|
|
|
More "Mantelpiece" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... she was still looking up at him everything turned black before her. She found herself half lying on the little spindle-legged sofa, without knowing how she got there, her head pillowed on a green silken cushion, with Dosia fanning her, while Girard leaned against the little mirrored mantelpiece with set face and contracted brows. Presently Lois pushed away the fan, made a motion as if to rise, only to relapse again on the cushion, looked up at Girard, and tried to ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... buildings. The wood's edge came close to the town, whose yards prolong themselves into green meadows and farming lands. We knocked at a rusty screen door and were welcomed with the cordiality of the country woman to whom all folks are neighbours, all strangers possible boarders. The house, built without mantelpiece or chimney, atoned for this cheerlessness with a large parlour stove, whose black arms carried warmth through floor and ceiling. A table was spread in the dining-room. A loud-ticking clock with a rusty ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... that he may do absolutely what he will. There are certain classes going on at certain hours, which he may attend if he choose. If not, he may stay away without the slightest remonstrance from the college. As to religion, he may worship the sun, or have a private fetish of his own upon the mantelpiece of his lodgings for all that the University cares. He may live where he likes, he may keep what hours he chooses, and he is at liberty to break every commandment in the decalogue as long as he behaves himself with some approach to decency within the academical precincts. In every ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... covering the stone floor of what twenty years before had been the kitchen of the farmhouse was a survival from a south-country home, which had sheltered their lives for eight happy years. Over the mantelpiece hung the portrait of the girls' father, a long serious face, not unlike Wordsworth's face in outline, and bearing a strong resemblance to Catherine; a line of silhouettes adorned the mantelpiece; on the walls were prints of Winchester and Worcester ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... but the precision with which I was comparing my watch with the clock over the mantelpiece, saved me from suspicion, and he resumed his conversation, in a voice ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... while Nanna laid the breakfast with the help of the village girl who, although she was supposed to come in at seven, very seldom turned up till eight. And then, while Betty was carefully dusting the quaint, old-fashioned Staffordshire figures on the mantelpiece, the door opened, and Nanna came in and shut it behind her. "There isn't any wine," she began mysteriously. "Gentlemen do like a little drop of ...
— What Timmy Did • Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes
... news came that they were to go to America and live with him, they got out all of these pictures they could find, and ranged them in a line on the mantelpiece in their parlor. There was a picture of Jim too, as black as charcoal. At first, Rea had been afraid of this; but Jusy thought it was splendid. Every morning the lonely little creatures used to stand in front of this line of pictures and say, "Good-morning, Uncle George! Good-morning to ...
— The Hunter Cats of Connorloa • Helen Jackson
... the room. It was a tiny sitting room, one of the inexpensive rooms in the hotel. There was a bit of fire in the grate, and standing by the mantelpiece was, a big old man with close-cropped hair and a pale, unhealthy face. It was the type of face that one associates with tribal races in Southeastern Europe. He was dressed in a uniform that fitted closely to his figure. It was a uniform of some ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post
... with a commissar. They asked for me by name and said they had an order to search the place. They asked if I had any arms and I said I had a service revolver, which had been given to me by the British. I also had another revolver of mine which lay on the mantelpiece. Nelka, who was there in the room, did at that moment a most risky thing. Unobtrusively she slipped my revolver into the pocket of her dress. I noticed this, but the men did not. I produced the other gun which they dutifully registered and took. They ...
— Nelka - Mrs. Helen de Smirnoff Moukhanoff, 1878-1963, a Biographical Sketch • Michael Moukhanoff
... the size and sort of portrait. It was to be a whole-length in water-colours, like Mr. John Knightley's, and was destined, if she could please herself, to hold a very honourable station over the mantelpiece. ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... then dropped it, and lighted a lamp which was on the mantelpiece between his vases of blue glass. His movements were very slow, hesitating and clumsy. Blowing out the candle, which smoked for a long time, he went with the lamp to the bookcase. As the key of the ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... suggest to you. It's four years now that you've shut yourself up here like an owl, never going anywhere, never taking any healthy exercise, never doing a damn thing but poring over those books up there on the mantelpiece." ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... On the mantelpiece were more of Joe's treasures, four or five cheap photographs, the subjects quite characteristic of Joe. One of them was a religious subject, "The Shepherd with a little lamb on his shoulders." A silent prayer went up from my heart that somewhere that same Good Shepherd was ...
— J. Cole • Emma Gellibrand
... him, smoothing her hair in the mirror above the mantelpiece. "You're sure of that?" she ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... way, their only sitting-room where they took their meals being small and musty and mean-looking, with its rickety chairs and sofa covered with cheap washed-out cretonne, its faded carpet and vulgar little gimcrack ornaments on the mantelpiece. And this friend gave one the idea that her husband had fallen from a somewhat better position in life than he was now in. There was an intangible something about him which showed him to be one of those favoured children of destiny who are placed above the need of a "career," who ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... round it. Near the bed were several jars and basins containing toads and frogs and newts and water creatures of all sorts. Besides these, there was a box of caterpillars, most of which had escaped, and on the mantelpiece Irene proudly pointed to a bottle ...
— A Modern Tomboy - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... the wall. On the sideboard was a basket, as yet unpacked, filled with hothouse fruit, and on a low settee by the side of one of the easy-chairs were a little pile of reviews, several volumes of poetry, and a couple of library books. In the centre of the mantelpiece was a photograph, the photograph of a man a little older, perhaps, than this newly-arrived visitor, with rounder face, dressed in country tweeds, a flower in his buttonhole, the picture of a prosperous man, yet with a curious, almost ...
— The Cinema Murder • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... was leaning against the smoky mantelpiece, his eye fell upon a small black frame that inclosed a ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... sacred associations, knowing that to Kingsley it would have a threefold value. My eye caught also a relic of curious interest—a fragment from one of the vessels of the Spanish Armada. It lay on the mantelpiece: I could well understand ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... should not have thought Harry had so much discernment in those days. Cocksmoor gave the stimulus, and made Ethel what she is. Look there—over the mantelpiece, are the designs for the painted glass, all gifts, except the east window. That one of St. Andrew introducing the lad with the loaves and fishes is Ethel's window. It is the produce of the hoard she began this time seven years, when ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... chairs in a row on one side of the room, and as many flatirons in a line on the mantelpiece. Everything where she was had, she said, to "stand just so;" and woe to the child who carried crookedness into her straight lines! Betsy had a manner of her own, and made a wonderful kind of a courtesy, with which her skirts puffed out all around ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... from her husband's face, and looked dreamily into the fire. Then, raising her face from the flame, she looked around with the air of one seeking for some topic of conversation. At that moment she caught sight of the corner of a letter lying on the mantelpiece. Reaching forth her hand, she took it. It ...
— Vain Fortune • George Moore
... mantelpiece, the canisters fell off the shelf; the kettle fell off the hob. Tommy Brock put his foot in a jar ...
— A Collection of Beatrix Potter Stories • Beatrix Potter
... me mine," said Ginger. "I sent it home. It's over the mantelpiece, my mother says. People come from miles to look at it. It's a pity you didn't get yours. That was foolish of you, if I may say so. Well, so long. I'm having tea to-day with one of our grand lady visitors in Rutland Gate. If you don't see me here when ...
— A Boswell of Baghdad - With Diversions • E. V. Lucas
... renowned. The author-to-be of Les Miserables was then a mere youth, and his budding glories as an ultra-royalist poet conferred upon him the honor of an introduction to the great man. Hugo was ushered in, and saw before him, leaning in a stately attitude against the mantelpiece, the illustrious individual. M. de Chateaubriand, says Hugo, affected the bearing of a soldier: the man of the pen remembered the man of the sword. His neck was encircled by a black cravat, which hid the collar of his shirt: a black frockcoat, buttoned to the top, encased his small, bent body. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... agricultural prize-tickets were pinned over the wall; and, on a heavy, highly-polished sideboard stood several silver cups. A heap of gilt-edged shavings filled the unused grate: there were gaudily-tinted roses along the mantelpiece, and, on a small table by the window, beneath a glass-case, a gilt basket filled with imitation flowers. Every object was disposed with a scrupulous precision: the carpet and the red-patterned cloth on the centre table were much faded. The room was spotlessly ...
— Victorian Short Stories • Various
... room. A silence that was measured by the ticking of the old fashioned pendulum clock on the mantelpiece. ...
— The Street That Wasn't There • Clifford Donald Simak
... everywhere; her hood and shawl lying in one corner; her mother's apron on the floor in the middle of the room; the breakfast dishes not yet washed; the stove all spattered with grease from the pork gravy; the hearth thickly covered with ashes; the paper window-curtain hanging by one tack; and on the mantelpiece, behind the stove, such an array of half-eaten apples, matches, forks, sticky spoons, broken teacups, and dirty candlesticks, as would have frightened any one less used to it than was Kitty. As she looked around her, a forlorn smile came over her face, ...
