"Floss" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Westminster Review; literary and scientific men Her alliance with George Henry Lewes Her life with him Literary labors First work of fiction, "Amos Barton," with criticism upon her qualities as a novelist, illustrated by the story "Mr. Gilfils Love Story" "Adam Bede" "The Mill on the Floss" "Silas Marner" "Romola" "Felix Holt" "Middlemarch" "Daniel Deronda" "Theophrastus Such" General characteristics of George Eliot Death of Mr. Lewes; her marriage with Mr. Cross Lofty position of George Eliot in literature Religious views and philosophical opinions ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VII • John Lord
... worked in a variety of ways, to suit taste and convenience. The border is often made to resemble black lace, and when properly executed, looks extremely well. The parts filled up, should be worked in black floss or black wool. Leaves may be worked with gold twist, or beads may be employed. The grounding should be in fine twisted silk: any color may be used. In other cases, white wool, white silk, silver and glass beads, and several other materials are in requisition; so that here is ample scope for classification ...
— The Ladies' Work-Table Book • Anonymous
... pins, bought for Court, and a pair of pearl earings, the cost of them—no matter what—less than diamonds, however. A sapphire blue demi-saison with a satin stripe, sack and petticoat trimmed with a broad black lace; crape flounce, & leave made of blue ribbon, and trimmed with white floss; wreaths of black velvet ribbon spotted with steel beads, which are much in fashion, and brought to such perfection as to resemble diamonds; white ribbon also in the van dyke style, made up of the trimming, which looked very elegant, a full dress handkerchief, and a bouquet ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... neighbourhood of that quiet town, and was not likely to be home till afternoon tea. Bessie was left in charge of the younger members of the household, and was further deeply engaged in an elaborate piece of ecclesiastical embroidery, all crimson and gold, and peacock floss, which she hoped to finish before All ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... Rob deliberately, "it is mostly tucked away under a modest little cap; but, were it not for that wise restraint, I should say it might be that kind of fluffy, fly-away floss-silk, which puts the finishing touch to a dainty, ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay
... expect I have dragged off my green floss," exclaimed her aunt, in irritation. "I ...
— Five Little Peppers and their Friends • Margaret Sidney
... twilight fell like silver floss, where rose the golden moon half-hid Behind a shadowy pyramid; a ...
— Fifty years & Other Poems • James Weldon Johnson
... allowed poor Pike no peaceful thought, no calm absorption of high mind into the world of flies, no placid period of cobblers' wax, floss-silk, turned hackles, and dubbing. For in making of flies John Pike had his special moments of inspiration, times of clearer insight into the everlasting verities, times of brighter conception and more subtle execution, tails of more elastic grace and heads ...
— Crocker's Hole - From "Slain By The Doones" By R. D. Blackmore • R. D. Blackmore
... one," confided Nell. "He had on five yesterday, and two this morning. He spilt his porridge down one at breakfast, and he nursed Floss in the other. She had just come in from the garden, and her paws were ...
— The Nicest Girl in the School - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... the robins build their nest? Robin Red Breast told me, First a wisp of yellow hay In a pretty round they lay; Then some shreds of downy floss, Feathers too, and bits of moss, Woven with a sweet, sweet song, This way, that way, and across: ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photograph, Volume 1, Number 2, February, 1897 • anonymous
... closed room the detonation was deafening; it rattled the windows, it seemed to bulge the very walls. Blake felt a heavy blow which drove the floss-filled pillows against his body with the force of a giant hammer, it tore them from his grip, it crushed the breath from his lungs and spun him half around. Seeing that he did not fall, Maruffi cocked and fired a second time without aiming, but ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... crossing the sheets of broader cloud above; and all these bathed throughout in an unspeakable light of pure rose-color, and purple, and amber, and blue, not shining, but misty-soft, the barred masses, when seen nearer, found to be woven in tresses of cloud, like floss silk, looking as if each knot were a little swathe or sheaf of ...
— The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century - Two Lectures delivered at the London Institution February - 4th and 11th, 1884 • John Ruskin
... whenever I eat them. You have to come down on the meat with such force to make any impression on it, that more gets pushed up between your teeth than goes down your alimentary canal; then you spend the balance of the night squandering Japanese dental floss. I unconsciously finish my prayers with "Lord preserve us from the holy trinity of roast beef, ...
— Letters of a Dakota Divorcee • Jane Burr
... he groaned, rather than murmured, as she disappeared around the corner of the veranda. She was a chubby, roundfaced child, with great brown eyes and curls like yellow floss; from her childishness and ignorance of what children at ten years of age are usually taught, she was supposed by strangers to be no more than eight years of age; she was an imperious little lady, impetuous, ...
