fit and graceful reward for his indefatigable efforts to uphold the dignity of the sublime Emperor; but to all such persons the Mandarin has sternly replied that such a proposal would more fitly originate ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah

... his shoulders, which were sardonyxes, [and I think it needless to describe their nature, they being known to every body,] the one of them shined out when God was present at their sacrifices; I mean that which was in the nature of a button on his right shoulder, bright rays darting out thence, and being seen even by those that were most remote; which splendor yet was not before natural to the stone. This has appeared a wonderful thing to such as have not so far indulged themselves in philosophy, ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus

... his belongings in a parcel so that there would be no bags to stow away, they approached the boat. Although Perry was no mechanician, he quite understood the operation of an electric horn, and now, swinging nimbly down to the bridge deck, he set the palm of his hand against a big black button. The result was all that he desired. An amazing, ear-splitting shriek broke the ordinary clamour of the scene. Perry smiled ecstatically and peered out and up from under the awning. But the half-dozen countenances that looked down ...
— The Adventure Club Afloat • Ralph Henry Barbour

... to the untidy parlor where he found Ellice dawdling over a paper. Her white summer dress was stained in places and open at the neck, where a button had come off. The short skirt displayed a hole in one stocking and a shoe from which a strap had been torn. Jernyngham leaned on the table regarding her ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss

... take a little peep around," he was told. "Never know what you might strike. Remember picking up a sleeve button once, after I'd been set on by a couple of fellows in the dark; and it gave the game away. Oh! yes, I returned the button, but my bruises felt a heap better after I'd given the ...
— Fred Fenton Marathon Runner - The Great Race at Riverport School • Allen Chapman

... either speak—tell me the truth, or I will hand you over to the police. I have only to touch this bell"—and I raised my hand to the electric button beside the fireplace—"and a telephone message will call ...
— Hushed Up - A Mystery of London • William Le Queux

... down to the saddle pack without taking his eyes from the moving speck and took out the radiophone. He held it to his ear and thumbed the call button insistently. ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett

... practical men of the day; after which evidence was taken at great length before a Select Committee which sat on the subject. Among those examined on the occasion were the venerable James Watt of Birmingham, Mr. John Rennie, Professor Button of Woolwich, Professors Playfair and Robison of Edinburgh, Mr. Jessop, Mr.Southern, and Dr. Maskelyne. Their evidence will still be found interesting as indicating the state at which constructive science had at that time arrived in England.*[8] There was a considerable diversity ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles

... "Then you button it in, Micky, and see you don't talk about it to no one. Only I should have said it would be safer put by, or giv' to some responsible person to take charge of." But Michael shook his head, assuming ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan

... grave, and the eldest of the boys among them, a practical youngster of seven years, made the proposition that there should be an exhibition of Puggie's burial-place for all who lived in the lane; the price of admission was to be a trouser button, for every boy would be sure to have one, and each might also give one for a little girl. This proposal was adopted ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen

... without pausing to question them, comes so naturally to a railroad man, that President Vanderveer himself now obeyed this grimy-faced young fireman as readily as though their positions had been reversed. With a quick movement he touched a button at one side of the car, and instantly a clear-voiced electric bell, in the cab of the locomotive that was dragging his train toward destruction, rang out an imperative call for brakes. The engineman's right hand sought the little brass "air" lever as he heard ...
— Cab and Caboose - The Story of a Railroad Boy • Kirk Munroe

... desperately sincere. She was sorry for Miss Quincey; but all her youth, unfettered and unfeeling, revolted from the bond of friendship. So she only stooped and laced up the shabby boots, and fastened the thin cape by its solitary button. The touch of Miss Quincey's clothes thrilled her with a pang of pity, and she could have wept over the unutterable pathos of her hat. In form and substance it was a rock, beaten by the weather; its limp ribbons clung ...
— Superseded • May Sinclair

... tooth Of the Great Bear, and, passing Neptune close, I would avoid his trident's point, and fell, Thus sitting, plump, right in the Scales! My weight Is marked, still registered, up there in heaven! (Hurriedly preventing De Guiche from passing, and detaining him by the button of his doublet): I swear to you that if you squeezed my nose It ...
— Cyrano de Bergerac • Edmond Rostand

... not measure less than twenty feet across, and the current whirled through it far below—thirty feet perhaps. He eyed his companions. Barboux leaned on his gun a few paces from the brink, where the two Indians stood peering down at the dim waters. John dropped on one knee, pretending to fasten a button of his gaiters, and drew a long breath while he watched for his chance. Presently Muskingon straightened himself up and, as if satisfied with his inspection, began to lead the way again, slanting his course away from the bank and back towards the selvage of the ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... as "Bill Stumps, his mark." He had an old inscription engraved on an unused bit of pewter—it was well begrimed and well battered, then exposed for sale in a broker's shop, where it was greedily purchased by the credulous virtuoso. The notion, by the way, of the Club button was taken from the Prince Regent, who had his Club and uniform, which he allowed favourites ...
— Pickwickian Manners and Customs • Percy Fitzgerald

... you," puffed the man, entirely winded by the six flights. "Must have pushed the wrong button in the ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various

... than one thick one, for the simple reason that going uphill one wants to peel to the minimum; sitting on top of a mountain or ridge in a wind, one wants to pile on everything one possesses, and going downhill one wants a medium amount, all of which will button up so that the snow cannot penetrate inside. Ordinary country clothes will usually suffice for the first season, especially if they are of smooth material which will shake off ...
— Ski-running • Katharine Symonds Furse

