"Broom" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in the scrubbing party was Little, and the skipper quickly forgot the seaman's fright in amusement at his friend's antics. Broom in hand, his trousers rolled above his knees, and his shirt flying open at the neck, his face glowing with the exercise, the late typewriter salesman darted in and out among the other scrubbers, leaving the spot he was working on ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... wi' the devil, an' got a bad end. But Miss Tranter, she don't listen to maids' gabble,—she's doin' well, devil or no devil—an' if any one was to talk to 'er 'bout ghosteses an' sich-like, she'd wallop 'em out of 'er bar with a broom! Ay, that she would! She's a powerful strong woman Miss Tranter, an' many's the larker what's felt 'er 'and on 'is collar a-chuckin' 'im out o' the 'Trusty Man' neck an' crop for sayin' somethin' what aint ezackly agreeable to 'er feelin's. ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... Tuesday after the new moon, Peipa jumped upon an old broom at midnight, as the witches are accustomed to do, both here and in Ingermanland, every year, on the third, sixth, ninth, and twelfth new moon, and thus flew away from the house. The maiden stole softly from her room long before dawn, and took the four ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... varied loveliness. The way lies through an avenue of cork trees, past which the great hills slope seaward, clothed with evergreen oak and heath, and a species of sundew, with here and there yellow broom, gum cistus, and an unfamiliar plant with blue flowers. Trees and shrubs fight for light and air, the fittest survive and thrive, sheltering little birds from the keen-eyed, quivering hawks above them. The road makes me think of what the French Mediterranean littoral must have been before ...
— Morocco • S.L. Bensusan
... to fetch him out did likewise. We lugged them out on deck. Then I leaped down to show how easily it could be done. They had learned wisdom by that time, and contented themselves by fishing for me with a chain-hook tied to a broom-handle, I believe. I did not offer to go and fetch up my shovel, which was ...
— Youth • Joseph Conrad
... walk in the night with a broom on his shoulder, and cry "chimney sweep," but when any one did call him, then would he run away laughing ho, ho, hoh! Sometimes he would counterfeit a beggar, begging very pitifully, but when they came to give him an alms, he would run away, laughing as his manner was. Sometimes ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick
... quotation tones: "Let a man get tired or out of sorts, or infernal mad at a pack of cursed fools, and music's the thing that'll set him straight every time, if he's any sort of a fellow. A man that ain't fond of music ain't of any account on God's green earth. I wouldn't trust him beyond a broom-straw. There's a mean streak in a man that don't care for music, sure. Why, the time the Democrats elected Peyton, the only thing that saved me from bursting a blood-vessel was Jenny's playing 'My Lodging's on the Cold Ground' with variations. ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... industriously sewing together the lengths of a cut carpet, and I recognized in him one of my fellow convicts at Windsor. He, however, did not know me, and I doubt if he could have been convinced of my identity as the wretch who plied the broom in the halls of the prison. To him, as he glanced at me, I was only a well-dressed gentleman whom the proprietor was courteously showing through the establishment in the hope of securing a good customer. It was this little ...
— Seven Wives and Seven Prisons • L.A. Abbott
... ill, Coz th' minute that yer back is turned they'll labor fit to kill. Th' house ain't cleaned to suit 'em an' they seem to fret an' fume 'Less they're busy doin' somethin' with a mop or else a broom; An' it ain't no use to scold 'em an' it ain't no use to swear, Coz th' next time they will do it jes' ...
— The Path to Home • Edgar A. Guest
... Falkirk's inward reply had been spoken aloud and in a past age, it might have cost poor Miss Hazel her life; as it was, he only said, 'Can you cut a broom-stick, Rollo?' The answer perhaps went into action, for the young ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner
... chairs, and a carpet) in the living-room, and there was a forlorn-looking bedstead in the bedroom. A pine table in the dining-room and a range in the kitchen completed the outfit. A soldier had scrubbed the rough floors with a straw broom: it was absolutely forlorn, and ...
— Vanished Arizona - Recollections of the Army Life by a New England Woman • Martha Summerhayes
... look after the children's linen, and do other occasional work: Enquire of Mr. Twitch, broom-maker, ...
— The Academy Keeper • Anonymous
... strong and baleful, To make it what it was before! There it skips with pail on pailful— Would thou wert a broom once more! Still new streams he scatters, Round and ever round me— Oh, a hundred waters Rushing in have bound me! No—no longer Can I bear it. No, I swear it! Gifts and graces! Woe is me, my fears grow stronger, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... the bee's side all dusted with pollen. (If you will look at a bed of scarlet kidney beans you will find that the wing-petals on the LEFT side alone are all scratched by the tarsi of the bees. [Note in the original letter by C. Darwin.]) In the broom the pistil is rubbed on the centre of the back of the bee. I suspect there is something to be made out about the Leguminosae, which will bring the case within OUR theory; though I have failed to do so. Our theory will explain why in the vegetable and animal kingdom the act of fertilisation ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... lined with winter firewood. Marvin, who met us at the pasture-gate, carried a lantern, the glow of the twilight having faded from the mountain-tops. He was a small, thick-set man, smooth-shaven as far as the under side of his chin and jaws, with a whisk-broom beard spread over his shirt-front and half of his waistcoat. His forehead was low, and his eyes set close together—sure sign of a ...
— The Underdog • F. Hopkinson Smith
... that sinister aspect, that air of hopeless farewells, which belongs to the chambers of the dying. Medicine bottles stood about on the furniture, linen lay in the corners, pushed aside by foot or broom. The disordered chairs themselves seemed affrighted, as if they had run, in all the senses of the word. Death, the ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... on a mild remonstrance anent the necessity for so gigantic an upsetting, Mrs. Carre laughingly said, "Ach, you are only a man. You woult neffer see"—and whirled her broom to the endangerment of ...
— Pearl of Pearl Island • John Oxenham
... a bush of golden broom, and pulled himself out of the water; and while the friar was scrambling out, Robin fitted an arrow to his bow and let fly at him. But the friar quickly held up his shield, ...