— Tip Lewis and His Lamp • Pansy (aka Isabella Alden)
... six sausages had been recovered; but the sixth was not retrieved until the next morning when, in dusting, Mrs. Tims discovered it on the mantelpiece. ...
— Malcolm Sage, Detective • Herbert George Jenkins
... do the picture-book. Well, there I was lying, Miss Baker, with my little eyes wide open. It is astonishing how much babies see, though people never calculate on their having eyes at all. I was lying on my back, staring at the mantelpiece, on which my ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... but very white and showing distinctly the interlacement of blue veins: she did not notice that her hands were rough, and red and dirty with the nails broken, and bitten to the quick. She got out of bed and looked at herself in the glass over the mantelpiece: with one hand she brushed back her hair and smiled at herself; her face was very small and thin, but the complexion was nice, clear and white, with a delicate tint of red on the cheeks, and her eyes were big and dark like her hair. She ...
— Liza of Lambeth • W. Somerset Maugham
... in the room. One old-fashioned settle. One small table. Clock. Decanter of water, half a dozen toddy tumblers. Matches, etc. The only light is a ruddy glow from the fire. Kettle on hob. Moonlight from R. of window when shutter is opened. Practical chandelier from ceiling or lights at side of mantelpiece. DOCTOR'S coat and muffler on chair up ...
— The Ghost of Jerry Bundler • W. W. Jacobs and Charles Rock
... Emmy sometimes felt that. She at times, when he had been provoking or obtuse, so shook with hysterical anger, born of the inevitable days in his society and in the kitchen, that she could have thrown at him the battered pot which she carried, or could have pushed him passionately against the mantelpiece in her fierce hatred of his helplessness and his occasional perverse stupidity. He was rarely stupid with Jenny, ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... hardly expected on the frontier. The sofas, chairs, tables, and a well-filled bookcase would not have disgraced an Eastern city; though there were one or two little tokens that indicated the rather questionable civilization of the region. A pistol, loaded and capped, lay on the mantelpiece; and through the glass of the bookcase, peeping above the works of John Milton glittered the handle of ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... wall like a cluster of some monstrous fruit. On each shell were painted precipitous and impossible seas through which full-rigged ships foamed with a lack of perspective only equalled by their sharp technical perfection. On the mantelpiece stood two large pearl shells, obviously a pair, intricately carved by the patient hands of New Caledonian convicts. In the centre of the mantel was a stuffed bird-of-paradise, while about the room were scattered gorgeous shells ...
— The Strength of the Strong • Jack London
... staring at her and couldn't say a word. He noticed that the room 'ad been altered, and that there was a big photygraph of her stuck up on the mantelpiece. He sat there fidgeting with 'is feet—until the 'ousekeeper looked at them—and then 'e got up ...
— Short Cruises • W.W. Jacobs
... later Jack Haydon was in his study, his heels on the mantelpiece, his eyes fastened on the pages of a novel, when there was a tap at his door and a telegram was brought in. He broke open the envelope and read the contents in growing surprise and wonder. Then a look of uneasiness came into his eyes. It was a cablegram ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore
... GAUDENS, - This is to tell you that the medallion has been at last triumphantly transported up the hill and placed over my smoking-room mantelpiece. It is considered by everybody a first-rate but flattering portrait. We have it in a very good light, which brings out the artistic merits of the god-like sculptor to great advantage. As for my own opinion, I believe it to be a speaking likeness, and not flattered at all; possibly ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... gateposts. In a chair on the gravel walk, he seemed to sit smoking a cigar, a blue ribbon in his buttonhole, victor over himself and circumstances, and the malignity of bankers. He saw the parlour with red curtains and shells on the mantelpiece—and with the fine inconsistency of visions, mixed a grog at the mahogany table ere he turned in. With that the Farallone gave one of the aimless and nameless movements which (even in an anchored ship and even in the most profound calm) remind one of the mobility of fluids; and ...
— The Ebb-Tide - A Trio And Quartette • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... took a stick of wood from the wicker basket, hesitated a moment, and then put it back again instead of burning it. The night was not cold and wood was very dear. He sat down under the light of the old lamp which stood upon the mantelpiece, and drew a long breath. But presently, putting his hand into the pocket of his overcoat in search of his cigarette case, he drew out something else which he had almost forgotten, a small something wrapped in coarse paper. He undid it and ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... mind the old woman relapsed into the previous century, from which she could not be recalled. May, therefore, made a diligent search for the letter, and found it at last under a cracked teapot on the mantelpiece, where Mrs Flint had told Miss Lillycrop to place it ...
— Post Haste • R.M. Ballantyne
... dining-room. Mr. Pfundner, the head-steward, with his white hair curled and arranged by the barber, if not in a braid at the back of his head, yet like a wig of the rococo period, stood, as usual, in majestic pose, before the false mantelpiece between the two entrance doors. It was the place from which he could best supervise the waiters and keep his ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... was. No dust, no noise, no bustle; still as a mouse, but watchful as a cat, the alert old woman went round the room, and made all tidy, and all clean and fresh. Very likely Juanita would change the flowers in a little vase which stood on the mantelpiece or the table, before she felt that everything was ...
— Melbourne House • Elizabeth Wetherell
... bug flew back home and she kept busy up to nine o'clock, making beds and dusting the crumbs off the mantelpiece and picking up grains of sand off the floor. Then she ...
— Uncle Wiggily's Travels • Howard R. Garis
... The floor was likewise black, polished with age and the labour of generations. A deeply sunken nail-studded door led into a low-ceiled library, containing a finely carved frieze and cornice, and an oak mantelpiece, which John Crewys earnestly desired to examine more closely; the shield-of-arms above it bore the figures of 1603, but the hall itself ...
— Peter's Mother • Mrs. Henry De La Pasture
... myself in a very pretty, neat little sitting-room, with the picture of a ship over the mantelpiece, and lumps of coral and large shells, and shell flowers, on it, and bows and arrows, and spears and models of eastern craft, and canoes from the Pacific, and some stuffed birds and snakes, and, indeed, all sorts ...
— Will Weatherhelm - The Yarn of an Old Sailor • W.H.G. Kingston
... smile at her own reflection in the glass as she passed the mantelpiece, she walked ...
— The Missionary • George Griffith
... than done. Off ran Rosy to her mother's room. It was getting dusk, dark almost, any way too dark to see clearly. Rosy fumbled about on the mantelpiece till she found the match-box, and though she was generally too frightened of burning her fingers to strike a light herself, this time she managed to do so. There were candles on the dressing-table, and when she had lighted them she proceeded to search. It was not ...
— Rosy • Mrs. Molesworth
... the type fast passing away. The great coal stove was enveloped in its usual summer wrapper of purple calico, which, tied neatly about its ebony neck and portly waist, gave it the appearance of a buxom colored lady presiding over the assembly. The kerosene lamps stood in a row on the high, narrow mantelpiece, each chimney protected from the flies by a brown paper bag inverted over its head. Two plaster Samuels praying under the pink mosquito netting adorned the ends of the shelf. There were screens at all the windows, and Diadema ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... trap was erect and intact, but empty. He crawled out and ran to the row of stockings he had hung on the mantelpiece as ...
— Mrs. Budlong's Chrismas Presents • Rupert Hughes
... dining-room and sat down to wait, with nothing but the winking jet on the wall and his own thoughts for company. The fire in the grate had died, and its cooling ashes made a crisp, faint noise from time to time. The clock on the mantelpiece ticked irritatingly, and sounded the quarters at intervals which seemed curiously irregular. At times one quarter seemed to follow close on another's heels, and the next seemed to lag for hours. Paul was soaked to the skin, and had violent fits of shivering, but he would not leave his post ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... functionaries, except with the prefect of Caen and the general in command.... Their association with the prefect intimates their belief that they might need him. All pay their respects to the general of division; his mantelpiece is strewed ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... her usual custom, she hovered about the dining-room after breakfast was over that morning, trying to make up her mind to speak. She watched her uncle wind the clock on the mantelpiece, saying to herself that she would speak when he left off turning the key, but she let the opportunity slip by. Then the doctor gathered up his letters and papers and went to his study without a word or a look in her direction. ...
— Hunter's Marjory - A Story for Girls • Margaret Bruce Clarke
... longest!" Then looking up at me, "I got him, Major—try dat do'. Spec' it's open. Colonel ain't yer yit. Reckon some ob dem moonshiners is keepin' him down town. 'Fo' I forgit it, dar's a letter for ye hangin' to de mantelpiece." ...
— Colonel Carter of Cartersville • F. Hopkinson Smith
... had taken from the mantelpiece the pack of cards with which her mother played every night, and was spreading ...
— A Mummer's Tale • Anatole France
... to the mantelpiece, pulled a bell-cord which hung from the ceiling, a distant bell was heard ringing in noisy fashion, and a moment afterward Pegeen put ...