— Miss Prudence - A Story of Two Girls' Lives. • Jennie Maria (Drinkwater) Conklin
... Sam scalped her new doll, and fastened the glossy black curls to a wigwam improvised with the curtains of the four-post bed in the best bedroom, Dot was sorely tried. As her eyes passed from the crown-less doll on the floor to the floss-silk ringlets hanging from the bed-furniture, her round rosy face grew rounder and rosier, and tears burst from her eyes. But in a moment more she clenched her little fists, forced back the tears, and gave vent to her favourite ...
— The Brownies and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... "Floss tells me you're about at the end of your rope—what?" said Gardner. "Clarence is the limit, of course, but don't be too much in a hurry, old girl. We'd be—we'd be awfully sorry to have you come to a smash, don't ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... of "The Mill on the Floss" little description of her child-life will be necessary. She has, in Maggie, pictured herself as nearly as possible during childhood. Here is ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... floss It nestles, sister, from the heat— A gracious growth of tender moss Whose nights are soft, whose days ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall
... pure light and heat? Yes! he, too, has got a little home down in the swamp over there,—that bit of a knot on the young oak-sapling. Last year we found a nest (and brought it home) lined with the floss of willow-catkin, stuck all over with lichens, deep enough to secure the two pure round pearls from being thrown out, strongly fastened to the forked branch,—a home so snug, so warm, so soft!—a home ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... said, "the day of yesterday you so big and strong. The morning of to-day you have the weakness of cold body. That Jack Floss him ...
— Little Sister Snow • Frances Little
... 's a garden that slopes to the south and the sun, A garden in Kerry I know, Where the poppy 's a-bloom, and the red roses run O'er the wall, and the pampas-plume's streamers seem spun Of the floss of the moon in the dusk watches won, And ...
— Sprays of Shamrock • Clinton Scollard
... wuz goin' to devour a fearful amount of time, she had got to embroider three night-shirts for Whitfield with fine linen floss. ...
— Samantha at the World's Fair • Marietta Holley
... got sixpence,' he said; 'that'll buy milk for her. We'll manage quite well, Floss. When mother goes out with her market-basket, we'll slip downstairs with Dickory, and well take her away, and we'll hide her somewhere. She shan't go to no workhouse, ...
— Dickory Dock • L. T. Meade
... exhibited, were of two sorts—the small groups being done with fine twisted silks in a simple "over and over" stitch, called at that time "satin stitch," alike on both sides, except that on the right side the flowers and leaves were raised from the surface by an under thread of cotton floss called "stuffing." This did not prevent, as it might easily have done, an unvarying regularity and smoothness, which was like satin itself, thread laid beside thread as if it were ...
— The Development of Embroidery in America • Candace Wheeler
... am grateful and yet rather sad to have finished; sad that I shall live with my people on the banks of the Floss no longer. But it is time that I should go, and absorb some new life and gather fresh ideas." They went at once to Italy, where they spent several months in ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton
... from between the teeth silk or linen floss can be recommended. Holding the thread between the fingers of each hand force it down between two teeth and bring it back and forth. If you have no regular dental floss, use any white silk thread for the purpose. It does ...
— Vitality Supreme • Bernarr Macfadden
... given a description of the carvings of this splendid cabinet, let me turn your attention to the enrichments in needlework, worked on black velvet, from nature, by Miss Kingsbury. The mottoes in frame for the different seasons are worked in floss silk of various colors; the inside doors—five in number—with wild flowers; and in front are rich specimens of raised embroidery, extending to the inside, and protected with plate glass. Miss Kingsbury is a young lady of Taunton, who has made this ...
— Young Americans Abroad - Vacation in Europe: Travels in England, France, Holland, - Belgium, Prussia and Switzerland • Various
... moved to another home, in the parish of Griff, where her childhood was largely passed. The scenery of the Midland counties and many details of her own family life are reflected in her earlier novels. Thus we find her and her brother, as Maggie and Tom Tulliver, in The Mill on the Floss; her aunt, as Dinah Morris, and her mother, as Mrs. Poyser, in Adam Bede. We have a suggestion of her father in the hero of the latter novel, but the picture is more fully drawn as Caleb Garth, in Middlemarch. For a few years she studied at two private schools ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... cups, which one of the statues held, sat down in the faint moonshine, with which she had thus flooded the room, and fell into a train of restless thought; a pale gleam darted up now and then from the lilies, and trembled through the floss-like curls under which she had thrust her hand, revealing a face more earnest and thoughtful than was usual to the gay young creature. Whether it was that she had become anxious from the dart of suspicion that had been that day cast at her brother's wife, or ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... of her daughter, and her charges to let no persuasion induce him to consent to Babington's overtures, adding that she hoped soon to obtain permission to have the maiden amongst her authorised attendants. She gave him a billet, loosely tied with black floss silk and unsealed, so that if needful, Sadler and Shrewsbury might both inspect the tender, playful, messages she wrote to her "mignonne," and which she took care should not outrun those which she had often addressed ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the Agony Column of a daily paper is not actually so domestic as it seems. When "Mother" apparently says to "Floss," "Come home at once. Father gone away for week. Bert and Sid longing to see you," what is really happening is that Barney Hoker is telling Jud Batson to meet him outside the Duke of Westminster's little place at 3 a.m. precisely on Tuesday morning, not forgetting ...