... There should be a button attached to the lower edge of the rear of the hive, so as to enable the apiarian to govern the bottom board in such a manner as to give all the air they need, or close ...
— A Manual or an Easy Method of Managing Bees • John M. Weeks

... formidable pike. Both the combatants wear conical caps upon their heads, similar to those which we have noticed as worn by a number of the statues from Cyprus; but the cap of the right-hand personage terminates in a button, whereto is attached a long appendage, which looks like the tail of an ox." The Egyptian character of much of this design is incontestable. The ankh, the lotus blossom in the hand, the winged disk, are purely ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson

... as she shook out the soft folds. "Guess I can slip it on over my other dress, it's plenty big. It must button in the front, for that's the way the lace shawl goes. Um—it's long"—she looked down as she fastened the last little button. "Oh, I know! I'll tuck it up in the front and leave the long back for a trail! How's ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers

... been looking on with intense disgust while Tom was admiring Mrs. Pugh's famous book of devices from letters, translating the mottoes, and promising contributions, the offence was greatly increased by his coming up to her (and that too just as Harry was released by the button-holding Mr. Grey) ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge

... from his interview with Sir Tobias, he found Terry standing in the hall, doing up the last button of her gloves. James, of the velvet-plush manners, lost no time in proffering him his hat and cane, and in flinging the front-door wide. He did it with the air of a sentimentalist who was aiding and abetting an elopement. Tabs had ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson

... The primitive English element was pirate; let the primitive American be bore. The fathers of the Britain that is took men by the throat; let the fathers of the America that is to be take them by the—button;—that is amelioration enough for one thousand years! In truth, this intense personal interest which characterizes the American, though often awkwardly manifested and troublesome, is an admirable feature in his constitution, and few traits should awaken our pride ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various

... terracotta hair, and a prunes-and-prisms mouth all puckered to say something soulful. She's wearin' a whackin' big black feather lid with a long plume trailin' down over one ear, a strawb'ry pink dress cut accordin' to Louis Catorz designs,—waist band under her armpits, you know,—and nineteen-button length gloves. Finish that off with a white hen feather boa, have her hands clasped real shy under her chin, and you've got a picture of what I sees there in the door. But it was the friendly size-up she was givin' me, and no mistake. She must have hung up there three or four minutes ...
— Odd Numbers - Being Further Chronicles of Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford

... proceeded to the untidy parlor where he found Ellice dawdling over a paper. Her white summer dress was stained in places and open at the neck, where a button had come off. The short skirt displayed a hole in one stocking and a shoe from which a strap had been torn. Jernyngham leaned on the table regarding ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss

... heard of from Paris a week or two ago," said Otto excitedly—"a marvellous electric invention a man's at work on, where you only turn a handle, or press a button, and you get Rubinstein—or Madame Schumann or my country-man, Paderewski, who's going to beat everybody. It isn't finished yet. But it won't be for the likes of me. It'll cost at least ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... you an' show my friends, as I says, that you ain't got a thing, I'll wager you two on the side, right now, that the pa'r of jacks I breaks on, is bigger than the hand on which you comes in an' makes that two-button tilt.' As he says this, Cherokee regyards the avaricious ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis

... subspace. The Commissioner's hand slapped a button. The flame vanished and stars shone all around. The engines hurled them forward. Twelve seconds later, they angled and dived again. ...
— Legacy • James H Schmitz

... about it by his fellow-workers. "How be you getting on with the 'Merican biff?" Tom was asked. "Oh," said he, "never no more 'Merican biff for me." "How's that, Tom?" "Why, the other day I found a trouser-button in it!" The point of this story lies in the fact that the Russo-Turkish war was proceeding at the time. Tempora mutantur, we were then encouraging Turkey against Russia, though the latter had declared war to avenge the atrocities in Bulgaria of which the Turks were guilty, ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory

... simple enough game, but dear for many and many a year to English children. A broad and shallow bowl or dish half-filled with blazing brandy, at the bottom of which lay numerous toothsome raisins—a rare tidbit in those days—and one of these, pierced with a gold button, was known as the "lucky raisin." Then, as the flaming brandy flickered and darted from the yawning bowl, even as did the flaming poison tongues of the cruel dragon that St. George of England conquered so valiantly, each one of the revellers sought to snatch a raisin ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various

... ground, and leaned his back against the end wall of his dreary dungeon. The light from the window above his head fell upon the opposite door, and illuminated the spot where he had scratched, with the shank of a button, a line for each day of his imprisonment. The melancholy calendar already reached one quarter across the door, and Paco was speculating and wondering how far it might be prolonged, when he thought ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various

... thus open'd: Hear thy suppliant's call, Great Queen, and common mother of us all! Fair from its humble bed I rear'd this flow'r, Suckl'd, and cheer'd with air, and sun, and show'r, Soft on the paper ruff its leaves I spread, Bright with the gilded button tipt its head. Then thron'd in glass, and nam'd it Caroline: Each maid cry'd, Charming; and each youth, Divine! Did Nature's pencil ever blend such rays, Such vary'd light in one promiscuous blaze? Now prostrate! dead! behold that Caroline: No maid cries charming! and no youth divine! ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various

... attractive than to any special talent. This was all very well now, while she got results, but what about the day when her shoes spread over the soles and turned over at the heels, and she bought her blouse "off the pile?" When her dollar gloves were shabby and would not button at the wrist? What about the day when she was too dispirited to dress her hair becomingly, but combed it straight up at the back, so that her "scolding locks" hung down upon her coat-collar, and her home-trimmed hat rode carelessly ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart

... having a mould formed of a piece of buffalo's horn, indented to several sizes, each like one half of a bullet mould, they lay their work over one of these holes, and with a horn punch they press it into the form of the button. After this they complete the upper part. The manner of making the little balls with which their works are sometimes ornamented is as follows. They take a piece of charcoal, and, having cut it flat and smooth, they make in it ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden

... had not made a move, but Colonel Leonidas Talbot rose, buttoned every button of his neat tunic, and said in ...
— The Star of Gettysburg - A Story of Southern High Tide • Joseph A. Altsheler

... consult the sorceress in a simple but rich dress. Her peplos was fastened on the shoulder, not by an ordinary gold pin, but by a button which betrayed her taste for fine jewels, as it consisted of a sapphire of remarkable size; this had at once caught the eye of the witch, showing her that she had to deal with a woman of rank and wealth. She had taken Katharina, who had come very plainly dressed, for ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... upon the table-cloth. Captain Plessy was in far too complacent a mood to notice such trifles. His vanity was satisfied, the world was a rosy mist with a sparkle of champagne, and he answered lightly as he unfastened another button of ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason

... came, and with a sinking heart he snapped the button at the door. It failed to throw the expected flood of light through the interior. With shaking hand Kay pulled the little electron torch from his pocket, and its bright beam showed that the door ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various

... I'll turn the whole thing over to you," he declared briskly, with his finger already on the button that would summon his stenographer for dictation. "Just step into that room there and stay as long as you like. Whatever Patch says I'll back up. You'll find him thoroughly capable and trustworthy. And now good luck to ...
— Dawn • Eleanor H. Porter

... struck the right place," he said. "Now I wonder if you could fix a pin or something in this button shank. ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss

... Mississippi. The crop meter was attached to the dashboard of an automobile and connected by cable to the odometer. A circuitous route was followed through the cotton area, and when the driver came to the edge of a cotton field he pushed a button which started the meter measuring the frontage of the field. The total mileage registered could be interpreted in terms of the acreage. The meter method was later replaced by aerial observation. Gift of Statistical ...
— Agricultural Implements and Machines in the Collection of the National Museum of History and Technology • John T. Schlebecker

... garters; a coat of crimson velvet faced with white velvet: a short cloak of crimson lined with white satin, covering the left shoulder and fastened on the right-hand side by a double clasp of diamonds; a black velvet cap, surmounted by two aigrets, a diamond loop, and for button, the most celebrated of the crown ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand

... fellow-passenger, on one of those swift, sudden, and ill-timed returns that preceded his last great exodus. Only that, whereas Stephen Lepper at thirty-nine was immaculately attired, the coat of that unfortunate young man hung by a thread or two, and his trousers by a button; while, instead of five million dollars piled at his back, he had but eighteenpence (mostly copper) lying loose in his front pockets. But Stephen Lepper had grown so used to his clothes and his millions that he carried them unconsciously. ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair

... fantastic nature had fastened round the tail of a white angora cat. She knew all the little tricks of a girl who seeks to marry; her fingers arranged her curls which were not in the least out of order; she entreated Rogron to fasten a cuff-button, thus showing him her wrist, a request which that dazzled fool rudely refused, hiding his emotions under the mask of indifference. The timidity of the only love he was ever to feel in the whole course of his life took an external appearance of dislike. Sylvie and her ...
— Pierrette • Honore de Balzac

... harmony between a Consul Sabinus and a Ricimer, Duke of the palace, that though you have written the story as well as it could be written, I fear few will have patience to read it." He coloured; all his round features squeezed themselves into sharp angles; he screwed up his button mouth, and rapping his snuff-box, said, "It had never been put together before"—so well he meant to add—but gulped it. He meant so well certainly, for Tillemont, whom he quotes in every page, has done the very thing. Well, from that hour to this I have never ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd

... she-bear coming down the street, poked its nose into the shop-window. 'What! no soap?' So he died, and she (very imprudently) married the barber. And there were present at the wedding the Joblillies, and the Piccannies, and the Gobelites, and the great Panjandrum himself, with the little button on top. So they all set to playing Catch-who-catch-can, till the gunpowder ran out at ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede

... don't get so excited. Little ladies should learn to be more composed—and don't stand on one foot. Come here—the top button of your dress is unfastened." Jane submitted to the buttoning process then flew off to tell the others, who were already setting up shop in the ...
— Chicken Little Jane • Lily Munsell Ritchie

... take advantage of every break in the traffic. This morning she felt only angry impatience; she choked back on the irritated impulse to drive directly into the side of a car that cut across in front of her, held her horn button down furiously when a slow-starting truck hesitated fractionally after the light ...
— The Sound of Silence • Barbara Constant

... pranced spryly to get the kinks out of their legs, long fatigued from vibrations of the train. Women, old and young, lined the curbs, smiling and throwing kisses, waving handkerchiefs and aprons and begging for souvenirs. If every request for a button had been complied with, our battery would have reached the front with a ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons

... rose-colored within, lilac-colored without. Stamens 10, united into a cylindrical tube, expanded at both ends, the mouth 15-toothed. Anthers inserted near the apex of the tube, short, fleshy, bilocular. Ovary free, of 5 biovuled cells. Style of equal length with the tube. Stigma button-shaped. Fruit a drupe, about the size of a small olive, yellow when ripe, with a dark brown pit ...
— The Medicinal Plants of the Philippines • T. H. Pardo de Tavera