— Light O' The Morning • L. T. Meade
... the mantelpiece ticked noisily, and the late afternoon sun that streamed in through the windows lighted into scarlet the crimson wall-paper and threw into prominence the posters tacked upon it. It was a cozy room ...
— The Story of Sugar • Sara Ware Bassett
... locked his door and clothed himself in his late purchase, which fitted him fairly well, considering that he had measured it only by eye. Putting on the billycock, and tying the green cotton kerchief loosely round his neck to hide his shirt, he stepped in front of the looking-glass above the mantelpiece. ...
— Charlie to the Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... leaving Mollie alone. As soon as the door closed Mollie stood up and began to inspect the trophies in the cabinet. She was far too restless and excited to remain sitting down. She looked at the presentation clock on the mantelpiece and puzzled over the signatures engraved upon a large silver dish which commemorated the joy displayed by the Criminal Investigation Department upon the occasion of Kerry's promotion to the post of ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... o'clock Clotilde was agitated by an ever-increasing impatience. At every instant she looked at the clock on the mantelpiece of her room; an Empire clock of gilded bronze, representing Love leaning against a pillar, contemplating ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... all her life a timorous creature, and after her marriage had seldom felt safe out of Northwick's presence. Her portrait, by Hunt, hanging over the mantelpiece, suggested something of this, though the painter had made the most of her thin, middle-aged blond good looks, and had given her a substance of general character which was more expressive of his own ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... and, as usual, of cement. In one corner of the front apartment stood a sideboard, covered with glass of various kinds, and a few handsome pieces of plate. Its vis-a-vis was a range of shelves, filled with books; and on the plain deal mantelpiece stood a pair of neat China vases, decked with brilliant prairie flowers. Before the open window was placed the table, arranged for the morning meal. How pure the cloth looked, how clear the glass; and then ...
— Inez - A Tale of the Alamo • Augusta J. Evans
... of the room was a group of photographs on the mantelpiece. Two were faded and brown, and represented Kendal's parents, both of whom had been dead some years. The other was a large cabinet photograph of a woman no longer very young—a striking-looking woman, with a fine worn face and a general air of distinction and character. ...
— Miss Bretherton • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... at the gilt-framed glass over the mantelpiece, the table, the five chairs (including one arm), the sofa and the chiffonnier, which was pretty well all the furniture that the room contained. The remains of a fire untidied the grate; the flimsiest curtains were hung before the windows. ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... picked up the revolver, locked it up again in the drawer, then he looked at himself in the glass over the mantelpiece to see whether his face did not look too much convulsed. It was as red as usual, a little redder perhaps. That was all. He went down, and ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... own age and importance. Then my mother retreated into the kitchen and he resumed immediately his natural proportions. After thirty years, when I think now of that ugly little room, with its painted pine furniture, with its coloured glass vases, filled with dried cat-tails, upon the mantelpiece, with its crude red and yellow print of a miniature David attacking a colossal Goliath, with its narrow window-panes, where beyond the "prize" red geranium the wind drove the fallen leaves over the brick pavement, with ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... down here, and you must have lots of milk and cream. Even if rations go on, I can certify all the extras for you. That's the good of being a doctor!" She laughed cheerfully as she took a cigarette from the mantelpiece and lit it. ...
— The Secret of the Tower • Hope, Anthony
... remains of the guild work which Mrs. Wrottesley had not finished occupied the greater part of the sofa, and Jane meant to ask her maid to run up all the little blouses and petticoats, as she herself was too frightfully busy to undertake them. An immense number of photographs ornamented the mantelpiece and were mixed up, without attempt at classification, with curious odds and ends which Peter had sent home from South Africa during the war time. Some riding-whips hung on a rack on the wall, side ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... find the best way to do this is as follows:—Get an old bucket with a few one-inch holes bored in the bottom, and almost fill it with good new straw horse-droppings; put a little hay on the top of the droppings, and then put the ferret on the hay. Place or hang the bucket over a boiler or on the mantelpiece, and let the kettle steam under the bucket, say for 30 minutes, and you will find the steam and the ammonia from the droppings will together sweat the disease out of the ferret; then you can start feeding it again. Feed it with something substantial, such as the jelly from ...
— Full Revelations of a Professional Rat-catcher - After 25 Years' Experience • Ike Matthews
... after their long drive through the cool October evening. A brass lamp of antique design, with perforated shade of the same material, was suspended from the ceiling, and helped illumine this strange apartment. From each end of the mantelpiece an immense high-backed sofa projected into the room, cushioned and padded, and looking as if built into its present position with the house. The walls were covered with odd portraits, whose frames were crumbling in decay, and the window curtains adorned with fairy scenes and mythological figures. ...
— The Ghost of Guir House • Charles Willing Beale
... This is what the snoopopath loves—no rage, no blustering—calmness, cynicism. He walked over towards the mantelpiece and laid his hat upon it. He set his ...
— Further Foolishness • Stephen Leacock
... thousand dollars won't—won't be needed?" I asked with a contemptible feeling of disappointment that the Byrds had got so rich before I had been able to do this one thing for them. I looked up at old Grandmother Byrd over the mantelpiece and said in my heart: ...
— Phyllis • Maria Thompson Daviess
... night I have crept gasping to bed, and shivered for hours with my head under the clothes, after an evening spent in listening to this authentic and fantastic family tale. How the candlesticks walked out into the air from the mantelpiece, and back again; how the chairs of skeptical visitors collected from all parts of the country to study what one had hardly then begun to call the "phenomena" at the parsonage at Stratford, Connecticut, hopped after the guests when they crossed the room; how the dishes ...
— McClure's Magazine December, 1895 • Edited by Ida M. Tarbell
... the hearth, spreading her bony hands towards the crackling flames, and, walking up to the mantelpiece, Salome touched the ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... instead of shrinking from me, she loves me, and is willing, indeed,—bless her wonderful heart for it,—wilful to marry me. What time is it?' he cried abruptly, turning his blank eyes toward the clock on the mantelpiece. ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 31, No. 1, May 1908 • Various
... in a small, uncomfortable easy-chair with its back to the window. Her supper of bread and milk was half finished, her hat lay upon the table. A book was upon her lap as though she had started to read only to find it slip through her fingers. He stood with his elbow upon the mantelpiece, looking down at her. Her eyelashes, long and silky, were more beautiful than ever now that her eyes were closed. Her complexion, pale though she was, seemed more the creamy pallor of some southern race than the whiteness of ill-health. The ...
— Havoc • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... struck and gave me warning that Love and Comus were calling me to bestow new delights upon me. With my pockets full of gold and silver, I left the ridotto, hurried to Muran, entered the sanctuary, and saw my divinity leaning against the mantelpiece. She wore her convent dress. I come near her by stealth, in order to enjoy her surprise. I look at her, and I ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... certain," replied her friend, "but it can't be much anyway, or I'd have seen it there," pointing to a pack of cards on the mantelpiece. "Wait a moment," she said suddenly, and then she knit her brows as if thinking very hard; "didn't the six of spades come out true? Yes, it did!" and she ...
— The Music Master - Novelized from the Play • Charles Klein
... she spoke and went to the mirror over the mantelpiece. There was something in the action that suddenly recalled Rosina to her senses, and she sprang to her feet and disappeared into the sleeping-room beyond, returning in two or three minutes bearing evidence of Ottillie's deft touch. She found Molly still before the mirror, and ...
— A Woman's Will • Anne Warner
... more, the Commanding Officer badly shaken and cut about the face, the strap of his tin hat broken by the force of the explosion, and Pynsent Elliott finding that for some little time he would have to take his meals off the mantelpiece! The Commanding Officer was anxious to be allowed to remain with us, but eventually was persuaded otherwise, and they both left for the Dressing Station, and Major V. O. Robinson, M.C., of the 6th Battalion, was sent to ...
— The Sherwood Foresters in the Great War 1914 - 1919 - History of the 1/8th Battalion • W.C.C. Weetman
... turned slightly, leaning his elbow upon the mantelpiece and flicking off the ash ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... her a few more antiquarian facts about the room, and its builders, she meanwhile looking in some perplexity from the rich embossments of the ceiling with its Tudor roses and crowns, from the stately mantelpiece and canopied doors, to the few pieces of shabby modern furniture which disfigured the room, the half-dozen cane chairs, the ugly lodging-house carpet and sideboard. What had become of the old furnishings? How could they ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. I. • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... guest had grimaced at her and left the drawing-room, Lady Holme stood with her hand on the mantelpiece, facing a tall mirror. She was alone for the moment. Her husband had accompanied Mrs. Wolfstein downstairs, and Lady Holme could hear his big, booming voice below, interrupted now and then by her impudent soprano. She spoke ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens
... door when she was gone, and stood as though he knew not whither to turn. He looked at the onyx clock ticking on the mantelpiece. He listened to the rumble of a carriage in the street. He put out his hands, and going slowly into his sleeping-room, sank upon his ...