— Happy Days • Alan Alexander Milne
... at the oven, having to push Charity Bradbridge out of her way, who was staring open-mouthed at the brilliant parrot wrought in floss silks on the exterior of Mrs ...
— All's Well - Alice's Victory • Emily Sarah Holt
... lips might pour out in thy praise A fitting melody—an air sublime,— A song sun-washed and draped in dreamy haze— The floss and velvet of luxurious rhyme: A lay wrought of warm languors, and o'er-brimmed With balminess, and fragrance of wild flowers Such as the droning bee ne'er wearies of— Such thoughts as might be hymned To thee from this midsummer land of ours Through shower and sunshine ...
— Green Fields and Running Brooks, and Other Poems • James Whitcomb Riley
... see her look so pretty, but Peter sweated and acted awful silly. Father had a time with the team. Ned and Jo became excited and just ranted. They simply danced. Laddie had braided their manes and tails, and they waved like silken floss in the sunshine, and the carriage was freshly washed and the patent leather and brass shone, and we rode flower-covered. Ahead, Laddie and the Princess fairly tried themselves. She hadn't put on ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter
... foreigners; but among the few Americans who had courage to stay were the sculptor Gibson and Theodore Parker—now near the close of his life—whose tete-a-tetes were eloquent of beliefs and disbeliefs. As the spring advanced the authoress of "The Mill on the Floss" was reported to be now and again visible in Rome, "with her elective affinity," as Mrs Browning puts it, "on the Corso walking, or in the Vatican musing. Always together." A grand-daughter of Lord Byron—"very quiet and very intense"—was among the visitors ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... unaccountable. Why, for instance, should their heads have been covered with coarse black disordered hair while their bodies, from the neck down, were almost beautiful with a natural raiment of golden white, as soft as silk and as brilliant as floss? I never could explain it, and Edmund was no less puzzled by this peculiarity. The immense size of their eyes did not seem astonishing after we began to reflect upon the consequences of the relative lack of light in their world. It was ...
— A Columbus of Space • Garrett P. Serviss
... sun and wind; and the foxtail, that shone so brightly green along the hill-side, takes on a golden hue. The light lavender tint of the chorizanthe now spreads along the hills where the poppy so lately flamed, and over the dead morning-glory the dodder weaves its orange floss. A vast army of cruciferae and compositae soon overruns the land with bright yellow, and numerous varieties of mint tinge it with blue or purple; but the greater portion of the annual vegetation ...
— Our Italy • Charles Dudley Warner
... meters about the stranger's rich attire, and his flowing locks of real gold wire, his lips like rubies, and his eyes like diamonds. He furnished the little dog with hair of real floss silk, and called his ribbon a silver chain. Then the coach, as it rolled along, presented such a dazzling appearance, that several persons who inadvertently looked at it had been blinded. It was the schoolmaster's opinion, set forth in his poem, that this really ...
— The Pot of Gold - And Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins
... prayer-books and guide-books, a bottle of soda mint tablets, a spool of dental floss, a Bath bun, a bit of gray frizz that aunt Celia pins into her steamer cap, a spectacle case, a brandy flask, and a bonbon box, which broke and scattered cloves and cardamom seeds. (I hope he guessed aunt Celia is a dyspeptic, and not intemperate!) All this was hopelessly vulgar, but I wouldn't ...
— A Cathedral Courtship • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... metal, and the chinking curb-patterned silver anklets hanging low over the rosy ankle-bone. She was dressed in jade-green muslin as befitted a daughter of the Faith, and from shoulder to elbow and elbow to wrist ran bracelets of silver tied with floss silk, frail glass bangles slipped over the wrist in proof of the slenderness of the hand, and certain heavy gold bracelets that had no part in her country's ornaments but, since they were Holden's gift and fastened with a cunning ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... the guests must show how expert they can be at cutting cats, free hand, from flannel. Beads for eyes, and floss and bristles for whiskers, are ...
— Entertaining Made Easy • Emily Rose Burt
... dark, and her hair was as black at midday as at midnight. So that now—when she shook her head at the boy—a wonderful long, thick, silky lock escaped its fastenings, and the wind caught it and spun it like silk into the finest blue-black floss. ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks
... five eggs, laid about the middle of June; the shell is bluish or purplish white, sprinkled with brown, black, or violet spots and streaks, some of which take the form of a wreath at the broad end. The exquisite daintiness and softness of the Wax-wing's coat can be compared only to floss silk. ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photograph [April, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... so large or elaborate as hers, and when I finished, she still had quite a piece to do, and was out of floss. She had pin-pricked from an embroidered silk shawl on to strips of white paper, the outline of a vine representing foliage, buds, and blossoms; then basted the paper in place around the skirt. The colors were shaded green and pink. Unable to get the floss for the blossoms, she had bought narrow ...