— The Elson Readers, Book 5 • William H. Elson and Christine M. Keck
... to the subject, that the remarkable shaking of the dry bones during the Reform Bill period, which culminated in the great measure of 1832, was merely a matter of politics—that John Bull was only buying a new broom to sweep away here and there an Old Sarum, and dust the benches of St. Stephen's for new company and—voila tout! the nation was reformed at a stroke! Yet that was not all by any means. In most ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston
... frames, and their air of being the latest thing from Paris and London. Then I crossed the road, threading my way through the carriages and motor cars, past the old white-bearded sweeper with the broom held aloft, gazing at the sky, and plunged into the English Shop to see whether I might buy something warm for Nina. Here, indeed, I could fancy that I was in the High Street in Chester, or Leicester, or Truro, or Canterbury. A demure English provincialism ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... have heard the following is effective: Take a quart of lye prepared from the ashes of vine twigs, briony, celandine roots, and tumeric, of each half an ounce; saffron and lily roots, of each two drams; flowers of mullein, yellow stechas, broom, and St. John's wort, of each a dram. Boil these together and strain off the liquor clear. Frequently wash the hair with the fluid, and it will change it, we are told, in a short time to a beautiful ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... heathendom a drunkard's wife cannot be found unless a heathen husband is being Christianized by Christian whiskey. The Chinese women have their feet compressed, but, unlike Christian women, they do not need their feet to give broom drills or skirt dances for the "benefit of their church." The child-wives of India need to be rescued and protected, but no more than many adult wives in Bible lands need protection from drunken and brutal husbands. ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... it thoroughly," declared the sheriff emphatically. "And the barn, and all other buildings. 'Tis most mysterious. He hath disappeared as unaccountably as though whisked out of sight on a witch's broom. Well, boys, scatter about the grounds again, and see if you can't find some trace. Some one in the house hath aided in the escape," he said, turning again to Mr. Owen as the men obeyed ...
— Peggy Owen and Liberty • Lucy Foster Madison
... off her back. Nevertheless, he kept Pepper's head in a beeline for Chanctonbury, never noticing how very ill she was going, and presently crossed the great High Road beyond which lay the Bush Hovel. The Wise Woman was at home; from afar the King saw her sitting outside the Hovel mending her broom with a ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon
... the boy, who stood with a broom in his hand, with which he was sweeping out the store,—"yes, it is about five miles from here, right on ...
— Jonas on a Farm in Winter • Jacob Abbott
... another horse coming made me look round; and there I saw a dreadful sight,—a wild horse, tearing over the ground, with fiery eyes and streaming tail. On his back sat a crazy man, beating him with a broom; a crazy woman was behind him, with her bonnet on wrong side before, holding one crazy child in her lap, while another stood on the horse; a third was hanging on by one foot, and all were howling at the top of their ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... off, and by mid-day the sun was in its full power. Each sustained the other by a desperate cheerfulness. When they took their morning walk in the Luxembourg Gardens—what time the blue-aproned Jacques was polishing their waxed floors with his legs for broom-handles—they went into ecstasies over everything, drawing each other's attention to the sky, the trees, the water. And, indeed, of a sunshiny morning it was heartening to sit by the pond and watch the wavering sheet of beaten gold water, reflecting all shades of green in a ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... mundation^; ablution, lavation^, colature^; disinfection &c v.; drainage, sewerage. lavatory, laundry, washhouse^; washerwoman, laundress, dhobi^, laundryman, washerman^; scavenger, dustman^, sweep; white wings brush [U.S.]; broom, besom^, mop, rake, shovel, sieve, riddle, screen, filter; blotter. napkin, cloth, maukin^, malkin^, handkerchief, towel, sudary^; doyley^, doily, duster, sponge, mop, swab. cover, drugget^. wash, lotion, detergent, cathartic, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... scarce any advantages of ornament or situation will be able to equal this beauty. It is the same case with particular trees and plants, as with the field on which they grow. I know not but a plain, overgrown with furze and broom, may be, in itself, as beautiful as a hill covered with vines or olive-trees; though it will never appear so to one, who is acquainted with the value of each. But this is a beauty merely of imagination, and has no foundation in what appears to the senses. Fertility ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... took the broom and swept the moth out of the door. Then she got down on her knees and carefully examined the steps, logs and the earth of the flower beds at each side. She found the place where the creature had emerged from the ground, and the hard, dark-brown case which had enclosed it, still wet inside. ...
— A Girl Of The Limberlost • Gene Stratton Porter
... masterly keeper of her box of a house. Her one living-room never seemed to have in it any of the dust which the friction of life with inanimate matter produces. She swept, and there seemed to be no dirt to go before the broom; she cleaned, and one could see no difference. She was like an artist so perfect that he has apparently no art. To-day she got out a mixing bowl and a board, and rolled some pies, and there was no more flour upon her than upon ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... engaged in the Brighton card-sharping case, upon which so much stress was laid by the Claimant as proving his identity with Roger Tichborne, Roger not having been in the matter at all. I was counsel for one of the persons, the notorious Johnny Broom, who was indicted for fraud, and whose trial ought to have come on before Lord Chief Justice Jervis. He was not a good Judge, so far as the defendant was concerned, to try such a case, and that being Johnny's opinion, he absconded from his bail. The Lord Chief Justice ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... had passed, the head teacher said to me, "The adjoining recitation room needs sweeping. Take the broom and sweep it." ...
— The Upward Path - A Reader For Colored Children • Various
... had been unaware of when crossing the bed itself, now began again. The Wadi went rushing past before the broom of moonlight. Again, the enormous and the tiny combined in one single strange impression. For, through this conception of great movement, stirred also a roving, delicate touch that his imagination felt as bird-like. Behind ...
— Four Weird Tales • Algernon Blackwood
... known—in Norfolk at least—as the "philosopher of Massingham." When Burney at last gained the honour of a personal interview, he wished to procure some "relic" of Johnson for his friend. He cut off some bristles from a hearth-broom in the doctor's chambers, and sent them in a letter to his fellow-enthusiast. Long afterwards Johnson was pleased to hear of this simple-minded homage, and not only sent a copy of the Lives of the Poets ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... Orange Free State authorises the commandeering without payment of every available man, and of all available material of whatsoever kind within thirty days of war being declared. During those thirty days, therefore, the war-broom sweeps with a most commendable thoroughness; and all the more so, because after that date everything must be paid for at market values. Why pay, if being a little "previous" ...
— With the Guards' Brigade from Bloemfontein to Koomati Poort and Back • Edward P. Lowry
... the doorway of this stronghold of dirt and disorder, she paused, broom in hand. The floor, as usual, was littered with papers and strings, the beds were unmade, the wash-stand and dresser were piled high with a miscellaneous collection, and the drawers of each stood open, disgorging ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice
... whip; and neither his flesh nor his fur hints the weapon with which he is armed. The most silent creature known to me, he makes no sound, so far as I have observed, save a diffuse, impatient noise, like that produced by beating your hand with a whisk-broom, when the farm-dog has discovered his retreat in the stone fence. He renders himself obnoxious to the farmer by his partiality for hens' eggs and young poultry. He is a confirmed epicure, and at plundering hen-roosts an expert. Not ...