— The Colossus - A Novel • Opie Read
... the fire got lower and lower, and still Melchior sat, with his eyes fixed on a dirty old print that had hung above the mantelpiece for years, sipping his 'brew', which was fast getting cold. The print represented an old man in a light costume, with a scythe in one hand and an hour-glass in the other; and underneath the picture in flourishing capitals was the ...
— Melchior's Dream and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... Most of us have done something and have our own reasons for this retreat. Brother Polygamus escaped here from the persecutions of his sixth wife. Even I," continued the Superior with a gentle smile, putting his feet comfortably on the mantelpiece, "have had my little fling, and the dear boys used to say—ahem!—but this is mere worldly vanity. You alone, my dear son," he went on with slight severity, "seem to be wanting in some criminality, or—shall I say?—some appropriate besetting sin ...
— New Burlesques • Bret Harte
... been done up since then, refurnished, and almost completely altered. Only the wide fireplace, with its brass dogs and its heavy oaken mantelpiece, ...
— The Return Of The Soul - 1896 • Robert S. Hichens
... on. He was choking. The sole relief to his indignation was in once more tearing round the room, while Miss Walbrook moved to the fluted white mantelpiece, where, with her foot resting on the attenuated Hunt Diedrich andirons she bowed her head against an attenuated ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... aloud to herself in the silence. Then she rose quickly to her feet and leaned against the smooth white marble mantelpiece, and buried her face in her small white ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford
... considerably with their age. The younger visibly grew uglier and uglier, and the elder became every day more and more stupid: she either made no answer at all to what was asked her, or said something very silly. She was with all this so unhandy that she could not place four pieces of china upon the mantelpiece without breaking one of them, nor drink a glass of water without spilling half ...
— The Tales of Mother Goose - As First Collected by Charles Perrault in 1696 • Charles Perrault
... spoilt his features yesterday afternoon if I could have afforded it,' said Newman, moving restlessly about, and shaking his fist at a portrait of Mr Canning over the mantelpiece. 'I was very near it. I was obliged to put my hands in my pockets, and keep 'em there very tight. I shall do it some day in that little back-parlour, I know I shall. I should have done it before now, if I hadn't been afraid ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... a sound in the inner room. Candle in hand, she opened the door and went in. She put the candle on the mantelpiece, and then going to the bed, bent over it and ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade
... realised that the House had won, that his hopes were satisfied, that the Buller crowd had been routed, that the cup would shimmer on the mantelpiece. A wave of wild exultation came over him. The House poured over the touch-line, yelling and shouting. It was all "a wonder and ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... dominant color; leaning minarets threatening to fall and never falling, luckily for their coating of enamel, which the intrepid traveller Madame De Ujfalvy-Bourdon, declares to be much superior to the finest of our crackle enamels—and these are not vases to put on a mantelpiece or on a stand, but ...
— The Adventures of a Special Correspondent • Jules Verne
... the way across the terrace, and to the smoking-room, that served also as his office, and closed the door. The stranger walked directly to the mantelpiece and put his finger on ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... notwithstanding I had thought it proper to rebuke James for having so contrived it, I disarranged my books, to give them the appearance of a graceful confusion on the table, and laying my foils (useless since your departure) across the mantelpiece, that the lady might see I was TAM MARTE QUAM MERCURIO—I endeavoured to dispose my dress so as to resemble an elegant morning deshabille—gave my hair the general shade of powder which marks the gentleman—laid my watch and seals on the table, to hint that I understood the value of time;—and ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... into the tent and watched him unload. First there was the old powder-horn that always hangs over the hall mantelpiece. Then there was a big, wide-necked bottle, a large, clean handkerchief, and a spool of thread. "You see this, Dago?" he said to me. "Now you watch and ...
— The Story of Dago • Annie Fellows-Johnston
... been produced? In this case, the quivering movement has passed through your teeth into the bones of your hear, and from them into the nerves, and so produced sound in your brain. And now, as a final experiment, fasten the string to the mantelpiece, and hit it again against the fender. How much feebler the sound is this time, and how much sooner it stops! Yet still it reaches you, for the movement has come this time across the air to the drums of ...
— The Fairy-Land of Science • Arabella B. Buckley
... a curtain. We entered the smaller of two lovely drawing rooms lately fitted up. Before us, over the mantelpiece, was suspended a magnificent full length portrait by Gaspar de Crayer of Philip II. of Spain. Just then my head was too full of the Hall of Eblis, of "Vathek" and its associations, for mere ordinary admiration of even one of the finest portraits painted, and on Mr. Beckford ...
— Recollections of the late William Beckford - of Fonthill, Wilts and Lansdown, Bath • Henry Venn Lansdown
... grazed at will. Around the walls of the "study"— (a strange misnomer!)—hung prints of celebrated fox-hunts and renowned steeple-chases: guns, fishing-rods, and foxes' brushes, ranged with a sportsman's neatness, supplied the place of books. On the mantelpiece lay a cigar-case, a well-worn volume on the Veterinary Art, and the last number of the Sporting Magazine. And in the room—thus witnessing of the hardy, masculine, rural life, that had passed away—sallow, stooping, town-worn, sat, I say, Robert Beaufort, ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 1 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... heart. My old carcass is all right, but inside—way down where a man lives—I'm sick unto death. Take a look at the mantelpiece. You see my best miniature's ...
— The Veiled Lady - and Other Men and Women • F. Hopkinson Smith
... is wanted and will do at the side, a mantelpiece is easily represented, and a banner screen will help to conceal the absence of a grate. A showy specimen of that dreadful thing, a paper grate-ornament, flowing well down into the fender, may sometimes hide deficiencies. ...
— The Peace Egg and Other tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... which looked out on the Bourg du Four were still rain-proof; the light which they admitted still found something garish in the portrait of the Syndic—by Schouten—that formed the central panel of the mantelpiece. New and stately, the room had not its pair in Geneva; and dear to its owner's heart had it been a short, a very short time before. He had anticipated no more lasting pleasure, looked forward to no safer gratification for his declining ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... painted by Joseph Lindon Smith, an artist of celebrity, who is a relative of Whittier's. Portraits of Whittier's brother, his sisters, his mother, and his old schoolmaster, Joshua Coffin, are shown in this room. The silhouette on the mantelpiece is of aunt Mercy, his mother's unmarried sister. A sampler worked by Lydia Aver, the girl commemorated in the poem "In School Days," is exhibited in this room. She was a member of the family who were the nearest neighbors of the ...
— Whittier-land - A Handbook of North Essex • Samuel T. Pickard
... men stood near the big screened fireplace and plain white marble mantelpiece. There was a rustling sound on the stair in the hall, and Irene came in. She was beautifully attired in a gown Mostyn had not yet seen. It was most becoming. How strange! There seemed, somehow, to-night more about her to admire than on any former ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... occupant of the room, Mr Marlowe,' replied Trent with similar lightness, pointing to the initials. 'I found this lying about on the mantelpiece. It seems a handy little pistol to me, and it has been very carefully cleaned, I should say, since the last time it was used. But I know little ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley
... sister, tenderly as though still they felt, in the last resting-place, so soft and trim. It soothes us, if it does no good to them, and the sad change which we know is soon to follow is wrought only by the gentle hand of Nature. And only think of a man pointing to half-a-dozen vases on his mantelpiece, and as many more on his cheffonier, and saying, 'There the wicked cease from troubling, and there ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... underneath her passioned and fevered her flesh until her mental exaltation reached the rushing of delirium. Then his evening manners fascinated her, and, as he leaned back smoking in the dining-room arm-chair, his patent-leather shoes propped up against the mantelpiece, he showed her glimpses of a wider world than she knew of—and the girl's eyes softened as she listened to his accounts of the great life he had led, the county-houses he had visited, and the legendary runs he had held his own in. She sympathized with him when he explained how hardly ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... if you would. The room was very spacious, with chairs and sofas round the walls, a great mirror at either end, a paper on its walls which pretended to be panels wreathed in roses. The ceiling had a gay picture of gods and goddesses reclining in a flowery mead. The mantelpiece was Carrara marble, curiously inlaid with coloured wreaths. There was a fire in the brass grate, although it was summer weather. The proximity of the trees and the natural climate of the place meant damp. The fire sparkled in the brass dogs and the brass jambs of the fireplace. ...
— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan
... I am boring you," said Marigny, leaning back in the chair and laying the cigarette on the mantelpiece. "Yet bear with me a little while, I pray you; these explanations are necessary. A sane man acts with motive, and it is only reasonable that you should understand my motive before ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... take a draught of spirits and water, and to declare that the gin was excellent; then placing his feet against the low mantelpiece, so as to bring his boots to about the level of his eye, ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... the idea of "Paradise Regained," and that the draft of the latter poem was written upon a great oak table which may be seen in one of the low-pitched rooms on the ground floor. I fancy that Milton must have beautified and repaired the cottage at the period of his tenancy. The mantelpiece with its classic ogee moulding belongs certainly to his day, and some other minor details may also be noticed which support this inference. It is not difficult to imagine that one who was accustomed to metropolitan comforts would be dissatisfied with the open hearth common to country cottages ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield
... husband's face, and looked dreamily into the fire. Then, raising her face from the flame, she looked around with the air of one seeking for some topic of conversation. At that moment she caught sight of the corner of a letter lying on the mantelpiece. Reaching forth her hand, she took it. It ...