— The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate • Eliza Poor Donner Houghton
... not bad-looking Frenchwoman, whose beard was genuine enough, as I know, having pulled it. My own beard has been described by a French newspaper as une barbe de Charlemagne, a very polite pun, but hers was much fuller. It was soft as floss silk. After a while the capillary attraction ceased to draw, and Mr. Barnum thought of an admirable plan to revive it. He got somebody to prosecute him for false pretences and imposture, on the ground that Madame was a man. Then Mr. Barnum had, with the greatest ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... her altogether gracious, from the silky floss of his gold hair to his proper legs, sheathed in scarlet to the thighs. He was as soft and daintily coloured as a girl, had long curved lashes to his grey eyes, a pathetic droop to his lip, the bloom as of a peach ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... having besought the king for a post of more active and more dangerous service. Ferdinand loves such daring spirits, and therefore no doubt will grant his boon. Ha! Alberic, what is it?" he continued, eagerly, as a page entered, and delivered a packet secured with floss silk, and sealed with the royal signet, adding that it had been brought by an officer of the royal guard, attended by some men at arms. "Give him welcome suited to his rank, boy: I will but peruse these, and ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar
... sunlight of the low latitudes. Positive and negative electricity draw together, which perhaps explains why the two most devoted intimates at the seminary were Senorita Estacardo and Warrenia Rowland. The latter was a true product of the North, with blue eyes, pink skin, hair like the floss of the ripening corn, and a figure as perfect as her sister's of the South, while the mental gifts in one ...
— Up the Forked River - Or, Adventures in South America • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... an odd, black, insignificant looking old man, with twinkling upturned eyes: he was swathed in yellow silk, and wore on his head a pink silk hat with a flat broad crown, from all sides of which hung floss silk. This was the Rajah, a genuine Tibetan, about seventy years old. On some steps close by, and ranged down the apartment, were his relations, all in brocaded silk robes reaching from the throat to the ground, and girded about the waist; and wearing caps ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... show the splendid simplicity and directness of his strength, the one a portrait of himself, the other that of a little child called Dorothy, who has all that sweet gravity and look of candour which we like to associate with that old-fashioned name: a child with bright rippling hair, tangled like floss silk, open brown eyes and flower-like mouth; dressed in faded claret, with little lace about the neck and throat, toned down to a delicate grey—the hands simply clasped before her. This is the picture; as truthful and lovely as any of those Brignoli children which ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... and roots, tow, and a variety of vegetable fibres, thread, floss silk, and cobwebs are all made use of to bind the little nest together and attach it to the twigs whence it depends. Grass again, moss, vegetable fibre, seed-down, silk, cotton, lichen, roots and the like are used in the body of the nest, which is lined ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume
... too brotherly in its easy candour to please her altogether: but she knew very well she was "stunning." She could see herself in a long old-fashioned mirror on the wall. Her hair was like gold floss. There was no sign of the embonpoint she feared in the slender grace of her figure. The pearls about her neck became her mightily, as did the green ribbon, the same shade as her dress, ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan
... unfastened the cords and stitches that secured the canvas covering, within which lay folds on folds of linen, and in the midst a rich silver goblet, long ago brought by her father from Italy, a few of her own possessions, and a letter from her uncle secured with black floss silk, with ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the sparkle had all come back. She had put on a striped silk dress, faint rose and green, made very full in the skirt; her flat lace collar was fastened by a little old pin—an oval of pearls holding a strand of hair like floss-silk. ...
— The Awakening of Helena Richie • Margaret Deland
... their way through, while the old vines were seized by the wind and ripped from the sides of the house, as the storm seizes upon the cords of a vessel, and tears them up into a net work of tangled floss. ...