— Squirrels and Other Fur-Bearers • John Burroughs
... sweet myrtle let foreign lands reckon, Where bright-beaming summers exalt the perfume; Far dearer to me yon lone glen o' green breckan, Wi' the burn stealing under the lang yellow broom. ...
— Language of Flowers • Kate Greenaway
... the most audacious boy in all that country-side. When I had entered he was sweeping the shop, and he had sweetened his labors by sweeping over me. He was still sweeping when I came out into the shop with Mr. Trabb, and he knocked the broom against all possible corners and obstacles, to express (as I understood it) equality with any blacksmith, ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... over dry ground? Why did she go only through the water? The horseman meanwhile squatted down among the broom, rested his gun upon his knee, made sure that it was cocked and that the powder had not fallen from the pan, and noiselessly crouched down, gazing after the retreating steed, as she reached the opposite bank. Suddenly she drew in her tail, bristled her ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... the invariable business of flecking his neat gray business suit with a whisk broom, "you got up on the wrong side of bed this morning. Lilly, suppose you shine papa's ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... hotel opposite the Cafe du Dome, in Paris (the hotel in which it is said Whistler stayed when he was a student), which almost exactly resembled my room at Antoine's, even to the dust which was under the bed—until 'Genie got to work with broom and brush. Moreover, connected with my room there was a bath which actually had a chaufbain to heat the water: one of those weird French machines resembling the engine of a steam launch, which pops savagely when you light the gas beneath it, ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... work, until their Astrolagers tell them, it is a good hour to handle their Tools. And then both Men and Women do begin their proper works; the Man with his Ax, Bill, and Hough, and the Woman with her Broom, Pestle, and Fan to clean ...
— An Historical Relation Of The Island Ceylon In The East Indies • Robert Knox
... my kitchen and you shall keep your room Where white flows the river and bright blows the broom; And you shall wash your linen and keep your body white In rainfall at morning ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... tight, that tune o' his, It crawled on scalp and skin, Till sudden—'long o' choir-practice— The belfry bells swung in; The piping cove he turned and passed, Till through the golden broom A mile along we saw him last Go lone-like ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 29, 1914 • Various
... meal in this distressful country. To think of eating three times every day under such circumstances for three weeks yet—it is worse punishment than riding all day in the sun. There are sixteen starving babies from one to six years old in the party, and their legs are no larger than broom handles. Left the fountain at 1 P.M. (the fountain took us at least two hours out of our way,) and reached Mahomet's lookout perch, over Damascus, in time to get a good long look before it was necessary to move on. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... should never be swept down with a long broom, but always with a short-handled brush, a dust-pan being held closely under each step of the stairs during ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... those who rose and fell in the saddles immediately before them; sometimes the air cleared a little, the curtain rolled up a space, and for a minute or two they discerned stretches of unfertile fields, half-tilled and stony, or long tracts of gorse and broom, with here and there a thicket of dwarf shrubs or a wood of wind-swept pines. Some looked and saw these things; more rode on sulky and unseeing, supporting impatiently the toils of a flight ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... repeated, "we'll have it slick here in a minute. Let me take the broom. You've got it wrong side up. By Harry, we've got the deluge inside the ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... pastime. When my floor was dirty, I rose early, and, setting all my furniture out of doors on the grass, bed and bedstead making but one budget, dashed water on the floor, and sprinkled white sand from the pond on it, and then with a broom scrubbed it clean and white; and by the time the villagers had broken their fast the morning sun had dried my house sufficiently to allow me to move in again, and my meditations were almost uninterrupted. ...
— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock
... their sleeves at him all the time, and who brags about the meerschaum pipe which the seducer of his own daughter gives him as a birthday present! Why, if I thought that you had had any idea of this abomination, I would sweep you out of this room with the very broom with which I now sweep up the fragments of ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... to their obvious places upon the shelves and with a broom she battled with the dust upon the floor and drove it out the open door. Then she swept up the hearth, singing as she swept, and tidied the arrangement of books, bait and tobacco upon the mantel, fingering them with ...
— The Innocent Adventuress • Mary Hastings Bradley
... old woman staggered under this blow, but quickly recovered. "Dick Garland, you blank fool. Sit down, or I'll fetch you a swipe with the broom." ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... of pale lightning, and remote murmurings of thunder. But Tamar was not easily alarmed; she had been brought up independently, and already had she recovered the direct path from the village to Shanty's shed, when suddenly a tall figure of a female arose, as it were, out of the broom and gorse, and stepped in the direction in which she was going, walking by her side for a few ...
— Shanty the Blacksmith; A Tale of Other Times • Mrs. Sherwood [AKA: Mrs. Mary Martha Sherwood]
... shut within my mew, A-painting for the great man, saints and saints And saints again. I could not paint all night— Ouf! I leaned out of window for fresh air. {50} There came a hurry of feet and little feet, A sweep of lute-strings, laughs, and whifts of song— 'Flower o' the broom, Take away love, and our earth is a tomb! Flower o' the quince, I let Lisa go, and what good in life since? Flower o' the thyme'—and so on. Round they went. Scarce had they turned the corner when a titter Like the skipping of rabbits by moonlight,—three slim ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... was clothed in a robe of flame-colored silk, and about her neck was a collar of ruddy gold, on which were precious emeralds and rubies. More yellow was her head than the flowers of the broom, and her skin was whiter than the foam of the wave, and fairer were her hands and her fingers than the blossoms of the wood anemone amidst the spray of the meadow fountain. The eye of the trained hawk, the glance of the three-mewed ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... lower animals? There is many a respectable spider who would justly feel himself calumniated by any comparison between him and any one of twenty Parliamentary lawyers we could name; yet the spider spins its own web, and seeks its own nook of refuge from the Reform Broom of Molly the housemaid. And then, the tiny insect, the ant—that living, silent monitor to unregarding men—doth it not make its own galleries, build with toilsome art its own abiding place? Does not the mole scratch its own chamber—the carrion kite build its own nest! ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 16, 1841 • Various
... same fate a little later. The Dutch fleet was now in disorder, and retreated under cover of the squadron of Van Tromp, son of the famous old admiral who in the days of the Commonwealth sailed through the Channel with a broom at his masthead. ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... the first smoke of the great conflict, so all of my early memories of Green's coulee are permeated with the haze of the passing war-cloud. My soldier dad taught me the manual of arms, and for a year Harriet and I carried broom-sticks, flourished lath sabers, and hammered on dishpans in imitation of officers and drummers. Canteens made excellent water-bottles for the men in the harvest fields, and the long blue overcoats which the soldiers brought back with them from the south lent many a vivid ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... saw a little girl coming along a street. She was dreadfully blown by the wind, and a broom she was trailing behind her was very troublesome. It seemed as if the wind had a spite at her! It kept worrying her and tearing at her rags. She was ...