— Vain Fortune • George Moore
... us,' said he; so, leading the way, he conducted me to the dining-room. At the head of the table sat Mrs. Wordsworth, and their three grandchildren made up the party.... It was a humble apartment, not ceiled, the rafters being visible; having a large old-fashioned chimney-place, with a high mantelpiece. ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... mittens, and wear white fichus and aprons and snowy Dutch caps, like the children of the Foundling Hospital. The building is on the site of Marylebone Park House, an old house, parts of which the architect has incorporated into its successor; a handsome oak floor and marble mantelpiece of the Queen Anne period are to be seen in the board-room. At its southern end High Street bifurcates, becoming Thayer ...
— Hampstead and Marylebone - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... room in which he sat possessed very little furniture and no signs of comfort. There were a quantity of books piled on the floor and mantelpiece, and the centre space was filled by an enormous bureau heaped with a mass of printed and written papers, for besides his extensive correspondence he was part-editor of one of the Anarchist journals, which he enlivened by daring and ...
— The Hippodrome • Rachel Hayward
... stairs, threw open the library door and entered. The electric lights were blazing in the heat and silence of the closed room. The odor of violets hung reminiscent in the stale air. The panel by the mantelpiece was thrust back, and the door of the safe, so uselessly concealed, hung open, revealing the empty shelves within and the deep shadow of the inner compartment. He saw it all in a flash of understanding; ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford
... and furnished with the plainest wood. His bed was in the alcove at the back; the only ornament was the portrait of his wife, a dark, Italian-looking woman, which hung surrounded by guns, pistols, and swords, over the low stone mantelpiece. It was just midnight, but Monsieur Joseph was not in bed. He looked a quaint figure, in a dressing-gown and a tasselled night-cap, and he sat at the table writing a long letter. He started when ...
— Angelot - A Story of the First Empire • Eleanor Price
... Count was smiling oddly at something he espied upon the mantelpiece, and stepping up to it ...
— Count Bunker • J. Storer Clouston
... morning nine had not ceased striking on the clock standing on the mantelpiece in Mr. Gorham's study when James Riley was formally and seriously ushered by his father into these, the sacred precincts, where none entered except by its owner's invitation; but it was a far different James from the man who had called upon Mr. Gorham some weeks earlier. The ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt
... the top of the wall. The young girl had never dreamed that her captain was much of a student. The only things that reminded her of Captain Jules were the fishnets that were hung at the windows for curtains and the great sprays of coral and sponge which decorated the mantelpiece. ...
— Madge Morton's Victory • Amy D.V. Chalmers
... Jud, and he pointed his finger to a letter lying on the mantelpiece. I arose and picked it up. It bore Cynthia's ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... going on at certain hours, which he may attend if he choose. If not, he may stay away without the slightest remonstrance from the college. As to religion, he may worship the sun, or have a private fetish of his own upon the mantelpiece of his lodgings for all that the University cares. He may live where he likes, he may keep what hours he chooses, and he is at liberty to break every commandment in the decalogue as long as he behaves himself with some approach to ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... went on with a shy little laugh and an innocent attempt at gallantry which the very directness of his simple nature made atrociously obvious,—"I mean what you've made lots of young fellows feel. There used to be a picture of Colonel Brigg on the mantelpiece, in full uniform, and signed by himself 'for Kitty;' and Lord! how jealous I was of it, for Kitty never took presents from gentlemen, and nobody even was allowed in here, though she helped her father all over the hotel. She was awfully strict in those days," he interpolated, ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte
... beautifully furnished and filled with works of art; china, choice pictures, and old silver abounded on every side; on the hearth burned a bright fire; on the mantelpiece was a very handsome looking-glass framed in oak. My companion, having lit six candles, went to the windows to draw down the blinds. I interposed and saved her this exertion ...
— A Queen's Error • Henry Curties
... child did not seem very ill, in vain she told herself during the night that Tommy had only an ordinary cold. She was restless and wakeful the night long; two or three times she lighted a match and looked at the slow-going clock on the mantelpiece. ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... me—the coward!" she murmured; then she rose with a sudden effort, swayed, steadied herself, and arranged her hair in the mirror over the mantelpiece. "The low coward!" she said again. "But before he leaves . . . before he leaves ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... and the clock on the mantelpiece striking ten sharp strokes did not interrupt it; and then, as Esther turned from the bedside for the brandy, Mrs. Collins's candle spluttered and went out; a little thread of smoke evaporated, leaving only a morsel ...
— Esther Waters • George Moore
... much is to be made out of it as possible. Like the elephants, which can crush a tree or pick up a needle, they conquer a province and they pick a pocket. As soon as a German is quartered in a room he sends for a box and some straw; carefully and methodically packs up the clock on the mantelpiece, and all the stray ornaments which he can lay his hands on; and then, with a tear glistening in his eye for his absent family, directs them either to his mother, his wife, or his lady-love. In vain the proprietor protests; the philosophical warrior utters ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... busy bug flew back home and she kept busy up to nine o'clock, making beds and dusting the crumbs off the mantelpiece and picking up grains of sand off the floor. Then she went ...
— Uncle Wiggily's Travels • Howard R. Garis
... it was a piece of scribbling paper, yellow and shining like the sun. He put it on the mantelpiece in the drawing-room and glanced at it. Heading the list was a woman's name: "Alice," the most beautiful name in the world, as it had seemed to him then, for it was the name of his fiancee. Next to the name was a number, "15,11." It looked like the number of a hymn, ...
— In Midsummer Days and Other Tales • August Strindberg
... farm cannot suffer three days' delay, not to speak of the additional days impaired to a greater or to a less degree by the moral and physical drunkenness which follows a gala-day. I was seated beneath the great mantelpiece of the old-fashioned kitchen fireplace when shots of pistols, barking of dogs, and the piercing notes of the bagpipe told me that the bridal pair were approaching. Very soon Father and Mother Maurice, Germain, ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... stairs—and on the first floor are the two rooms. Betty drew a long breath when she saw them. They were lofty, they were airy, they were light. There was not much furniture, but what there was was good—old carved armoires, solid divans and—joy of joys—in each room a carved oak, Seventeenth Century mantelpiece eight feet high and ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... matter, poor chap. I say," said Lighthead, hurriedly, turning his back and examining a pipe on the mantelpiece, "do you think he is going to—I ...
— McClure's Magazine, Volume VI, No. 3. February 1896 • Various
... of all she was obliged to prepare the umbrella so that the disaster might be complete, and the reason of it quite evident. She took a match from the mantelpiece, and between the ribs she burnt a hole as big as the palm of her hand; then she delicately rolled it up, fastened it with the elastic band, put on her bonnet and shawl, and went quickly towards the Rue de Rivoli, where ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... enough style had either; a simpler manner of life and thought could hardly exist, short of cave-dwelling. The flint-and-steel with which his grandfather Adams used to light his own fires in the early morning was still on the mantelpiece of his study. The idea of a livery or even a dress for servants, or of an evening toilette, was next to blasphemy. Bathrooms, water-supplies, lighting, heating, and the whole array of domestic comforts, were unknown at Quincy. Boston had already ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... low to his Mistress, his invariable custom, and began to light the candles on the mantelpiece and sideboard, and then those in the two big silver candlesticks which decorated each end of the table, with its covers for six. Little Jim still stood behind his Miss Nancy's chair: he was not to be trusted with any of Chad's ...
— Colonel Carter's Christmas and The Romance of an Old-Fashioned Gentleman • F. Hopkinson Smith
... Gabriel, the lonely and reserved man returned to his house to breakfast—feeling twinges of shame and regret at having so far exposed his mood by those fevered questions to a stranger. He again placed the letter on the mantelpiece, and sat down to think of the circumstances attending it by ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... nor even a Dutch oven, in that case the veal should be suspended by, and fastened to, the end of a twisted skein of worsted, made fast at the upper end by tying it to a large nail driven into the centre of the mantelpiece for that purpose. This contrivance will enable you to roast the veal by dangling it before your fire; the exact time for cooking it must depend upon its weight. A piece of veal weighing four pounds would require rather more than an hour to cook it ...