— The Old Countess; or, The Two Proposals • Ann S. Stephens
... affectation, especially in the attempt to deal with words of which only half the meaning is understood or half the sound heard. Mrs. Gamp's "aperiently so"—and the "underminded" with primal sense of undermine, of—I forget which gossip, in the "Mill on the Floss," are master-and mistress-pieces in this latter kind. Mrs. Malaprop's "allegories on the banks of the Nile" are in somewhat higher order of mistake: Mrs. Tabitha Bramble's ignorance is vulgarized by her selfishness, and Winifred Jenkins' by her conceit. The "wot" ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... skin, with a faint coralline tinge in the cheeks. The forehead is too low, some say; and yet artists have praised its bend, and the Greek line of the nose; not intellectual, but womanly, you know. Hair of a bright brown, feeling like floss silk. Eyes, I believe, few people ever fairly saw. Men are bewitched by them, women cannot understand their charm. Perhaps you have seen Wilson's portrait of me, the one with the grayish green background; you notice ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... instrument, called the hygrodeik, which indicates the exact amount of moisture in the air. It consists of two thermometers side by side, one of which has its bulb surrounded by floss-silk wrapping, which is kept constantly wet by communication with a cup of water near it. The water around the bulb evaporates just in proportion to the heat of the air around it. The changing of water to vapor draws heat from ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... on the coverlet in firm stitches and twisted threads, while on the curtains the frailest materials and most delicate stitches were freely bestowed, as they were safe from friction. We may employ floss-silk and satin-stitch for ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... showy and fanciful was to be evolved thereby, she almost rebelled against the plain sewing, it was such dull, uninteresting work; it made so much difference if the sharp little instrument held Berlin wool, floss, etc., or the common cotton thread, which, though so useful, was too prosaic ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth
... Guenevere, whom Jurgen loved with an entire heart, was this:—She was of middling height, with a figure not yet wholly the figure of a woman. She had fine and very thick hair, and the color of it was the yellow of corn floss. When Guenevere undid her hair it was a marvel to Jurgen to note how snugly this hair descended about the small head and slender throat, and then broadened boldly and clothed her with a loose soft foam of pallid gold. For ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... feel with the peasant's fate, as George Sand felt it. She never ceased to care for the cause of social progress, just as she was always heart and soul an artist. George Eliot has written words "to the reader" about the ruined villages on the Rhone. In "The Mill on the Floss," she writes, and again the remarkable difference between the two writers appears as forcibly as in the two prefaces. "These dead tinted, hollow-eyed skeletons of villages on the Rhone, oppress me with the feeling that human life—very much of it—is a narrow ...
— Cobwebs of Thought • Arachne
... hear that she was recommended by a parishioner to the Rev. Barnabas Smith, an old bachelor in search of a wife, as "the widow Newton—an extraordinary good woman:" and so I expect she was, a thoroughly sensible, practical, homely, industrious, middle-class, Mill-on-the-Floss sort of woman. However, on her second marriage she went to live at North Witham, and her mother, old Mrs. Ayscough, came to superintend the farm at Woolsthorpe, and take care of ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... eat. Other regiments arrived with cannon and munitions. About eleven o'clock there were from ten to twelve thousand men there and two thousand and more in the village—all Souham's division. The general and his ordnance officers were quartered in an old mill to the left, near a stream called Floss-Graben. The line of sentries were stretched along the base of the hill a musket-shot off. At length I fell asleep, but I awoke every hour, and behind us, toward the road leading from the old bridge of Poserna ...
— The Conscript - A Story of the French war of 1813 • Emile Erckmann
... last, she had no very clear idea. The touch of the slippery, mousy bodies was fearsomely repugnant to her; the very sight of the great, skull-bearing things began to sicken her physically. A dreadful, almost impalpable floss from their handled wings and bodies smeared her hands; the place vibrated with ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers
... coming, Emmie," she said presently; "do you remember in The Mill on the Floss, when Maggie Tulliver closed the golden gates of childhood behind her? I can almost see them swing; almost hear them clang; and I can't tell whether ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... opening is then made with a broad needle through the margin of the cornea, close to the sclerotic, just large enough to admit the canula forceps, with which a small portion of iris close to its ciliary attachment is seized and drawn out; a piece of fine floss silk, previously tied in a small loop round the canula forceps, is slipped down and carefully tightened round the prolapsed portion. This speedily shrinks, and the loop may generally be removed about the second day. The chief advantage claimed for this method is the ease with ...
— A Manual of the Operations of Surgery - For the Use of Senior Students, House Surgeons, and Junior Practitioners • Joseph Bell
... Dr. Mercier in his office in Girod street in the summer of 1883, to appeal to his remembrance of this long-forgotten matter, I found a very noble-looking, fair old gentleman whose abundant waving hair had gone all to a white silken floss with age. He sat at his desk in persistent silence with his strong blue eyes fixed steadfastly upon me while I slowly and carefully recounted the story. Two or three times I paused inquiringly; but he faintly shook his head in the negative, a slight frown ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... eyes and drew the baby closer. It looked like a rose dipped in milk, she thought, this pink and white blossom of girlhood, or like a pink cherub, with its halo of pale yellow hair, finer than floss silk. ...
— The Bird's Christmas Carol • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... half-tropical country. She was, one knew at a glance, warm-blooded, full-blooded, with an even, comfortable balance of temperament. Her neck was thick, and sloped to her shoulders, with full, beautiful curves, and under her chin and under her ears the flesh was as white and smooth as floss satin, shading exquisitely to a faint delicate brown on her nape at the roots of her hair. Her throat rounded to meet her chin and cheek, with a soft swell of the skin, tinted pale amber in the shadows, but ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... not enjoy the 'Mill on the Floss' so much as you, but from what you say we will read it again. Do you know 'Silas Marner'? it is a charming little story; if you run short, and like to have it, we could send it by post...We have almost finished the first ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... decidedly. "Of course," she pursued, "the Gregorys get along without a maid, and use a fireless cooker, and drink cereal coffee, but admit, darling, that you'd rather have me useless and frivolous as I am!—than Gertrude or Florence or Winifred Gregory! Why, when Floss was married, Dad, Gertrude played the piano, for music, and for refreshments they had raspberry ice-cream ...