— At the Back of the North Wind • Elizabeth Lewis and George MacDonald
... know what I mean," said Tod, testily. "Get a broom or something of that sort, and dress it up with a mask and wings: and he is as scared over it now as he ever was. I ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... return, I saw nothing for a time but fans and feathers of browning fern, dark shags of ling, and podded spurs of broom and furze, and wisps of grass. With great relief (of which I felt ashamed while even breathing it), I thought that the man was afraid to tell the rest of his story, and had fled; but ere my cowardice had much time for self-congratulation a ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... was a hunchback, vehemently suspected of dealings in necromancy, and of riding to nocturnal orgies on a broomstick, according to the custom of witches. Certain persons had seen her putting the harness on her broom in the stable, which, as everyone knows is on the housetops. To tell the truth, she possessed certain medical secrets, and was of such great service to ladies in certain things, and to the nobles, that she lived ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... of a broom, carpet sweeper, or umbrella can be repaired with this first aid to the injured. In the same way the handles of golf sticks, baseball bats, flagstaffs and whips may be given a new lease ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... would you even higher fly, And found a "Cult"? You've but to try. That blend fools follow in full cry, Meaninglessness plus Mystery! A witch astride upon a broom, A bogie in a darkened room, Nonsense and nubibustic gloom,— Mix them like witch-broth; they will "boom"! Chorus—Tra-la! We "boom" to-day! [Till you ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, March 5, 1892 • Various
... we merely asked of intermediate places that they should not detain us. We dined in Grossetto at an inn of the Larthian period,—a cold inn and a damp, which seemed never to have been swept since the broom dropped from the grasp of the last Etrurian chambermaid,—and we ate with the two-pronged iron forks of an extinct civilization. All the while we dined, a boy tried to kindle a fire to warm us, and beguiled his incessant failures with stories of inundation on the road ahead of us. But we ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... gives us the line at the right side, and the figure of the cat carries the line of the woman's skirt into a corresponding slant on the left. The lines of the tiled floor add to the pyramidal effect by converging in perspective. Even the broom leaning against the shelf near the door takes the same diagonal direction as the tiles of the ...
— Jean Francois Millet • Estelle M. Hurll
... the good fortune to come from "the old county of Hanover," as that particular division of the State of Virginia is affectionately called by nearly all who are so lucky as to have first seen the light amid its broom-straw fields and heavy forests; and to this happy circumstance I owed the honor of a special visit from one of its most loyal citizens. Indeed, the glories of his native county were so embalmed in his ...
— P'laski's Tunament - 1891 • Thomas Nelson Page
... pasture ground, some parts covered by "lady-smocks, all silver white," with the course of the little stream through the midst indicated by a perfect golden river of shining kingcups interspersed with ferns. Beyond lay tracts of brown heath and brilliant gorse and broom, which stretched for miles and miles along the flats, while the dry ground was covered with holly brake, and here and there woods of oak and beech made a sea of verdure, purpling ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... so," answered the visitor. And when the pony had finished his oats Mr. Tallman stood in front of him, and, holding out a broom handle, as the ring-master in a circus ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue and Their Shetland Pony • Laura Lee Hope
... than the duties of the moment. It never occurred to Aunt Hannah to complain of anything that was. If her life spelled unrelieved drudgery she accepted it as the station to which it had pleased God to call her, and conceived that complaint would be a form of blasphemy. Now as she wielded her broom, her angular shoulders ached with rheumatism, and, in a voice as creaking as her joints, she sang, "For the Master said there is work to do!" Such was Aunt Hannah's creed, and it pleased her while she moiled over the work to announce in song that she acted upon divine command. To Aunt Hannah's ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... here?" he asked; "it is an unwholesome place for grief. Return to our mountains. Your native air will do you good. Come with me; I promise you that your unhappiness will not hold out against the perfume of broom and heather." Then he spoke with tender earnestness of my duties. He did not conceal from me the obligations my fortune and the position left me by my father, laid me under to the land where I was born; I had neglected ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... stature, I have been from infancy, small. I have the greatest respect for Maria Jane's Mama. She is a most remarkable woman. I honour Maria Jane's Mama. In my opinion she would storm a town, single-handed, with a hearth-broom, and carry it. I have never known her to yield any point whatever, to mortal man. She is calculated to ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... awful long speech fo' a hot day," said Mormon equably. "But I don't sabe that talk at all. Molly Casey ain't here, to begin with. Nor she ain't been here. An' I don't sabe no obstruction of the law by settin' up a fence in a mesa canyon to round up broom-tails." ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... With a broom in one hand, and feather dusting-brush in the other, she ran down the front steps, her white cap strings flying like distress signals,—bent down to the ground as a blood-hound might in scenting a trail,—then dashed back into the quiet old ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... poor brother Bill Used to be drawn to Pentonville, Stood in the lumber-room: I wiped the dust from off the top, While molly mopp'd it with a mop, And brush'd it with a broom. ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... witcheries we'll make you wish you'd kept out of this country. Good-night, and bad luck to you, Old Mog." Notwithstanding the words they used, there was terror in the voices of most of the children. Some of them shouted, "She's coming after us! The witch is coming after us! She's mounting her broom, and out she'll ride. Run—run—run!" On this the urchins shrieked louder, and ran faster and faster down the slope. One boy, more daring than the rest, and superior in appearance to most of them, lingered behind, and finding a stone remaining in his pocket of those with which he had, like his ...
— Mountain Moggy - The Stoning of the Witch • William H. G. Kingston
... long, and has an eastern flamboyant window, with others in the side walls. The arches are fast going to decay, the stone altar is also sculptured. When we saw it, the interior was filled with bundles of broom-branches and poultry. It is strange this little chapel, built by the Queen of two Kingdoms, should be suffered to fall to ruin for the ...