— A Plain Cookery Book for the Working Classes • Charles Elme Francatelli
... say?" asked Lizzie, who sat gazing upon the Corsair, and who was now herself fascinated. Lord George was walking about the room, then sitting for a moment in one chair and again in another, and after a while leaning on the mantelpiece. In his speaking he addressed himself almost exclusively to Lizzie, who could not keep her ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... him now, how he used to be standing there by the fireplace when we came out o' the two bedrooms early in the morning, an' he always made out, poor's he was, to give us some little present, and he 'd heap 'em up on the corner o' the mantelpiece, an' we 'd stand front of him in a row, and mother be bustling about gettin' breakfast. One year he give me a beautiful copy o' the 'Life o' General Lafayette,' in a green cover,—I 've got it now, but we child'n 'bout ...
— The Queen's Twin and Other Stories • Sarah Orne Jewett
... and made himself known to the pretty brown-haired girl who rose to greet him. Miss Maitland clearly was surprised—and a little frightened—by this unexpected visit. Her glance strayed from the visitor to a silver-framed photograph on the mantelpiece and back again to Dr. Lepardo ...
— The Sins of Severac Bablon • Sax Rohmer
... growled, tumbling himself hastily off the bed, and Fan, starting back in fear, stood still. He took the coppers roughly from her, cursing her for being so long away, then taking his clay-pipe from the mantelpiece and putting on his old hat, swung out of the room; but after going a few steps he groped his way back and looked in again. "Go to bed, Margy," he said. "Sorry I hit you, but 'tain't much, and we must give and take, you know." And then with a ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... a clock on the mantelpiece,—"Before that clock strikes. Now, go back to your spiders." The child looked irresolute and disinclined to obey; but a stern and terrible expression gathered slowly over the man's face, and the boy, growing pale as he remarked it, crept ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Verlaine at the climax of his fame, when he had won a sure immortality; simple and childlike, and with a child's unshamed acceptance of any money one might leave behind on the mantelpiece. He seems to have made very little by his verses. He spoke English quite well, having probably acquired it when teaching French; and he was perhaps more proud of it than of his poems. Mr. Moore says he wished to translate Tennyson. He ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... a cry of dismay. She had been standing on a chair over the mantelpiece, sticking holly into the ornaments, behind and under which, in true man's fashion, a good many papers and letters had accumulated. One of these papers—by some unlucky movement—fell, and by a sudden waft of air floated ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... I was a very little boy, many doors on the upper floor were kept locked, to the undue development of my natural inquisitiveness by day, and my mortal terror when sent to bed at night. In one of these her portrait still hung above the mantelpiece, and her harp stood in its accustomed corner. In another, which was once her bedroom, everything was left as in her lifetime, her clothes yet hanging in the wardrobe, her dressing-case standing upon the toilet, her favorite book upon the ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... wheel-spoke candelabrum. He found the spring, pressed it, and laughed weakly. He rose from his chair and inspected a picture on the wall, then moved on to another picture, the mess watching him without a word. When he came to the mantelpiece he shook his head and seemed distressed. A piece of plate representing a mounted hussar in full uniform caught his eye. He pointed to it, and then to the mantelpiece with inquiry in ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... Joe went to the mantelpiece, took a large square bottle of eau-de-Cologne, removed the stopper, and once more drew out his father's pocket-handkerchief, moistened it with the scent, and softly applied it to the ...
— Sappers and Miners - The Flood beneath the Sea • George Manville Fenn
... invited Peveril to partake with him. "I am an old soldier," he said, "and, I must add, an old prisoner; and understand how to shift for myself better than you can do, young man.—Confusion to the scoundrel Clink, he has put the spice-box out of my reach!—Will you hand it me from the mantelpiece?—I will teach you, as the French have it, faire la cuisine; and then, if you please, we will divide, like brethren, the labours of our ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... burning in a bowl when he entered the Chaplain's room. After giving a hasty greeting and blessing to the lad, who was charmed to see his tutor, the Father continued the burning of his papers, drawing them from a cupboard over the mantelpiece wall, which Harry had never ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... he was lying in bed (he thought he was quite awake), and looking at a little picture of the crucifixion which was hanging over the fireplace. While doing so he saw as plainly as possible some black figures of imps and devils walking along the mantelpiece with a ladder, which they placed against the wall, evidently for the purpose of removing this picture from its place. He watched them intently, and noticed that they seemed much troubled and perplexed as to how they were to accomplish their task: ...
— From Death into Life - or, twenty years of my ministry • William Haslam
... Draperies of "art" muslin; photographs in profusion—of ladies in very low dresses and affected poses, with names and affectionate messages written across the corners;—a multitude of dingy knick-knacks; above the mantelpiece a large colored photograph of Mrs. Betts herself as Ariel; clothes lying about; muddy shoes; the remains of a meal: Marcia looked at the medley with quick repulsion, the wave of ...
— The Coryston Family • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... little French clock on the marble mantelpiece of his dressing-room, wondering, in his impatience, whether it ever would strike the hour of twelve, the hour at which he was to witness the departure of the Strozzis for ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... was almost akin to eagerness, to the interview I was to have with Kitwater and Codd that afternoon. If the two gentlemen had faults, unpunctuality was certainly not one of them, for the clock upon the mantelpiece had scarcely finished striking the hour of four, when I heard footsteps in the office outside, and next moment they were shown into my own sanctum. Codd came first, leading his friend by the hand, and as he did so he eyed me with a look of intense anxiety upon his face. ...
— My Strangest Case • Guy Boothby
... formed the burden of our talk. Not to know a Belgian in these days is a mark of social outlawry, and you cannot know them without admiring them. The fire was warm, the room was comfortable, and the minutes ticked themselves away in the usual place on the mantelpiece. ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 9, 1914 • Various
... sun was streaming through the curtained window of her room, and by the light of it she saw that the clock which stood upon the mantelpiece pointed to half-past eleven. She had slept for nearly twelve hours, and felt that, notwithstanding the cold and exposure, save for stiffness and a certain numb feeling in her head—the result, perhaps, of the unaccustomed brandy—she was well and, ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard
... hearth-rug, where he stood with one hand resting on the mantelpiece. It was a convenient attitude, and one which exposed him to no rebuffs. He was too wise to offer hand or cheek to his mother by ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... hall one morning after breakfast when I was opening a parcel of books which had arrived for me. It was a fine, sunny day, and the sun lit up the portrait framed in the panelling over the mantelpiece, an old and skilful copy (at least I suppose it was a copy) of Reynolds' fine portrait of James, tenth Earl of Shropshire. Father Payne regarded the picture earnestly. "Isn't he magnificent?" he said. "But he was a very poor creature really, and came to great grief. My great-great-grandfather! His ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... down in the darkness, and felt his way to the parlour, and then to the mantelpiece. The talisman was in its place, and a horrible fear that the unspoken wish might bring his mutilated son before him ere he could escape from the room seized upon him, and he caught his breath as he found that he had lost the direction of the door. His brow cold with sweat, he felt his way round ...
— Lady of the Barge and Others, Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs
... said. She went to the fireplace, leaned on the mantelpiece, and poked the fire. The attitude struck him. She was about to put some coals in the grate, but he interfered with an "Allow me," and performed the office for her. She thanked him simply, and sat down opposite to him, facing the light. She began ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford
... added the figure with a sound that was like the falling of an executioner's axe. And, as if to emphasise the arrival of the remorseless moment, the clock just then struck loudly on the mantelpiece—seven times. ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... was cowering over the hearth, spreading her bony hands towards the crackling flames, and, walking up to the mantelpiece, Salome touched the nurse, ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... leisure for dreams." He stood up suddenly and leaned against the mantelpiece. The atmosphere had become electric. "A good thing, too, as far as some of us are concerned. The last thing for a columnist to indulge in is dreams. Fine hash he'd have for ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... When we reached home, I returned the keys and money to my father. As he entered his study, he emptied out his purse on the mantelpiece, counted the money, and turned to me with a kindly look, saying with more or less long and significant pauses ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... remaining of King Henry's building are the gatehouse, some turrets, a mantelpiece in the presence chamber, which bears the initials H. and A. (Henry and Anne Boleyn) with a true lovers' knot, the Chapel Royal (which has, of course, been renovated), and the tapestry-room. Levees are ...
— The Strand District - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant
... Mollie alone. As soon as the door closed Mollie stood up and began to inspect the trophies in the cabinet. She was far too restless and excited to remain sitting down. She looked at the presentation clock on the mantelpiece and puzzled over the signatures engraved upon a large silver dish which commemorated the joy displayed by the Criminal Investigation Department upon the occasion of Kerry's promotion to the ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... he was shown was a long apartment furnished in the style of the Georgian era. The genuine Adams ceiling, mantelpiece, and dead white walls, with the faintly faded carpet of old rose and light-blue, were all in keeping. The lights, too, were shaded, and over all was an old-world atmosphere of quiet and ...
— Mademoiselle of Monte Carlo • William Le Queux
... the kitchen and the tiled path to the gate, and shaken the mats, and dusted the chairs and mantelpiece, and was sitting down to rest her hot and weary little body, before Miss Rose came down again. When she heard the footsteps on the stairs ...