— The Treasure • Kathleen Norris
... so tall as I having to stand upright and do my duty; but you,—why, you are no taller than one of my green pods that I am filling with floss—" ...
— Dreamland • Julie M. Lippmann
... luxurious warmth of the piled hearth lay basking on the rug, three exquisitely formed Blenheim spaniels of the large breed—short-legged and bony, with ears that almost swept the ground as they stood upright, and coats as soft and lustrous as floss silk. ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... was sitting in a chair in the middle of a little space cluttered up with discarded exchanges and galley proofs. He was rather a small man, short but compact. He had his hat off and his hair, which was thin but fine as silk floss, was combed back over his ears and sprayed out behind in a sort of mane effect. It had been red hair once, but was now so thickly streaked with white that it had become a faded brindle color. I took notice of this first ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... Chinese style, with piazza around it has the outer wall covered with blue and white tiles, and inside blinds inlaid with mother of pearl. The floor was matted, and the divans were of white silk embroidered with gilt thread and crimson and green floss. A third pavilion was ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... back to the tailor's shop to order mourning for the servants; and he had still to discharge another function, for the gloves that he had ordered were of beaver, whereas the right kind for a funeral were floss-silk. ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert
... dread of these days to pass; he saw the joy coming. He saw the lovely, creamy, cool little ear of the baby, a bit of dark hair rubbed to a bronze floss, like bronze-dust. And he waited, for the child to become his, to look at him and ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... had more flesh and blood than Emeline. She was larger and of a warmer and browner tint—that type of brunette with startling black hair which breaks into a floss of little curls, and with unexpected blue eyes. Her full lips made a bud, and it only half bloomed when she smiled. From crown to slipper she was a ripe and supple woman. Though clad, like Emeline, in ...
— The King Of Beaver, and Beaver Lights - From "Mackinac And Lake Stories", 1899 • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... been given a peculiarly acceptable present. She was so used to being underrated, that she had become in a measure immune to criticism, and besides criticism from her adored Mrs. Edes was even a favour. She took another bungling stitch in the petal of a white floss daisy. ...
— The Butterfly House • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... came from under the pillow; and out of the box trotted a curly black dog, with long ears, a silver collar, and such bright, kind eyes May was not a bit afraid of him, but loved him at once, and named him Floss, he was so soft and silky. Pussy liked him too; and when May was sleepy they both snuggled down in the same basket like two good ...
— The Louisa Alcott Reader - A Supplementary Reader for the Fourth Year of School • Louisa M. Alcott
... fair and flowing locks. His right foot served as a horse to a rapturous little boy, whose locks and looks were so like to those of the man that their kinship was obvious—only the man was rugged and rough in exterior; the boy was round and smooth. Tow typified the hair of the man; floss silk ...
— The Norsemen in the West • R.M. Ballantyne
... the new guest, Mr. Starbuck, to show OTHERS, particularly Larry Hawkins, what she COULD do if she were inclined to be civil. For two days she "fixed up" her distracting hair at him so that its silken floss encircled her head like a nimbus; she tucked her oval chin into a white fichu instead of a buttonless collar; she appeared at dinner in a newly starched yellow frock! She talked to him with "company manners;" said she would "admire ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... boy, whose age it appeared was thirteen years, was the eldest pupil in the school, and Floss Jones, who was ...
— An Australian Lassie • Lilian Turner
... history of which was vague, was a white woman's head. What wife of what navigator there was no telling. But earrings of gold and emerald still clung to the withered ears, and the hair, two-thirds of a fathom long, a shimmering silk of golden floss, flowed from the scalp that covered what had once been the wit and will of her that Bashti reasoned had in her ancient time been quick with love in the ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... the cool sky; And the feel of the sun-warmed moss; And each cardoon, like a full moon, Fairy-spun of the thistle floss; And the beech grove, and a wood dove, And the trail where the shepherds pass; And the lark's song, and the wind-song, And the scent of the ...
— A Cluster of Grapes - A Book of Twentieth Century Poetry • Various
... father's, and inclining rather to improvement in the arts and elegancies than to anything severe or dangerously laborious. A slim-built, witty-talking, popular and pretty man, with uncommonly bright eyes, and hair like floss silk: they called him Olaf Kyrre (the Tranquil ...
— Early Kings of Norway • Thomas Carlyle
... no better market for fine bits of embroidery, mandarin coats, and all the better products of needle, silk and floss, of which the Chinese have been masters for centuries, than the city of the court. The population consists largely of great officials and their families, whose cast-off clothing, toned down by the use of years, often without a blemish or ...