— Brittany & Its Byways • Fanny Bury Palliser
... consternation he suddenly appeared from behind a hayrick. I was so startled that I turned to fly, and in my precipitancy tripped on a tussock and fell. Mr. Diggles came to my assistance, and, when he had helped me to my feet and brushed me down with a birch broom he was carrying, I could do nothing less than buy ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 7, 1919. • Various
... leeward of our last boat, continued dropping them athwart our course, and finished dropping them far to windward of our first weather boat. The hunting, for us, was spoiled. There were no seals behind us, and ahead of us the line of fourteen boats, like a huge broom, swept the ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... is the result of my own observation upon that species of the insect called a house spider. I perceived about four years ago a large spider in one corner of my room, making its web; and tho the maid frequently leveled her fatal broom against the labors of the little animal, I had the good fortune then to prevent its destruction; and I may say it more than paid me by ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... shop, and the shop only, Lablache," Dingan said grimly. "I'm not huckstering my home, and I'd choose the buyer if I was selling. My lodge ain't to be bought, nor anything in it—not even the broom to keep it clean of any half-breeds that'd enter it ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... no. Make what he likes of himself. A crossing sweeper, if he fancies that. Buy him a crossing and a broom, ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... of the old Inn where I live with the heart of a boy. Across Lincoln's Inn Fields, down by the Law Courts, and so to Waterloo. I felt I must have a confidante, so I told the slate-coloured pigeons in the square where I was off—out among the thrushes, the broom, and the may. But they wouldn't come. They evidently deemed that a legal purlieu was a better place ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... witches could change themselves, and other people, into the form of animals. In Wales, the cat and the hare were the favourite animals into which witches transformed themselves, but they did not necessarily confine themselves to these animals. They were able to travel in the air on a broom-stick; make children ill; give maids the nightmare; curse with madness, animals; bring misfortune on families; hinder the dairy maid from making butter; and many more imaginary things were ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... served on plates on the kitchen table, reassembled itself in the pie tin and walked out of the kitchen door when Annie changed the plates in the dining room. One entire loaf of bread vanished from the earth while Annie was trying to expel Ernest from the kitchen with a broom. ...
— Chicken Little Jane on the Big John • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... scattered about in the most agreeable way, such as is only practicable in a country in a state of considerable security. Some of them were surrounded by a bush like the broom, growing to a height of ten or twelve feet. The doctor and his native companions passed through a village in which was a large market-place consisting of several rows of well-built sheds. The market ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... He changed from a statue of stupefaction to a young man with a problem to tackle. He admitted Nevada, got a whisk-broom, and began to brush the snow from her clothes. A great lamp, with a green shade, hung over an easel, where the artist had been sketching ...
— Options • O. Henry
... sofa, a great low red shadow in the depths of the room near the window. She leaned her broom beside her. Her dust cloth fell to the floor and was ...
— The Inferno • Henri Barbusse
... woman tossed up in a basket, Ninety times as high as the moon; And where she was going, I couldn't but ask it, For in her hand she carried a broom. Old woman, old woman, old woman, quoth I, O whither, O whither, O whither, so high? To sweep the cobwebs off the sky! Shall I go with you? Aye, by ...
— Young Canada's Nursery Rhymes • Various
... then old Wolde came limping by, with a new broom which she had bought in the town for Sidonia, no doubt to lay under the table, as she was wont; ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... stepped aside from the road and found a little dell thick with underwoods, and in it a clear spring gurgling among the ferns and mosses. Around the opening grew wild gooseberries and golden broom and a few tall spires of purple foxglove. He drew off his dusty boots and socks and bathed his feet in a small pool, drying them with fern leaves. Then he took a slice of bread and a piece of cheese from his pocket and made his breakfast. ...
— The Broken Soldier and the Maid of France • Henry Van Dyke
... frowsy woman on the first, who sat on the front steps in her soiled breakfast cap and bungalow apron. She hated the nervous tenant who occupied the apartment just over her mother's three-room-and-bath, and pounded with a broom handle on the floor when Lorraine practised overtime ...
— The Quirt • B.M. Bower
... posies! Here's your choice unsold! Buy a blood-red myrtle-bloom, Buy the kowhai's gold Flung for gift on Taupo's face, Sign that spring is come— Buy my clinging myrtle And I'll give you back your home! Broom behind the windy town; pollen o' the pine— Bell-bird in the leafy deep where the ratas twine— Fern above the saddle-bow, flax upon the plain— Take the flower and turn the hour, and kiss your ...
— The Kipling Reader - Selections from the Books of Rudyard Kipling • Rudyard Kipling
... were at that moment in the elevator, ascending. "Whisk-broom up in the office," Sheridan was saying. "You got to look out on those corners nowadays, I tell you. I don't know I got any call to blow, though—because I tried to cross after you did. That's how I happened to run into you. Well, you want to remember to look out after this. We were talkin' ...
— The Turmoil - A Novel • Booth Tarkington
... shadow thrown on the white limestone far on high, and directly after one of the great glossy black birds alight, right on the edge of the cliff, from whence it hopped into the air, and seemed to let itself fall some forty feet, down behind a stunted patch of broom, which had rooted in a cleft. There it disappeared for a few moments, to reappear, diving down toward the stream, but only to circle upward again, rise higher and higher, and finally disappear over the cliff, half a quarter ...
— The Black Tor - A Tale of the Reign of James the First • George Manville Fenn
... (and rightly) the absence in the tropic forests of such grand masses of colour as are supplied by a heather moor, a furze or broom-croft, a field of yellow charlock, blue bugloss, or scarlet poppy. Tropic landscape gardening will supply that defect; and a hundred plants of yellow Allamanda, or purple Dolichos, or blue Clitoria, or crimson Norantea, set side by side, as we might use a hundred Calceolarias or Geraniums, ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... front bell during this interesting conversation had not been noticed. The charwoman, still busy with broom and pail outside, knocked at the door with a knock which might have been given with the broom-handle and announced ...
— Catharine Furze • Mark Rutherford
... was generally asleep with a whisk broom in one hand and the other hand extended with the palm up, waiting for a dividend ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... you think we two are sufficient? Had we not better get more help? There is Broom, and Black, the gipsy, at the rendezvous. I can go for them, and be back in time: ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat
... home." And, as Therese remained silent, immovable, Fusellier came near her with his broom, hiding with his left hand ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... present outward woman stands to me in lieu of the housemaid's broom, and the united authority of the Captain and Mrs. Crompton make up the mistress between them. And the worst of it all is, that though I have to endure the tyranny, I have not got the follower. It is as hard upon Mr. Shand as it ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... which he had thoughtfully sent for my convenience to the railway station, I drove, one sunny morning in October, through the graceful, hilly landscape of Kent, that with the chequered foliage of its woods, with its stretches of purple heath, yellow broom, and evergreen oaks, was arrayed in its fairest autumnal dress. As the carriage drew up in front of Darwin's pleasant country house, clad in a vesture of ivy and embowered in elms, there stepped out to meet me from the shady porch, ...