— Dick and Brownie • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... for many miles nothing but sombre moors climbing and stretching away. I have heard the winds moaning and wuthering night and morning, among the gravestones, and around the angles of the house; and crossing the threshold, I know by instinct that this mirror will stand over the mantelpiece in the bare room to the left. I know also to whom those four suppressed voices will belong that greet me while yet my hand is on the latch. Four children are within—three girls and a boy—and they ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... think I can stand this much longer," said Mr Mountchesney, the son-in-law of Lord de Mowbray, to his wife, as he stood before the empty fire-place with his back to the mantelpiece and his hands thrust into the pockets of his coat. "This living in the country in August bores me to extinction. I think we will go to ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... coldly, and began to examine a photograph on the mantelpiece. After an apparently interminable period, receiving ...
— Blazed Trail Stories - and Stories of the Wild Life • Stewart Edward White
... Would the heavy chestnut be very pleasant in the heat of the dog-days; should I prefer to have it hot from the stove, rather than the gooseberry, the strawberry, the refreshing fruits which the earth takes care to provide for me. A mantelpiece covered in January with forced vegetation, with pale and scentless flowers, is not winter adorned, but spring robbed of its beauty; we deprive ourselves of the pleasure of seeking the first violet in the woods, of noting the earliest buds, and exclaiming in a ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... aunt was, as are most Irish folk of decayed families, very proud of her family tree with its roots in the inevitable "kings." Her particular kings were the "seven kings of France"—the "Milesian kings"—and the tree grew up a parchment, in all its impressive majesty, over the mantelpiece of their descendant's modest drawing-room. This heraldic monster was regarded with deep respect by child Emily, a respect in no wise deserved, I venture to suppose, by the disreputable royalties of whom she was a fortunately distant twig. Chased out of France, ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... sleep in. It came from Edinburgh, and is made mostly of materials which can be produced in Scotland. And in this direction, we can see a set of beautiful mantelpieces and fenders, from Sheffield, all decorated in the most elegant manner. The first mantelpiece we must look at is made of cast-iron; the mouldings of the cornice are richly ornamented, and supported by little pillars covered with graceful wreaths of oak-leaves, while the freize is adorned with a cluster of rich fruit. The next mantelpiece is painted white and gold, and has a burnished ...
— The World's Fair • Anonymous
... as they were, however, Jasper quietly removed and hid them behind a heavy old bureau. Steps were now heard mounting the stair that led into the chamber; Losely shrunk back into the recess beside the mantelpiece. Darrell entered, with a book in his hand, for which he had indeed quitted his chamber—a volume containing the last Act of Parliament relating to Public Trusts, which had been sent to him by his solicitor; for he is creating a deed of trust, to insure to the nation the Darrell antiquities, ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... to display her spelling prowess, fished out of her pocket a bit of pencil and one of Octavius Smith's trade cards that drew attention to his prime line of bacon. This last Larkin had pressed upon her that very morning, and urged her to put it on the mantelpiece, where their visitors could see it. They owed him a return. Morning after morning did he, after receiving his orders from Miss Bibby at the kitchen door, ride his horse to the road at one side of the house, where some well-grown ...
— In the Mist of the Mountains • Ethel Turner
... this into a richly gilt and embossed envelope, our friend directed it conspicuously to Sir Harry Scattercash, Bart., and stuck it in the centre of the mantelpiece. He then retraced his steps through the back regions, informing the sleeping beauty he had before disturbed, and who was now busy scouring a pan, that he had left a letter in the drawing-room for Sir Harry, and if she ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... complained; but it was precious rubbish to the old man. His chest was behind the door; a blowfish, stuffed and varnished, hung from the ceiling; two colored prints of the "Barque Letty M., 800 tons," decorated the walls; his sextant, polished daily by his big, clumsy hands, hung over the mantelpiece, on which were many dusty treasures—the mahogany spoke of an old steering-wheel; a whale's tooth; two Chinese wrestlers, in ivory; a fan of spreading white coral; a conch-shell, its beautiful red lip serving to hold a loose bunch of cigars. In the chimney-breast was a little ...
— Quaint Courtships • Howells & Alden, Editors
... very well!" West flung the words from between set teeth, and with them he abruptly turned his back upon Babbacombe, lodging his arms upon the mantelpiece. "I am not going into details on that point or any other. But the fact is there, and you know it. You have never been absolutely straight in your dealings with me. I knew you weren't. I always knew it. But how crooked you were I did not know till lately. If you had been ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... enquired whether I saw anything of the Bloggs now. If you went and put that question to them there would be a scene. Mrs. Blogg would probably fall among the fire-irons, Knollys would foam in convulsions on the carpet, Ethel would scream and take refuge on the mantelpiece and Gertrude faint and break off her engagement. Frances would—but no intelligent person can affect an interest in ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... his Peekskill country place with great baskets of flowers, the most beautiful always found their way to this household. Miss Anthony recalls one occasion when Mrs. Tilton, slipping her hand through her arm, drew her to the mantelpiece over which hung a lovely water color of the trailing arbutus, and said, "My pastor brought that to me this morning." At another time, when she went on Saturday evening to stay over Sunday, Mrs. Tilton said, as she dropped into a ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... open air, that it may get dry as speedily as possible. A landing-net will last double the time if attention is given to it in this way. Take out all used casting-lines from your book, and lay them on the mantelpiece till morning: this will insure the feathers being freed from moisture. And in the case of expensive flies, this is a matter of consideration, both on the point of expense as well as your possible inability to replace them ...
— Scotch Loch-Fishing • AKA Black Palmer, William Senior
... Hilda was lunching. The two had met among the faint-tinted draperies of Alicia's drawing-room—there was something auroral even about the mantelpiece—a little like diplomatists using a common tongue native to neither of them. Perhaps Alicia drew the conventions round her with the greater fluency; Hilda had more to cover, but was less particular about it. The only thing she was bent upon making imperceptible ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... thy grave tick tock I heard in my childhood days, In the solemn night, when the fire burned bright, And the lamp cast feeble rays; When grandmother close by the mantelpiece, Sat dozing or knitting, or carding fleece, Or watching the dying blaze; When mother was young and her beautiful hair Had never a silver thread; When her life was fair as her love was rare, In the years that ...
— The Loom of Life • Cotton Noe
... Thanksgiving and Christmas, and I thought this was about as great an occasion," she said. "I moved the wax flowers off the mantelpiece so they wouldn't melt, and put the shells, the coral, and the green stuffed bird on top of the what-not, so the children wouldn't ask to play with them. Brother Milliken's coming over to see Mr. Burch about business, ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... emotion and love; you could see at a glance that she was too deeply affected to be heedful of the opinion of others. Pere Maurice was the spokesman on the occasion, and delivered the customary compliments and invitations. In the first place, he fastened to the mantelpiece a branch of laurel ornamented with ribbons: this is called the exploit—that is to say, the form of invitation. He then proceeded to distribute to each of those invited a small cross, made of blue and rose coloured ribbon—the rose for the ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 444 - Volume 18, New Series, July 3, 1852 • Various
... continued. "You can then descend by the other lift to the fifth floor, and walk boldly into the sitting-room. The door on the right will be Mr. Delora's bedroom, and of that there will be, after midnight, a key upon the mantelpiece ...
— The Lost Ambassador - The Search For The Missing Delora • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... he wrote, "described an easy and graceful semicircle, while the opposite side was perfectly square, and in the centre glistened a mantelpiece of white marble and gold. The entrance was through a side door, hidden by a rich portiere of tapestry, and facing a window. Within the horseshoe curve was a genuine Turkish divan, that is to say, a mattress resting directly upon the floor, a mattress as large ...
— Honor de Balzac • Albert Keim and Louis Lumet
... not finished occupied the greater part of the sofa, and Jane meant to ask her maid to run up all the little blouses and petticoats, as she herself was too frightfully busy to undertake them. An immense number of photographs ornamented the mantelpiece and were mixed up, without attempt at classification, with curious odds and ends which Peter had sent home from South Africa during the war time. Some riding-whips hung on a rack on the wall, side ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... the private office. At ten minutes past, Mr. Murphy's respectful tap was heard. "Don't, Eddie," said Mrs. MacMahon in a queer, flurried voice. "Come in," said her husband. Nora was examining some judicial cartoons pinned over the mantelpiece. Mr. Murphy opened the door a few inches, slid through the aperture, and was at once caught and held by his employer's eye, which, like a hand, guided him to the table with his notebook. Under the almost physical pressure of that authoritative glare he did not dare ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... a friend of the de Berny family, who used to visit the son Alexander in the office of the Rue des Marais, often admired on the mantelpiece a fine bust of Flora, modelled by Marin. One day the printer said to him: "Do you know how much that bust cost me? . . . Fifteen thousand francs. I got it from Balzac, who owed me a great deal ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... before it was called for. I tried to put it out o' my head, but the thought kept comin' back; and when I went down into the sittin'-room to get Jacob's cyarpetbag to carry a few things in, I happened to look up at the mantelpiece and saw the brass candlesticks with prisms all 'round 'em that used to belong to my mother; and all at once I seemed to see jest what the Lord intended ...