— Court Life in China • Isaac Taylor Headland
... laboring oar, that toils in the surf of the ocean, Bent, but not broken, by age was the form of the notary public; Shocks of yellow hair, like the silken floss of the maize, hung Over his shoulders; his forehead was high; and glasses with horn bows Sat astride on his nose, with a look of wisdom supernal. Father of twenty children was he, and more than a hundred ...
— The Children's Own Longfellow • Henry W. Longfellow
... scarcely be said to be anything deserving the name of wind, though Ghita felt her cheek, which was warmed with the rich blood of her country, fanned by an air so gentle that occasionally it blew aside tresses that seemed to vie with the floss silk of her native land. Had the natural ringlets been less light, however, so gentle a respiration of the sea air could scarcely have disturbed them. But the lugger had her lightest duck spread—reserving the heavier canvas ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... had a beautifully turned brim of the same material as was used in the former nest. The lining, likewise, was of goldenrod fiber, and a few of the green and yellow feathers of the female. As usual, more or less spider's floss entered into the composition of this well-made structure. The dwelling strikingly corresponded in color with the gray maple crotch that supported it. Each house was well adapted to ...
— Ohio Arbor Day 1913: Arbor and Bird Day Manual - Issued for the Benefit of the Schools of our State • Various
... pattern, especially if one is used to cross-stitch embroidery. Each stitch counts for one of cross-stitch. Keep the stitches very close together so that the nap will stand up well when finished. Silk rugs can be copied in the same way, using floss or rope silk for the pile. If one prefers, a piece of burlap may be stretched across the loom and secured to the rods, instead of weaving ...
— Hand-Loom Weaving - A Manual for School and Home • Mattie Phipps Todd
... wedged in among the living ones I saw the object of her solicitude; a lovely sight it was! Two young bluejays huddled close together on a twig. They were "humped up," with heads drawn down into their shoulders, and breast feathers fluffed out like snowy-white floss silk, completely covering their feet and the perch. No wonder that poor little mother was anxious, for a more beautiful pair I never saw, and to see them was to long to take them ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... stretched hammock-wise from the four corners and her food was of the meagerest; nevertheless if a visitor left an offering upon her table, it was largely spent for apparatus or delicately colored silk floss, with which to pursue the fascinating experiment. Another sadly crippled old woman, the widow of a sea captain, although living almost exclusively upon malted milk tablets as affording a cheap form of prepared food, was always eager to talk ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... content to be in art what she was in nature, her books live, while those of her ponderous rival are being very rapidly forgotten. "Romola" and "Daniel Deronda" are dead beyond hope of resurrection; "The Mill on the Floss", being more feminine, still lives, even though its destiny is to be forgotten when "Pride and Prejudice" ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... chapters of George Eliot's The Mill on the Floss. The book follows the fortunes of Tom and Maggie, whom at the opening of the story we find living with their parents at the old mill house on the Floss River, until they meet their death, in their early manhood and womanhood. We give here, however, only a part of the ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... a little leathern case, containing moss well dried and rubbed between the hands, and also the white floss of the seed of the ground-willow, to serve as tinder. The sparks are struck from two lumps of iron pyrites; and as soon as the tinder has caught, it is gently blown till the fire has spread an inch around, when ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... velvet is always in thick guimp or gold cord. Satin, equally beautiful in its way, is also freely left unornamented in places; the needlework directly upon it is often very fine and delicate in coloured floss silks, generally closely protected by thick raised frames or edges of metallic threads or ...
— English Embroidered Bookbindings • Cyril James Humphries Davenport
... window-frame open, then casting a glance outside, from within the glass casement, he realised that it was not the reflection of the sun, but that of the snow, which had fallen throughout the night to the depth of over a foot, and that the heavens were still covered as if with twisted cotton and unravelled floss. Pao-y got, by this time, into an unusual state of exhilaration. Hastily calling up the servants, and completing his ablutions, he robed himself in an egg-plant-coloured camlet, fox-fur lined pelisse; donned a short-sleeved ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... been written to London signed by Dowie and the models and patterns had been sent to the village and brought to the castle by Jock Macaur. Later there had come rolls of fine flannel and lawn, with gossamer thread and fairy needles and embroidery floss. Then ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... The use of dental floss silk between the teeth, provided care is taken not to press it against the gums, ...