— Life of Charles Darwin • G. T. (George Thomas) Bettany
... bride, the goddess Diana, with the crescent on her head, and attended by our big lazy dog, in lack of any fleeter hound. Drawing an arrow from her quiver, she let it fly at a venture, and hit the very tree behind which I happened to be lurking. Another group consisted of a Bavarian broom-girl, a negro of the Jim Crow order, one or two foresters of the Middle Ages, a Kentucky woodsman in his trimmed hunting-shirt and deerskin leggings, and a Shaker elder, quaint, demure, broad-brimmed, and square-skirted. Shepherds of Arcadia, and allegoric figures from the "Faerie Queen," ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... they might have sat down to dinner. Madame Pfeiffer began to think that it would be better to have no cloth at all. She was mistaken! One day she saw the steward belabouring a piece of sailcloth, which was stretched on the deck under his feet, to receive a good sweeping from the ship's broom. The numerous spots of dirt and grease showed plainly that it was the table-cloth; and that same evening the table was bare. The consequence was, that the teapot had no sooner been placed upon it ...
— The Story of Ida Pfeiffer - and Her Travels in Many Lands • Anonymous
... and Little John Down a down, a down, a down, Went o'er yon bank of broom, Said Robin Hood to Little John, "We have shot for many a pound: Hey down, ...
— The Book of Old English Ballads • George Wharton Edwards
... family house or dwelling are buildings for the various pursuits of the society: the sisters' shop, where tailoring, basket-making, and other female industries are carried on; the brothers' shop, where broom-making, carpentry, and other men's pursuits are followed; the laundry, the stables, the fruit-house, wood-house, and often machine ...
— The Communistic Societies of the United States • Charles Nordhoff
... and while he said how happy his parents were and how kind the master was to them, I could see the house on the hill with its garden in flower, and its spring from which the little brooklets crawled down to the river, hiding themselves under the broom. I often spoke of it to Sister Desiree-des-Anges, who listened to me meditatively. She knew the neighbourhood and every corner of the place, and one evening, when she sat dreaming and I asked her what she was thinking about, she said, "Summer ...
— Marie Claire • Marguerite Audoux
... gipsy woman—still stout and hearty, with green fresh brooms to sell. We bought some brooms—one of them was left on the kitchen floor, and the tame rabbit nibbled it; it proved to be heather. The true broom is as green and succulent in appearance in January as June. She would see the 'missis.' 'Bless you, my good lady, it be weather, bean't it? I hopes you'll never know what it be to want, my good lady. Ah, well, you looks good-tempered ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... besides the squire's guests to take their education in hand, and teach pheasants at least that they are no native British birds. These are a wild set, living scattered about the wild country; turf-cutters, broom-makers, squatters, with indefinite occupations, and nameless habits, a race hated of keepers and constables. These have increased and flourished of late years; and, notwithstanding the imprisonments ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... is an easy thing. I do skin off the potatoes and schop up the meat for the hash, and Babette, she do sweep with the broom and set out the table. And while we work she can tell me all there is going about outside, and I can tell how mooch bettare I am doing ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... use, dame Peake; they won't be gammon'd, take notice. If you have any old broom-handles, throw 'em out directly, and if not, throw all the brooms you have in the house out of window—throw out all your sticks—throw Peake out. I'm for the gown, take notice. Down with the ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... how hot the water must be when maize meal or sweet-broom meal has to be mixed with it, how the whole mess must be stirred with a spoon, how a little finely grated cheese has to be added to it, and how it had then all to be tied up in a cloth like a plum-pudding and have milk poured over ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... naught to do but learn of the Black Man now; they do say he rides his ferule and bunch of twigs high up in the air, like Mistress Hibbins used her broom-stick," cried William Bartholomew, the sneak ...
— Harper's Young People, May 25, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... very short time to clear the path; the dust was so light that one sweep of the broom cleared it away. When they got to the farther end they returned to examine the floor. For four or five feet from the cistern the rock had been evidently untouched, except to cut off any projecting points. Then there was a clear line running across the path. ...
— The Treasure of the Incas • G. A. Henty
... up to sweep the parlor, and she swept and she swept till the clock struck twelve, when she dropped her broom in a hurry, and exclaiming, "Lawks! the gingerbread will be all baked to a cinder," she ran down into the kitchen, and threw open the oven door. And the square cakes were all done, nice and hard and brown, and the round cakes were all ...
— The Little Gingerbread Man • G. H. P.
... Bruce Fearing! The sight was so strange that Elliott's broom stopped moving. The two boys at the dish-pan chaffed each other good-naturedly; their jokes might have seemed a little forced, had you examined them carefully, but the effect was normal and cheering. Now and then they threw a ...
— The Camerons of Highboro • Beth B. Gilchrist
... diligent beginning with his office, for that, entering a saloon on the ground floor, they saw there the tables laid with the whitest of cloths and beakers that seemed of silver and everything covered with the flowers of the broom; whereupon, having washed their hands, they all, by command of the queen, seated themselves according to Parmeno's ordinance. Then came viands delicately drest and choicest wines were proffered and the three serving-men, without more, quietly tended the tables. All, being gladdened by these things, ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... couldn't be readily identified as being something very earthly. We had a contract with a materials-testing laboratory, and they would analyze any piece of material that we found or was sent to us. The tar-covered marble, aluminum broom handle, cow manure, slag, pieces of plastic balloon, and the what-have-you that we did receive and analyze only served to give the people in our material lab some practice and added nothing but laughs to the ...
— The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects • Edward Ruppelt
... Jennie, he held up a broom and they would have to jump over it backwards and then old man Glass pronounced them ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Arkansas Narratives Part 3 • Works Projects Administration
... the conqueror had kept the sword handed to him on this occasion, and was rather disappointed to learn that it was given back. Once I found in the garret a bayonet which my grandma said had been carried by grandfather in the war. I turned it with a broom-handle into a lance and made ferocious charges ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... witch saw there was no help to be got from her old servants, and that the best thing she could do was to mount on her broom and set off in pursuit of the children. And as the children ran they heard the sound of the broom sweeping the ground close behind them, so instantly they threw the handkerchief down over their shoulder, and in a moment a deep, ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Various
... the morning along came the gaoler. The cell was opened and a broom was thrust into my hands. To me that domestic utensil was as a new toy to a child. I grasped it with delight: it at least would give me some occupation. I set to sweeping the cell furiously. I could have enjoyed the company ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... air reeked of the dead Romans who builded London twelve hundred years ago. Methinks, too, from the stink, they must have been Roman swineherd who habited this sty with their herds, an' I venture that thou, old sow, hast never touched broom to the place for fear of disturbing the ancient ...