... little band of light, of the colour of heliotrope, spread over the lawn like a carpet on which I could not tire of treading to and fro with lingering feet, nostalgic and profane, while Francoise shouted: "Come on, button up your coat, look, and let's get away!" and I remarked for the first time how common her speech was, and that she had, alas, no ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust

... City, or the one I had seen going below on board the steamer. He wore a frock-coat and light trousers, lavender gloves, and a hat—glorious product of that identical box—in which you might see your own face. A rose was in his button-hole, his hair was brushed, his collar was white, and his ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed

... officers had the old army fly tents; the soldiers were each supplied, or rather had supplied themselves upon the battlefield of the enemy with small tent flies, about five by six feet, so arranged with buttons and button holes that two being buttoned together and stretched over a pole would make the sides or roof and the third would close the end, making a tent about six feet long, five feet wide, and four feet high, in which three or four men could sleep very comfortably. In the bitter weather great roaring ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert

... the flap of the holster with the right thumb; insert the pistol in the holster and push it down; button the flap with the right hand. If the pistol be loaded and cocked the command. 1. Lock, 2. Pistol must precede ...
— Military Instructors Manual • James P. Cole and Oliver Schoonmaker

... one or two revolutions wired it tight. This lot had the butts left on, but from the next layer he sliced them down wedge-fashion with a very sharp knife, having secured them to those already on by a strap which could be fastened at such length as he chose by means of a leather button; another and another tier, each time of choicer quality, succeeded, and so on till the stock for that broom was ...
— Illustrated Science for Boys and Girls • Anonymous

... have been holding the torch upward when she pressed the button, for the round circle of light appeared on the supporting timbers above the door. They both looked up, fascinated for a moment. The old oak had been laid in a crisscross pattern, the best support possible in the days when the vaults ...
— Ralestone Luck • Andre Norton

... very high, and the flower in his button-hole has evidently been chosen with great care. He shakes hands with Margaret first, of course, and with Tita last. She is sitting near Mrs. Chichester, and she gives him her hand without looking at him. She has ...
— The Hoyden • Mrs. Hungerford

... cheated and pinched one another's arms—they were all expert pinchers. The only time the Burnell children ever played with them Kezia had got a prize, and when she undid three bits of paper she found a very small rusty button-hook. She couldn't understand why they ...
— The Garden Party • Katherine Mansfield

... Vovo began to button his collar, readjust his clothes. "Well, shall we emerge and let the quaking multitudes know that once again we have made a shaky agreement? One that will last ...
— Summit • Dallas McCord Reynolds

... man into a make-believe Roman. At the period when England produced its greatest poets, we find exactly the reverse of this, and we are thankful that the man who made the monument of Lord Bacon had genius to copy every button of his dress, everything down to the rosettes on his shoes, and then to write under his statue, "Thus sat Francis Bacon"—not "Cneius Pompeius"—"Viscount Verulam." Those men had faith even in ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell

... several particulars. The most remarkable difference was the absence of lace, an absence specially authorized only for this corps, and then only in view of special service and many bush fights in America. The double-breasted coats were made to button across, except at the top, where the lapels turned back, like the cuffs and coat-tails. All these 'turnbacks' and the breeches were blue. The very long gaiters, the waist and cross belts, the neckerchief and hat piping were white. Wearing this distinctively ...
— The Winning of Canada: A Chronicle of Wolf • William Wood

... diameter of the drums at the French opera is 29 and 251/4 inches, and of the Crystal Palace band, 28 and 241/4 inches. In cavalry regiments the drums are slung so as to hang on each side of the drummers horse's neck. The best drum sticks are of whalebone, each terminating in a small wooden button covered with sponge. For the bass drum and side drum I must be content to refer to Mr. Victor de Pontigny's article, and also for the tambourine, but the Provencal tambourines I have met with have long, ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 819 - Volume XXXII, Number 819. Issue Date September 12, 1891 • Various

... haversack,—furnished with towel, soap, comb, knife and fork in various pockets, a change of underclothes in one main division, and whatever rations we happened to have, in the other,—hung on the left hip; the canteen, cup and plate, tied together, hung on the right; toothbrush, "at will," stuck in two button holes of jacket, or in haversack; tobacco bag hung to a breast button, pipe in pocket. In this rig,—into which a fellow could get in just two minutes from a state of rest,—the Confederate Soldier considered himself all right, and ready for anything; in this he marched, and in this he fought. ...
— From the Rapidan to Richmond and the Spottsylvania Campaign - A Sketch in Personal Narration of the Scenes a Soldier Saw • William Meade Dame

... to kill and eat you, So undo the button of your chemie." When Bill received this information He used his ...
— Ballads • William Makepeace Thackeray

... becoming an Orleanist once more. And he added, with the crafty hypocrisy of an old hosier from the Rue Saint-Honore: "But you, my dear Granoux; don't you think the ribbon would look well in your button-hole? After all, you did as much to save the town as Rougon did. Yesterday, when I was calling upon some very distinguished persons, they could scarcely believe it possible that you had made so much noise ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola

... said his niece, "but it wasn't, because I got her off at last and searched it through and through. I never saw anything like her clothes in all my life. There was hardly a button or a tape on; and ...
— Lady of the Barge and Others, Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs

... originated Goldsmith's "Retaliation." Will's, at the north corner of Russell Street and Bow Street, famous for its memories of Dryden and for the Tatler's dramatic criticisms, had ceased to exist in 1714. Its place was taken by Button's, at the other side of Russell Street, started by Addison in 1712. Here, later, was the lion-head letter-box for the Guardian, designed by Hogarth. At Child's, in St. Paul's Church-yard, the Spectator often smoked a pipe. Sir Roger de Coverley was beloved at Squire's, near Gray's Inn ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy

... stuck in his lapel the Boosters' Club button. With the conciseness of great art the button displayed two words: "Boosters-Pep!" It made Babbitt feel loyal and important. It associated him with Good Fellows, with men who were nice and human, and important in business circles. It was his V.C., his Legion of ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis

... there, too, and has asked the old lady to spend some weeks at Trevellian Castle. It is frightfully lonesome there, he says, and he wants Flossie to brighten it up. Can you read between the lines? I think I can. Flossie is bright as a button. ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes

... the trousers by the waist and place together the first two suspender buttons, one on the left and the other on the right. This will make the fold preserve the natural crease and dispose of the extra material, button and buttonhole tab at the waist. Trousers carefully folded will only need pressing about twice a year. Hose should be well shaken, and unless perfectly clean, thrown in the soiled-linen basket. Evening silk hose can be worn several times. The undervest, or undershirt, and the ...
— The Complete Bachelor - Manners for Men • Walter Germain

... Pope Clement VII. I retired from Florence, and repaired to Rome. His holiness commissioned me to execute a button for the pontifical cope, and to set into it the jewels which I had taken out of the two crowns in the Castle of St. Angelo. The design was most beautiful, and so pleased and astonished was the Pope that he employed ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton

... stated, Burton, Lady Burton, Dr. Baker and Lisa took steamer for Brindisi, where they visited Virgil's house, and then made for Malta. On December 20th they were at Tunis, and Sir Richard ransacked the bazaar and button-holed people generally in order to get manuscripts of The Scented Garden, but without success. Nobody had ever heard of it. [612] At Carthage he recalled that rosy morning when Dido in "flowered cymar ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright

... be clever enough!" sighed Esther. "But then you see the teachers at our school are real ladies and they dress, oh, so beautifully! With fur tippets and six-button gloves. I could never afford it, for even when I was earning five shillings a week I should have to give most of it to father and ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... his taste, though somewhat grotesque, is by no means lavish. A sort of stud or button, composed of a solitary ruby, in the upper rim of the cartilage of either ear,—a chain of gold, curiously wrought, and intertwined with a string of small pearls, around his neck,—a massive bangle of plain gold on his arm,—a richly jewelled ring on his thumb, and others, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various

... begin on the tiny garment of her doll. She will easily form the habit of mending torn places in dolly's clothes and replace absent buttons. With this experience, it will not be long before she will begin to take an interest in her own clothes, and so will not need to be warned that a button is coming off or that the hem of her skirt is coming out. But, of course, she could not begin by sewing or patching her own clothes, nor by mending intricate tears. First see that she sews on buttons correctly and then ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter

... check of his shooting-coat and the stockings which she had once laughingly admired, and which he had ever since worn. Her eyes rested upon the sprig of heliotrope which, with her own fingers, she had arranged in his button hole, as they had strolled down the garden together just before the start; and the faint perfume which reached her where she stood, helped her to realize that she was in the thrall of no nightmare, but that this thing had really happened. She had never loved ...
— The New Tenant • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... something in their character that reminded him of large polished buttons—buttons that might have fixed the elastic loops of some tense receptacle: he seemed to see the reflection of surrounding objects on the pupil. The expression of a button is not usually deemed human, but there was something in Miss Stackpole's gaze that made him, as a very modest man, feel vaguely embarrassed—less inviolate, more dishonoured, than he liked. This sensation, it must be added, after he had spent a day or two in her company, sensibly diminished, ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James

... even fences, wagons, ploughs, and haycocks had been laid in cinders. There remained not one thing that could burn which had not been burned. Only breeze-stirred ashes marked these silent places, with here and there a bit of iron from wagon or plough, rusting in the dew, or a steel button from some dead man's coat, or a bone gone chalky white—dumb witnesses that the wrath of England had passed wrapped in the ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers

... but, at the same time, some of the bravest men in the regiment. The members of the clique supported one another against all opposition, particularly in the face of the enemy. They called themselves the Jokers, and recognised one another by a notch cut into the metal of the first button on the right hand row of the pelisse and dolman. The officers were aware of the existence of the clique, but as its worst crimes were limited to the adroit theft of chickens or sheep, or some trick played on the local inhabitants, and as the Jokers were always at the forefront in any action, ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot

... said, his chin still in his hands and eyes gazing away to the Bar—"earth and pebbles banked up into a flat-topped mound, upon which stood your shoes filled with sprays of hedge fruit and yellow button-chrysanthemums—stolen too, I suppose, from one of the gardens at Lampit. They grow freely there. Your silk stockings hung round her neck, a posy of flowers twisted into them.—When I came on this exhibition, ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet

... and successful mode" of treating lumbago, advocated by Dr. Day, is a form of counter-irritation, said to have been introduced into this country by the late Sir Anthony Carlisle, and which consists in the instantaneous application of a flat iron button, gently heated in a spirit-lamp, to the skin. Dr. Corrigan published, about three years ago, an account of some cases very successfully treated by nearly similar means. Dr. Corrigan's plan was, however, to touch the surface ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton

... the beginnings of modern English life. What we call "society" was forming, the town, the London world. "Coffee, which makes the politician wise," had just been introduced, and the ordinaries of Ben Jonson's time gave way to coffee-houses, like Will's and Button's, which became the head-quarters of literary and political gossip. The two great English parties, as we know them to-day, were organized: the words Whig and Tory date from this reign. French etiquette ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers

... moment after the vision had vanished, while his tongue was yet in act to stay it with speech. He would not have been surprised at any time in walking into his room to find It there; or waking at night to confront It in the electric flash which he kindled by a touch of the button at his bedside. Rather, he was surprised that nothing of the sort happened, to confirm him in his belief that he had been all but in touch with the other life, or to give him some hint, the slightest, the dimmest, why this vision had been shown him, ...
— Questionable Shapes • William Dean Howells

... ago, when I exhibited the Morse system to the astonished dignitaries of Peking, those old men, though heads of departments, chuckled like children when, touching a button, they heard a bell ring; or when wrapping a wire round their bodies, they saw the lightning leap from point to point. "It's wonderful," they exclaimed, "but we can't use it in [Page 205] our country. The people would steal the wires." Electric bells are now common appliances in the houses ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin

... French, "tente d'abri" has not, so far as I know, been adopted by travellers: it seems hardly suitable, except for soldiers. Each man carried a square of canvas (fig. 1), with buttons and button-holes all round it, by which it can be doubly attached to other similar squares of canvas, and thus, from several separate pieces, one large cloth can be made. The square carried by the French soldier measures 5 feet 4 1/2 inches in the side, reckoning along the buttons; ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton

... disconcerted. He knows not what to do with his hands or his hat, but either puts one of them in his pocket, and dangles the other by his side: or perhaps twirls his hat on his fingers, or perhaps fumbles with the button. If spoken to he is in a much worse situation; he answers with the utmost difficulty, and nearly stammers; whereas a gentleman who is acquainted with life, enters a room with gracefulness and a modest assurance; addresses even persons he ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore

... firing button and deep within the Atlas a relay clicked, activating a solenoid that pushed open a valve. A thin stream of Sally's milk shot in from one side of the firing chamber to blend with a fine spray of egg, batter coming from a jet in ...
— Make Mine Homogenized • Rick Raphael

... begun to button up her ulster, as though preliminary to resuming her deck promenade. And he wanted to walk with her. But because she had chosen to be informal with him did not deceive him into thinking that she was likely to ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers

... moment, hoping against hope. Then, with a groan of despair, I seized luggage and raincoat, made for the door and flung it open, only to find myself face to face with an attractive young girl, apparently on the point of pressing the electric button. ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers

... a glass door, which opened into the central hall. Beyond it was a crowd of figures and a buzz of talk, and at the door stood a tall person in black with white gloves, holding a silver tray, from which he presented David with a button-hole. Then, with a manner at once suave and impersonal, he held open the door, and the ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... master of the house. The great artist had a diplomatic bearing: buttoned-up black frock-coat, long cravat with pin (a present from a royal highness who paid her bills slowly), and a many-colored rosette in his button-hole (the gift of a small reigning prince who paid slower yet the bills of an opera-dancer). He came and went—precise, calm, and cool—in the midst of the solicitations and supplications of his customers. "M. Arthur! M. Arthur!" One heard ...
— Parisian Points of View • Ludovic Halevy

... it for the world.' She did me the honour to inspect me from the lowest waistcoat button to the eyebrows. 'Bring him to me to-night. Captain DeWitt, you have forsaken ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... walk back, and Charlie, saying he had to dine with Victor Button, made an appointment to see Taylor again, and left him, striking across the Row. Taylor strolled on, and, finding Mrs. Marland still in her seat, sat down by her. She was surprised and pleased to hear that ...
— Comedies of Courtship • Anthony Hope

... noble. So careful was he, so fearful of facing eternity and judgment—if drown he must—without them, that, although the time was short and the danger instant, and the man by this time a coward, he had stripped off oilskin coat and pea-jacket to indue them again and button them over his treasure. ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... they came out, followed by a bearded man, bowing very low, and carrying the wire baskets, Madam Liberality's godmother stopped near the toy-stall to button her glove. And when she had buttoned it (which took a long time, because her hands were stout, and Podmore generally did it with a hook), she said to Madam Liberality, "Now, child, I want to tell you that if you are very good whilst you are with ...
— A Great Emergency and Other Tales - A Great Emergency; A Very Ill-Tempered Family; Our Field; Madam Liberality • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing

... of the ferocious white bear; but without a hammer, it was impossible to form their heads, or those of the arrows. However, by heating the iron hook, and widening a hole which it happened to have in the centre, with the help of one of the large nails, they inserted the handle, and a round button at one end of the hook, made the face of the hammer. A large pebble served for an anvil, and a pair of reindeer's horns were the tongs. Such were the tools with which they fashioned the heads for two spears, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 433 - Volume 17, New Series, April 17, 1852 • Various

... about, tramped down the ramp as Raf settled himself behind the control board of the flyer. He triggered the shield which snapped over them for a windbreak and brought the flitter up into the spreading color of the morning. Beside him Hobart pressed the button of the automatic recorder, and in the seat behind, Soriki had the headset of the com clamped over his ears. They were not only making a record of their trip, they were continuing in constant communication with the ship—now already a silver ...
— Star Born • Andre Norton

... slipped a helmet over his head and one over Sitar's, pressed a button to open one of the doors, and supported her ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith

... from Prim, who was holding his head back and struggling to make ends meet over his front collar button, he ...
— The Co-Citizens • Corra Harris