— How to Live - Rules for Healthful Living Based on Modern Science • Irving Fisher and Eugene Fisk
... finer baby boy for his size. He is small now, but he will grow; he has such long feet and hands that, she assures me, he will be a tall man. Mrs. Heron says he is a thorough Redmond. Look at his hair like floss silk, only finer; and he has your forehead, dear, and your eyes. Oh, he will be just ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... by a plunge in the river and a puff in his wig. But, alas! he found that Mistress Betty, without quitting Mistress Fiddy's bedchamber, and by the mere sleight of hand of tying on a worked apron with vine clusters and leaves and tendrils all in purple and green floss silks, pinning a pink bow under her mob-cap, and sticking in her bosom a bunch of dewy ponceau polyanthuses, ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... in Goldsmith's "Deserted Village" and "Vicar of Wakefield," in Charlotte Bronte's "Shirley" and "Villette," in Dickens's "David Copperfield" and George Eliot's "Mill on the Floss," will be found interesting and helpful studies. In each case a good biography of the author will give the ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... do not value very highly the artificial civilities which half strangle half the world with a sort of floss-silk insincerity; and the longer I live the more convinced I am that real tenderness to others is quite compatible with the truth that is due to them and ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... light came some degree of resignation. Several days went slowly by, bringing the first of April, which was to be the wedding-day. August Naab had said it would come before the cottonwoods shed their white floss; and their buds had just commenced to open. The day was not a holiday, and George and Zeke and Dave began to pack for the ranges, yet there was an air of jollity and festivity. Snap Naab had a springy step and jaunty mien. Once he regarded Hare ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey
... said to him: "Many of the soldiers are suffering severely from the cold." So he made a round of the whole army, comforting and encouraging the men; and straightway they felt as if they were clothed in garments lined with floss silk.] ...
— The Art of War • Sun Tzu
... Of the stream; I crept Where the waters wept - The floss in the foss Gurgling across The bosses of moss, Like a dryad's nipple ...
— Household Gods • Aleister Crowley
... patriarchal. He never shaved and rarely trimmed it. It was glossy, soft, clean, and altogether not unprepossessing. It was such that ladies might desire to reel it off and work it into their patterns in lieu of floss silk. His complexion was fair and almost pink; he was small in height and slender in limb, but well-made; and his ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... moment as plainly as though they were of yesterday, for notwithstanding I was greatly troubled at the time, nothing escaped me; the faintest touch of shading, the little dark speck at the point of the chin, the imperceptible down at the corners of the lips, the velvety floss upon the brow, the quivering shadows of the eyelashes upon the cheeks—I could notice everything with astonishing ...
— Clarimonde • Theophile Gautier
... got the burrs out of Lionel Hezekiah's crop of curls. It would be impossible to decide which of them suffered more in the process. Salome cried as hard as Lionel Hezekiah did, and every snip of the scissors or tug at the silken floss cut into her heart. She was almost exhausted when the performance was over; but she took the tired Lionel Hezekiah on her knee, and laid her wet cheek against his ...
— Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... obtaining fire the Esquimaux use two lumps of common iron pyrites, from which sparks are struck into a little leathern case containing moss well dried and rubbed between the hands. If this tinder does not readily catch, a small quantity of the white floss of the seed of the ground willow is laid above the moss. As soon as a spark has caught, it is gently blown till the fire has spread an inch around, when, the pointed end of a piece of oiled wick being applied, it soon bursts into a flame, ...
— Journal of the Third Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage • William Edward Parry
... staggered on the uneven pavement and fell against the wall. Her sisters, who had been sadly following her, unseen, came forwards much alarmed and begged her to desist; but, smiling wanly, she went on and gave Floss and Keeper their ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... that her figure was genteel; and as for Miss Swartz, the rich woolly-haired mulatto from St. Kitts, on the day Amelia went away she was in such a passion of tears that they were obliged to send for Dr. Floss, and half-tipsify her with salvolatile. Miss Pinkerton's attachment was, as may be supposed, from the high position and eminent virtues of that lady, calm and dignified; but Miss Jemima had already whimpered several times at the ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... Bobbin Silk, which has now almost superseded floss, is used for working on satin and silk, or for any fine work. It is made in strands, each of which has a slight twist in it to prevent its fraying as floss does. As this silk is required in all varieties of thickness, it is manufactured in what ...
— Handbook of Embroidery • L. Higgin
... her dolly to sleep, swinging back and forth in her little rocking-chair, the waxen face pressed against the warm pink cushion of her own cheek, the yellow silk of curls palpitating with the owner's vitality mingling with the lifeless floss of her darling's wig. The picture was none the less charming because so common, but it was not in admiring contemplation of it that I arrested my pen in the middle of a word, holding it thus an inch or two above the paper in ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... and by stage, finding the bitterness of the people growing more intense as they proceeded. They found many women using thorns instead of pins and knitting one pair of stockings with the ravelings of another. They were also flossing out their silk gowns and spinning the floss into gloves with cotton. All this was to avoid buying goods ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... "old woman" or "old lady." The latter has a pretty sound. We see the soft white curls, so like floss silk, the delicate white camel's-hair shawl, the soft lace and appropriate black satin gown, the pretty old-fashioned manner, and we see that this is a real lady. She may have her tricks of old-fashioned speech; they do not offend us. To be sure, she has no slang; she does not talk about "awfully ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... Freckles' face in sweats of agony. It was a smooth, even white, its brown rift scarcely showing. What the nurses and Lady O'More had done to Freckles' hair McLean could not guess, but it was the most beautiful that he ever had seen. Fine as floss, bright in color, waving and crisp, it fell ...
— Freckles • Gene Stratton-Porter |