— The Outlaw of Torn • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... happened all at once that helped Spot's spirits amazingly. The woodshed door flew open and Miss Kitty Cat all but flew out of it. Farmer Green's wife appeared in the doorway with a broom in her hand. And with it she helped Miss Kitty into the yard. She helped her so much that Miss Kitty never touched the ...
— The Tale of Old Dog Spot • Arthur Scott Bailey
... should be her faithful, loving, and sincere. servant. If she would only show her what to do, she would work for her as a child that loved her. And so indeed she did. My dear mother would laugh and say she was quite a fine lady now, for Frida would not let her touch broom nor mop, ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale
... he arrived at home, a little after midnight, he found the place deserted, and was compelled to usher his friend in through the parlor window; that from top to bottom the mansion gave evidence of not having seen a broom or a dust-brush since the departure of the family; that Jane had not been seen in the neighborhood for one full week—this came from those living on adjoining property; that Ellen had been absent since early that morning, and was not expected to return for three days; and, ...
— Paste Jewels • John Kendrick Bangs
... the glass and china, the lady shakes the table- cloth, folds it, and puts it away. She then takes a light brush broom and sweeps the dining-room, and dusts it carefully, opening a window to air the apartment. When this is done she sets the parlor in order. The maid-of-all-work should, in the mean time, make a visit to the bedrooms, and do the heavy work of turning ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... mountains and wild nature is of recent growth. One writer in the seventeenth century considered the Alps as so much rubbish swept together by the broom of nature to clear the plains of Italy. A seventeenth century traveler thought the Welsh mountains better than the Alps because the former would pasture goats. Dr. Johnson asked, "Who can like the Highlands?" The influence of the ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... in their places, but despite her awkwardness, the girl went about her unaccustomed tasks with a light heart. It was for her new-found hero that she played at housekeeping. For his commendation she filled the tea-kettle, enveloped herself in a cloud of dust as she wielded the stub of a broom she discovered, and washed the greasy dishes after the water was hot. A childish pleasure suffused her. All her life her least whims had been ministered to; she was reveling in a first attempt at service. As she moved to and fro with an improvised dust-rag, sunshine filled her being. From her lips ...
— Ridgway of Montana - (Story of To-Day, in Which the Hero Is Also the Villain) • William MacLeod Raine
... tell them you did it—and be quick about it." "But you can't expect even the Neutralians to swallow that!" "Why, you fool, they'd swallow anything! That's the meaning of their phrase 'rubber-neck.'" There's a photo of the Queen of Rowdydaria coming up at this point, snatching the broom away, and beating the up-and-down girl with it, and calling her "Spying English Pig." Altogether, my dear, it's positively enthralling! Order your copy early, for people will be slaying each other for this book. Astounding Disclosures of an Up-and-down Girl in the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, February 16, 1916 • Various
... I don't believe you were prayin'. I heard the knockin' o' your whis'-broom. You was ...
— Martha By-the-Day • Julie M. Lippmann
... boards and carpet and pushed the bed into its corner. Then he gathered up the money, rolling some of it in a piece of linen, which he packed in his suitcase, and putting the rest in a money belt about his waist. After that he took up his hat and Jim slipped away to a broom closet at the upper ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... crossing a wild and marshy heath, you notice a lonely house surrounded by thorny broom, the aspect of which is forbidding, though it is gaily painted. Surely, you think, it can only be the gloomy tales with which my guide has beguiled this morning's walk, that make one suspect there is a history connected with that house; and you ask him its name. "That is Chanty, ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... broom, the yellow broom, The ancient poets sung it, And sweet it is on summer days To lie at ease ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... unromantic workman mowed it down—but by this time there was a little house there which Mrs. Clemens had built, just for the children. It was a complete little cottage, when furnished. There was a porch in front, with comfortable chairs. Inside were also chairs, a table, dishes, shelves, a broom, even a stove—small, but practical. They called the little house "Ellerslie," out of Grace Aguilar's "Days of Robert Bruce." There alone, or with their Langdon cousins, how many happy summers they played and dreamed away. Secluded by ...
— The Boys' Life of Mark Twain • Albert Bigelow Paine
... tent," called Hazelton, as Dick started inside to use a broom there. "You fellows are the providers, and I can do the little housework that's left ...
— The High School Boys' Fishing Trip • H. Irving Hancock
... he's got home, anyway," she remarked, aloud, to herself as she hung her dish-cloth tidily over the upturned dish-pan and took up her broom. "I 'ain't felt noways easy 'bout her sence she left, though I do suppose there ain't any sense to it. But I'm ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... stable have fatty livers and kidneys, and never again do well on ordinary feed. Diuresis may further occur from increase of blood pressure in the kidneys (diseases of the heart or lungs which hinder the onward passage of the blood, the eating of digitalis, English broom, the contraction of the blood vessels on the surface of the body in cold weather, etc.); also from acrid or diuretic plants taken with the feed (dandelion, burdock, colchicum, digitalis, savin, resinous shoots, etc.); from excess ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... his big whisk broom and told Luck that they would all presently be gazing at Dry Lake, or words which carried that meaning. So Luck permitted himself to be whisked from a half dollar while his thoughts were "in the field" with his ...
— The Phantom Herd • B. M. Bower
... in jest, and half in earnest, he told the lad to drive the pigs into a pond close by. Joseph, nothing loath, set to work with a will, delighted with the fun. The woman, to whom the pigs belonged, came out presently, broom in hand, flourishing it over the young sinner's head. The tempter was standing by, and sought to cover his share of the transaction by shaking ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... staying in the hotels resent us. They look on us as a menagerie—a rabble. So we are. At least, they are. I don't count myself in with them. What can I do? I'm not omnipotent. Perhaps you are. Anyhow, they're prepared to believe it, for you're a new broom—a broom with a fine handle. I'm only a poor colonel with a few medals given by my country for services that were appreciated. You're brother ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... watched over by the same pitiless laws. Cheapest, say the prudent, is the dearest labor. What we buy in a broom, a mat, a wagon, a knife, is some application of good sense to a common want. It is best to pay in your land a skillful gardener, or to buy good sense applied to gardening; in your sailor, good sense applied to navigation; in the house, good sense ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... that who make the Bargain: Besides, if he had not had a Mind to cheat or baffle the poor Man, what need he have taken a Cow so near home? if he had such and such Powers as we talk of, and as Fancy and Fable furnish for him, could not he have carried a Cow in the Air upon a Broom-stick, as well as an old Woman? Could he not have stole a Cow for him in Lincolnshire, and set it down in Herefordshire, and so have performed his Bargain, saved his Credit, and kept the poor Man out of Trouble? so that if the Story is True, as I really believe ...