... Snitchey,' he continued, rising and taking him by the button, 'and Craggs,' taking him by the button also, and placing one partner on either side of him, so that neither might evade him. 'I don't ask you for any advice. You are right to keep quite aloof from all parties in such a matter, which is not one in which grave men like you could interfere, ...
— The Battle of Life • Charles Dickens

... of the various canoes at the landing, another one passed, paddled by a good-looking youth, who half stopped, and gazed intently at Du Meresq, then catching sight of the flower in his button-hole, an expression of baffled rage came over his boyish ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston

... we both, at the same time, observed, that an alteration began to take place. My master attributed this to his altered fortunes, and I placed it to the score of my decayed appearance—the threadbare cloth and tarnished button came in, I was sure, for their full share of neglect, and he at last fell into the same opinion. To describe all the variety of treatment that we experienced would be a tedious and unpleasant task,—but I was the more convinced that I had at least as much to do with it as my master, from observing ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 262, July 7, 1827 • Various

... though I have met more learned book-worms in the world, especially a great hulking, clumsy, blear-eyed old doctor, whom they called Johnson, and who lived in a court off Fleet Street, in London, yet I pretty soon silenced him in an argument (at 'Button's Coffeehouse'); and in that, and in poetry, and what I call natural philosophy, or the science of life, and in riding, music, leaping, the small-sword, the knowledge of a horse, or a main of cocks, and the manners of an accomplished gentleman and a man of fashion, I may say for myself that Redmond ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray

... girl gave a little cry of fright and stepped back, her hands reaching blindly toward Gavin, as if for support or comfort. The gesture caused her to drop the flashlight. Its button was "set forward," so it did not go out as it fell. Instead, it rolled in a semi-circle, casting its ray momentarily in a wide irregular arc as it revolved. Then it came to a stop, against ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune

... his arrangements with Mr. Wade, he hung up the telephone, and pushed an electric button. A young man ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick

... at his attire. His duck jacket had shrunk with constant wetting, and would not button across the old blue shirt, which fell apart at his bronzed neck. The sleeves had also drawn up from his wrists, and left the backs of his hands unduly prominent. His hands were scarred, and the fingers were bruised where ...
— The Greater Power • Harold Bindloss

... round that there is going to be a social session down at the lodge to-night, followed, mayhap, by a small sociable game of quarter-limit upstairs over Corbett's drug-store. At this point, our traveler rummages his Elks' button out of his trunk and gives it an affectionate polishing with a silk handkerchief. And oh, how he does long for a look at a home newspaper—packed with wrecks and police news and municipal scandals and items about the persons one knows, and ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb

... ever! To be trying on a lady's dress at a party!! Who ever heard of such a thing? I never did! But the best of it was, that Miss Florence did not seem to care a button; she smiled and simpered, and allowed herself to be tumbled over on her nose, and never squealed an atom when pins were run into her back. But no doubt she came to the conclusion that it was the custom of the country. At any rate, ...
— The Two Story Mittens and the Little Play Mittens - Being the Fourth Book of the Series • Frances Elizabeth Barrow

... two men could have known that the steel box was in that satchel this story might never have been told. But it never entered their heads that the pallid little waif had sense enough to conceal a button to her own profit. ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers

... the side of the ship, and began to feel with their feet for the open trap-door. This was soon reached; the party entered the opening, closed the flap, and, with a murmured "Thank God, we are safe at last!" began to feel for the button which was to open the door giving access to the interior proper of the ship. Another second and this door swung open, and the party found themselves at the foot of the cylindrical staircase, in the full blaze of the ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood

... certain extent took my place in Therese's favour was the old father of the dancing girls inhabiting the ground floor. In a tall hat and a well-to-do dark blue overcoat he allowed himself to be button-holed in the hall by Therese who would talk to him interminably with downcast eyes. He smiled gravely down at her, and meanwhile tried to edge towards the front door. I imagine he didn't put a great value on ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad

... was the noblest horse of the world, strained him mightily and stably, and kept still the spear in the rest; and therewith Sir Launcelot strained himself so straitly, with so great force, to get the horse forward, that the button of his wound brast both within and without; and therewithal the blood came out so fiercely that he felt himself so feeble that he might not sit upon his horse. And then Sir Launcelot cried unto Sir Bors: ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume II (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory

... dissatisfied with his condition? It is said, that he has the devil in him, and it must be whipped out. Does he answer loudly, when spoken to by his master, with an air of self-consciousness? Then, must he be taken down a button-hole lower, by the lash, well laid on. Does he forget, and omit to pull off his hat, when approaching a white person? Then, he must, or may be, whipped for his bad manners. Does he ever venture to vindicate his conduct, when harshly and unjustly accused? Then, he is guilty of impudence, ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass

... thought I had put him in the way of it; but after I had gone to dress Mrs. Wimbush came up to see him, with the inevitable result that when I returned I found him under arms and flushed and feverish, though decorated with the rare flower she had brought him for his button-hole. He came down to dinner, but Lady Augusta Minch was very shy of him. To-day he's in great pain, and the advent of ces dames—I mean of Guy Walsingham and Dora Forbes— doesn't at all console me. It does Mrs. Wimbush, however, for she has ...
— The Death of the Lion • Henry James

... much in debt. I've made a vow to pay no more for him. I've been such a fool, you have no notion; and I'm speaking, you know, against myself; it would be such a relief if he were to find a wife to support him; and he has been, I'm told, very sweet upon a rich old maid—a button-maker's sister, in Manchester.' ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu

... swift, wondering glance and walked laughingly over to the library door. "Oh, is that all?" she said, and, touching a button, she switched off the big red table-lamp and switched on what seemed like a thousand little tapers concealed ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz

... moment (I remember) he was engaged in brushing it vigorously, pausing between whiles to pick carefully at certain refractory blemishes, to give an extra polish to some particular button, or consult the never-failing watch, for to-day Diana and I were to ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol

... seam," he retorted rapidly, "which can be used as a tent pole in severe weather. On buttoning the top button this pole telescopes automatically and forms a bullet-proof spine protector. Each sleeve can be unscrewed and used in an emergency as a Lewis gun. This ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Dec. 26, 1917 • Various

... look it.) "Now pettums! Wave handikins to Uncle David. He's goin' broadies. 'Army' dear, would you ask them to whistle for a taxi? I know David doesn't want to walk all the way back to the Temple in those lovely button boots." ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston

... on the street, which reached around the corner from one of the trust companies, I thought. I was making a note of an order to send into the outside office there on the left, and had just pushed this button here under the table to call a boy to carry it. Mr. Parker had just received a letter by special delivery, and seemed considerably puzzled over it. No, I don't know what it was about. Of a sudden I saw him start in his chair, ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve

... prince of cats, I can tell you. O, he's the courageous captain of compliments. He fights as you sing prick-song—keeps time, distance, and proportion; rests me his minim rest, one, two, and the third in your bosom: the very butcher of a silk button, a duellist, a duellist; a gentleman of the very first house,—of the first and second cause: ah, the immortal passado! the ...
— Romeo and Juliet • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]

... a short man, with a nose resembling a copper knob, a damp voice, and eyes like button-holes. "Who'll make an ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy

... Will, it won't do. But it's hard to forget—when one has seen a comet. Touch that button if you don't mind. It's time ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck

... little maid about the simple round of her childish pursuits. Every morning she goes demurely to school to fix her thoughts on "button holes and spelling books." Perhaps it is a dame school like that in "Water Babies," with a "shining clean stone floor and curious old prints on the wall and a cuckoo clock in the corner," Here some dozen children sit on ...
— Sir Joshua Reynolds - A Collection of Fifteen Pictures and a Portrait of the - Painter with Introduction and Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll

... answer him. He stepped to the end of the desk and with his scholarly white finger touched a mother-of-pearl bell button. Utter silence reigned in the room until the servant ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer

... The same Signor Jupe was to 'enliven the varied performances at frequent intervals with his chaste Shaksperean quips and retorts.' Lastly, he was to wind them up by appearing in his favourite character of Mr. William Button, of Tooley Street, in 'the highly novel and laughable hippo- comedietta of ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*

... started to carry out his determination to take some pictures. The first subject he selected was a serious-faced little baby, innocent of any clothing, that sat playing with a ragged dog at, the entrance of one of the beehive huts. He had just clicked the button and exclaimed: ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton

... black coat, with a very yellow face, and eyes still half-closed. The rotten part of it all had been that you wanted to be just FEELING, and you had to be thinking of the ring, and your gloves, and whether the lowest button of your white waistcoat was properly undone. Girls could do both, it seemed—Cis seemed to be seeing something wonderful all the time, and Sylvia had looked quite holy. He himself had been too conscious of the rector's voice, and ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... two centuries to take the tone and opinions of those who assume to go back to Clovis. This young man, pale, slender, and delicate in appearance, a man of honor and true courage, who would fight a duel for a yes or a no, had never yet fought upon a battle-field, though he wore in his button-hole the cross of the Legion of honor. He was, as you perceive, one of the blunders of the Restoration, perhaps the most excusable of them. The youth of those days was the youth of no epoch. It came between the memories of the Empire and those of the Emigration, between ...
— Ferragus • Honore de Balzac

... sailing until he received the complete play. Frohman's interest in "Secret Service" was heightened by the fact that he had scored two tremendous triumphs with military plays, "Held by the Enemy" and "Shenandoah." He felt that the talisman of the brass button was still his, and he plunged heavily on ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman

... Troost sat sighing over things in general, Mrs. Hill sewed on the last button, and, shaking the loose threads from the completed garment, held it up a moment to take a satisfactory view, as it were, and folded ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller

... degrees, as that swells, the skin cleaves, and at length falls off, with its thorny top and all (which is a part of it) and leaves the seed Case to ripen, and by degrees, to shatter out its seed at a place underneath this cap, B, which before the seed is ripe, appears like a flat barr'd button, without any hole in the middle; but as it ripens, the button grows bigger, and a hole appears in the middle of it, E, out of which, in all probability, the seed falls: For as it ripens by a provision of Nature, that end of this Case turns ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke

... had worn when he called upon Mrs. Green, hung about his shoulders, covering his hands completely with its profusion of sleeves, and giving him a singular, if not distinguished appearance. This coat had been made more gorgeous than it originally was by having gilt paper pasted to each button, and a red sash tied about the waist, in which were two table-forks and a wooden sword, the latter article interfering sadly with his knees when he walked. On his head he wore a huge paper cap that had been painted red, white, and blue, and ornamented with a tuft of feathers that had once ...
— Left Behind - or, Ten Days a Newsboy • James Otis

... contrairy to the notions o' the haincients, wot wos rediklous enough to suppose that the sun went round the world. And don't I know that the earth is like a orange, flattened at the poles? though I don't b'lieve there is no poles, an' don't care a button if there was. That's enough o' jogrify for my money; w'en I wants more ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne









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