— Aunt Jane of Kentucky • Eliza Calvert Hall
... The room behind him was bare of all graceful or even tasteful ornament—a few native weapons, captured probably during small frontier wars, hung on the wall, but nothing else relieved its blank, whitewashed monotony. The one photograph of his father which had once been fastened above the mantelpiece had been taken down months before and the hole made by the nail carefully and methodically filled and painted over. The room typified the man in its painful order, its painful whitewashed cleanliness, its rigid plainness. But the garden was ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... did not mind the implied description. She leant back, smiling still. I sighed again, smiled at Dolly, and took my hat. Then I turned to the mirror over the mantelpiece, arranged my necktie, and ...
— Dolly Dialogues • Anthony Hope
... the door behind her lighted a candle and commenced her search. On the fifth night she was rewarded by finding that the center of what looked like a solidly carved flower in the ornamentation of the mantelpiece gave way under the pressure of her finger, and at the same moment she heard a slight click. Beyond this nothing was apparent; and after trying everything within reach she came to the conclusion that it needed a second spring to be ...
— One of the 28th • G. A. Henty
... favorite attitude, even when debating vital matters with the great ones of the nation, is described by his secretaries as "sitting on his shoulders"—he would slide far down into his chair and stick up both slippers so high above his head that they could rest with ease upon his mantelpiece.(5) No wonder that his enemies made unlimited fun. And they professed to believe that there was an issue here. When the elegant McClellan was moving heaven and earth, as he fancied, to get the army out of its shirt-sleeves, the President's manner was a cause of endless irritation. Still ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... there in that commonplace little room, with its commonplace accessories, its ornaments, that suddenly seemed so trivial, so impertinent—the stopped French clock, with its simpering, gilded cupids, on the mantelpiece; the photograph of a number of picnickers "grouped" on a hotel piazza gazing with monolithic cheerfulness at this grim business, this struggle of the two world forces, this ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris
... "my little old friend! She has come back! Now that is good!" And, patting her hand he looked into her face, which had a warmth and brilliance rare to her in these days. Then, making for the mantelpiece, he took therefrom a bunch of Parma violets, evidently brought by his last pupil, and thrust them under her nose. "Take them, take them—they were meant for me. Now—how much have you forgotten? Come!" And, seizing ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... heavy, unrefreshed, and with a splitting headache. The clock on the mantelpiece was striking three o'clock; from below I could hear the clatter of vehicles in the courtyard, and the distant roar of traffic from the streets beyond. Slowly I realized that it was three o'clock ...
— The Great Secret • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... gateposts. In a chair on the gravel walk he seemed to sit smoking a cigar, a blue ribbon in his buttonhole, victor over himself and circumstances and the malignity of bankers. He saw the parlour, with red curtains, and shells on the mantelpiece—and, with the fine inconsistency of visions, mixed a grog at the mahogany table ere he turned in. With that the Farallone gave one of the aimless and nameless movements which (even in an anchored ship, and even in the most profound ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... there she stood, her elbow on the mantelpiece, her eyes hidden by her hand. Thus she remained for some minutes, and Lucy ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... prescribes—besides," she continued apologetically, "when your father was away last fall and Freddie had a very miserable attack, I called in Dr. Campbell, and he cured him in a fortnight, he is very clever," she added with slow emphasis, straightening a fancy panel on the mantelpiece by which she stood. There was silence for a few moments, as I ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... a wreath or coat-of-arms between them: we find it on the frieze of the St. Louis niche, and it is repeated on Judith's dress. The wreath or garland, of which the Greeks were so fond, became a favourite motive for the Renaissance mantelpiece. The classical amoretti, of which many versions in bronze existed, were also frequently copied. But there was one radical difference between the children of antiquity and those of the Renaissance. Though children were introduced on to classical sarcophagi and so forth, it is impossible to ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford
... quite a colony of dusty boots in one corner of the room, and there was a great bottle of black, treacly looking varnish on the mantelpiece. Bunty conceived the brilliant idea of cleaning the whole lot and standing them in a neat row to meet his father's delighted eyes. He found a handkerchief on the floor, of superfine cambric, though dirty, poured upon it a liberal allowance of varnish, ...
— Seven Little Australians • Ethel Sybil Turner
... object in a dim, gray light,—our chamber, the study, all in confusion; the parlor, with the fragments of that abortive breakfast on the table, and the precious silver forks, and the old bronze image, keeping its solitary stand upon the mantelpiece. Then, methought, the wretched Vigwiggie came, and jumped upon the window-sill, and clung there with her fore paws, mewing dismally for admittance, which I could not grant her, being there myself only in the spirit. ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... corner was ticking very distinctly; the scent of roses in the crowded room made the air heavy with sweetness; the candles on the mantelpiece flickered in the breeze from the open window; outside a whip-poor-will was ...
— The Old Gray Homestead • Frances Parkinson Keyes
... the room a door and covered stairway lead to the upper story. Farther forward is a wall cupboard, and a door leading into the kitchen. Opposite this cupboard, in the left-hand wall of the room, is a mantelpiece and grate; farther back a double door, leading to a hall. Off the hall open two bedrooms (not seen), one belonging to Mr. and Mrs. Beeler, the other to Rhoda Williams, a niece of Mrs. Beeler, child ...
— The Faith Healer - A Play in Three Acts • William Vaughn Moody
... study she rose and went to the mantelpiece and took one book from the heap of books there. She opened it and glanced abstractedly through the leaves as ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... did not stop there. Though I was compelled to introduce Mrs Murchison in the kitchen, she had a drawing-room in which she might have received the Lieutenant-Governor, with French windows and a cut-glass chandelier, and a library with an Italian marble mantelpiece. She had an icehouse and a wine cellar, and a string of bells in the kitchen that connected with every room in the house; it was a negligible misfortune that not one of them was in order. She had far too much, as she declared, for any one pair of hands and ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... the taste and to the smell, impossible to discover in food—a poison that would kill slowly or quickly as the poisoner willed and would leave no trace behind; he knew the secret of the poisoned key that lay always on the pope's mantelpiece, so that when His Holiness wished to destroy some one of his intimates, he bade him open a certain cupboard: on the handle of the key there was a little spike, and as the lock of the cupboard turned stiffly the hand would naturally press, the lock would yield, and nothing would have ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... those modern hostelries, built on an old English model. The windows were muslined, the rooms were wainscoted in oak, the furniture was heavy and cumbersome. Anna was delighted with everything she saw. Sanderson had had their sitting-room filled with crimson roses, they were everywhere; banked on the mantelpiece, on the tables and window-sills. Their perfume was to Anna like the loving embrace of an old friend. Jacqueminots had been so closely associated with her acquaintance with Sanderson, in after years she could never endure ...
— 'Way Down East - A Romance of New England Life • Joseph R. Grismer
... degenerates. The sun was shining full in at the little diamond-paned window. The window was open, and a late fly of metallic hue was shooting about with a pinging noise, like the twang of some instrumental string. But neither fly, nor sun, nor the tick of the little clock on the mantelpiece had awakened the cat. It was the click ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... going the circuit of the room, fell upon a trumpery filigree card-rack of pasteboard, that hung dangling by a dirty blue ribbon from a little brass knob just beneath the middle of the mantelpiece. In this rack, which had three or four compartments, were five or six visiting cards and a solitary letter. This last was much soiled and crumpled. It was torn nearly in two, across the middle—as if a design, in the first instance, to tear it entirely up as worthless, had ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... prints gave Arthur neither more nor less pleasure than he would have received from striped silk, white paint, and other whims of Waring. There were no swords, foils, signed photographs of royalties, pet dogs, or babies, invitation cards on the mantelpiece, nor any of the other luxuries usually seen in illustrated papers as characteristic of "Celebrities at Home". A palm, on its last legs, draped in shabby green silk, was dying by the window. The gloom was mitigated by an air of cosiness. There were ...
— The Twelfth Hour • Ada Leverson
... read it, half past ten struck on the little clock on his mantelpiece. It was probably this fact that decided Ashe. If he had been compelled to postpone his visit to the offices of Messrs. Mainprice, Mainprice & Boole until the afternoon, it is possible that barriers of laziness might have reared themselves in the path of ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... the one I was sitting in, with the figures of the tapestry glimmering grey and lilac and purple in the twilight, the great bed, columned and curtained, looming in the middle, and the embers reddening beneath the overhanging mantelpiece of inlaid Italian stonework, a vague scent of rose-leaves and spices, put into the china bowls by the hands of ladies long since dead, while the clock downstairs sent up, every now and then, its faint silvery tune of forgotten days, filled the room;—to do this is ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
Copyright © 2024 Free Translator.org
|
|
|