— The History of the Devil - As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts • Daniel Defoe
... edge, and almost to the bottom of the Chine; and here, amid laurel and rhododendron, broom and gorse, the garden merges into a network of paths and stairways, with tempting seats and unexpected arbors at every turn. This seductive little labyrinth is of Mrs. Stevenson's own designing. She makes the whole garden her special ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... A dark, fleshy broom-rape, with scaly leaves. We have one species of the same genus in England. They are parasitic on the roots of plants; and the Midianite species, which is found in North Africa, Egypt, and Arabia, grows on the roots ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 2 • Richard Burton
... to pile against the tent. Singular as it may seem, on the east end of the building, and on the south front, which looked in towards the cliff next the cove, there was scarcely any snow at all. This was in part owing to the constant use of the shovel and broom, but more so to the currents of air, which usually carried everything of so light a nature as a flake to more quiet spots, before it was suffered to settle on ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... consists of hot roast meat, hot baked potatoes, hot cabbage, hot pumpkin, hot peas, and burning-hot plum-pudding. The family drinks on an average four cups of tea each per meal. The wife takes her place at the head of the table with a broom to keep the fowls out, and at short intervals she interrupts the conversation with such exclamations as "Shoo! shoo!" "Tommy, can't you see that fowl? Drive it out!" The fowls evidently pass a lot of their time in the house. They mark the circle described by the broom, and take ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... way you have of relating a story,' said the carpet-broom; 'it is easy to perceive that you have been a great deal in women's society, there is something so pure runs ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... housekeeper fell upon them with a broom, and the boys scampered away, amidst shouts and laughter. Worse half opened his eyes for a moment, and then laid his head back again on ...
— Skipper Worse • Alexander Lange Kielland
... his own room to wash and dress; which process completed, he entered the dining-room to find the table laid with tea-things and a bottle of rum. Clearly no broom had yet touched the place, for there remained traces of the previous night's dinner and supper in the shape of crumbs thrown over the floor and tobacco ash on the tablecloth. The host himself, when he entered, was still clad in a dressing-gown exposing a hairy chest; and ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... Nearly half a century passed before the face of a white man was again seen at the mouth of the river, and all the toil of Kino, Garces, and the rest was apparently as completely wasted as if they had tried to stop the flow of the Colorado with a broom. ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... with round beehive ricks and past meadows on which a flock of gulls, looking in the distance like a bed of white crocuses, were settled in platoons. As we neared the coast the scenery changed to shifting dunes of pale sand, fine as flour, and tufted with tussocks of wiry grass. Here clumps of broom and beech, with an occasional fir, maintained a desperate existence against the salt winds from the Atlantic, and the beeches held up plaintive arms like caryatids supporting the intolerable architrave of the sky. The bare needle-like branches of the ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... twenty years back had increased more than a third, the keeper who had them in charge was obliged to make them fast or ruin himself.—With respect to the mode of filling the depots, the police are Turks in their treatment of the lower class; they strike into the heap, their broom bruising as many as they sweep out. According to the ordinance of 1778, writes an intendant,[5334] "the police must arrest not only beggars and vagabonds whom they encounter but, again, those denounced as such or as suspected ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... pocketed his card I glanced at Madonna Serafina, wondering whether she had an eye for contrasts. She had picked up one of the little couples and was tenderly dusting it with a feather broom. ...
— The Madonna of the Future • Henry James
... compared to nitrogen (N). Quick laboratory analysis of protein content is not done by measuring actual protein itself but by measuring the amount of combined nitrogen the protein gives off while decomposing. Acacia, alder, and leaves of other proteinaceous legumes such as locust, mesquite, scotch broom, vetch, alfalfa, beans, and peas have low C/N ratios because legume roots uniquely can shelter clusters of nitrogen-fixing rhizobia. These microorganisms can supply all the nitrate nitrogen fast-growing legumes can use if the soil is also well endowed with other ...
— Organic Gardener's Composting • Steve Solomon
... fleets the Dutch were defeated, and the mercury of Parliamentarian pride rose. In the next combat Van Tromp, the veteran Dutch admiral, drove Blake with a shattered fleet into the Thames. Van Tromp swept the Channel in triumph, with a broom at his mast-head. The hopes of the members went down to zero. They agreed to disband in November. Cromwell promised to reduce the army. But Blake put to sea again, fought Van Tromp in a four days' running fight, and won the honors of the combat. Up again went the mercury ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... to utter one word agin the poor and afflicted, Mr. John, but when the Widder Stebbins hit Cleo with a broom to-day I own I b'iled over. I shouldn't tell you ...
— The Romance of an Old Fool • Roswell Field
... read an excellent essay, opposing the national bank system. Mrs. Bristol gave an instructive lesson in political economy on "Appropriation." The next lesson will be upon "Changes of Matter in Place." Appropriate remarks were made by Mrs. Neyman of New York, Mr. Broom, Mrs. Duffey and Mr. Bristol. Several new names were added to the list of membership. Miss Etta Taylor gave another recitation, which closed the exercises of the afternoon. In the evening a pleasant reception was held, and many invited guests were present. The exercises consisted of vocal ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... of the urban centre, and athwart the shining advertisements that will adorn them, will go the ceremonial procession, all glorious with banners and censer-bearers, and the meek blue-shaven priests and barefooted, rope-girdled, holy men. And the artful politician of the coming days, until the broom of the New Republic sweep him up, will arrange the miraculous planks of his platform always with an eye upon the priest. Within the ample sheltering arms of the Mother Church many eccentric cults will develop. The curious may ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... of the day by the river side, and in the afternoon she joined him with her two children. He was busily engaged crooning to himsel; and Mrs. Burns, perceiving that her presence was an interruption, loitered behind with her little ones among the broom. Her attention was presently attracted by the strange and wild gesticulations of the bard, who was now seen at some distance, agonized with an ungovernable access of joy. He was reciting very loud, ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... as the loveliest light in which to see the last of the hill. On that evening, I remember, the reds and saffrons in the sky were of an astonishing richness. The sea wall, the bastions, the faces of the great rocks, the yellow broom that sprang from the clefts therein, were dyed as in a carmine bath. In that mighty glow of color, all things took on something of their old, their stupendous splendor. The giant walls were paved with brightness. The town, ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... over the fields and the hill. Clumps of withered grass stood out upon the hill-top; the furze bushes were black, and now and then a black shiver crossed the snow as the wind drove flurries of frozen particles before it. The sound was that of a broom sweeping—sweeping. ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf |
