"Homespun" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that Ichabod arrived at the castle of the Heer Van Tassel, which he found thronged with the pride and flower of the adjacent country—old farmers, a spare leathern-faced race, in homespun coats and breeches, blue stockings, huge shoes, and magnificent pewter buckles; their brisk withered little dames, in close crimped caps, long-waisted shortgowns, homespun petticoats, with scissors and pincushions and gay calico pockets hanging on the outside; buxom ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... pulpit were men whom I had left in the gamesome frolic of their youth, but who had succeeded to the sanctity of station of which they once had stood so much in awe. What most struck my eye was the change in the female part of the congregation. Instead of the primitive garbs of homespun manufacture and antique Dutch fashion, I beheld French sleeves, French capes, and French collars, and a fearful-fluttering of ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... native-made cloth. The blue-jeans coat was ornamented with brass buttons and cost one dollar and twenty-five cents a yard, a high price for that locality and time. His wife wore a calico dress for company, while the neighbor wives wore homespun linsey-woolsey. The new house was referred to as the Crystal Palace. When John and Jane Clemens attended balls—there were continuous balls during the holidays—they were considered ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... of an exact tow-color, braided up from her forehead in front and from her neck behind. These tails, meeting on the top of her head, were fastened with a small tin comb. Her dress was of checkered homespun, a "very tight fit," and, as she wore no ruff or handkerchief around her neck, she looked as if just prepared for execution. She was evidently awestruck at the sight of visitors, and seemed inclined to take ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
... But the bishops and their clergy had demurred. They had little fancy for being left with no other protection than a half-disciplined rabble, who, ready as they might be to act against their troublesome countrymen, had no more respect for a lawn sleeve than for a homespun jerkin. A few troops of regular cavalry were therefore retained, and one regiment of Foot Guards. The former were commanded by Athole, the latter by Linlithgow. Towards the end of 1677 a fresh troop ...
— Claverhouse • Mowbray Morris
... the army began to gather into Boston. Tan, lanky, awkward fellows came in squads, and companies, and regiments, swaggering along, dressed in their brown homespun clothes and blue yarn stockings. They stooped as if they still had hold of the plough-handles, and marched without any time or tune. Hither they came, from the cornfields, from the clearing in the forest, from the blacksmith's forge, from the carpenter's workshop, and from the shoemaker's seat. They ...
— Grandfather's Chair • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... looking at; there certainly was an immense water power here; but that, after all, they would go twice as far to see the noble stone works of Lockport, where the Grand Canal is locked down a descent of sixty feet. They were succeeded by a young fellow, in a homespun cotton dress, with a staff in his hand, and a pack over his shoulders. He advanced close to the edge of the rock, where his attention, at first wavering among the different components of the scene, finally ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... thought, in that enchanted region which, to those who have lingered there, comes to have so much more colour and substance than the painted curtain hanging before it. The Professor's particular veil of Maia was a narrow strip of homespun woven in a monotonous pattern; but he had only to lift it to step ...
— The Descent of Man and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... black velveteen sleeveless jackets, bright red shirt-sleeves, gay-coloured green, blue, and red skirts, and thick leather boots. The old women, dressed more quietly, stood behind them, with white kerchiefs, homespun coats, old-fashioned skirts of dark home-spun material, and shoes on their feet. Gaily-dressed children, their hair well oiled, went in and ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... self-confident man. Remembering how his first appearance had fluttered this dovecote and awakened a severe suspicion in the minds of the two principals, he had discarded his usual fashionable attire and elegantly fitting garments for a rough, homespun suit, supposed to represent a homely agriculturist, but which had the effect of transforming him into an adorable Strephon, infinitely more dangerous in his rustic shepherd-like simplicity. He had also shaved off his silken mustache for the same prudential reasons, but had only succeeded ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... unintelligible sailing-orders; but just at that moment, as luck would have it, another cyclist flew past—the first soul I had seen on the road that morning. He was a man with the loose-knit air of a shop assistant, badly got up in a rather loud and obtrusive tourist suit of brown homespun, with baggy knickerbockers and thin thread stockings. I judged him a gentleman on the cheap at sight. "Very Stylish; this Suit Complete, only thirty-seven and sixpence!" The landlady glanced out at him with a friendly nod. He turned and smiled at ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... clumsy. He was not a good-looking boy— there's no denying it!—and yet I liked him; he looked very sensible and straightforward, and there was a vigorous ring in his voice. He had nothing to boast of in his attire; it consisted simply of a homespun shirt and patched trousers. The face of the third, Ilyusha, was rather uninteresting; it was a long face, with short-sighted eyes and a hook nose; it expressed a kind of dull, fretful uneasiness; his tightly- drawn lips seemed rigid; his contracted brow never relaxed; he seemed continually ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Works of Ivan Turgenev, Vol. I • Ivan Turgenev
... of quotation and illustration staggered me. It is true, that his thought was not always clothed in the best language, and often appeared in the slouching, slangy undress of the place and period, yet it never was rustic nor homespun, and sometimes struck me with its precision and fitness. Considerably softened toward him, I tried him with other literature. But vainly. Beyond a few of the lyrical and emotional poets, he knew nothing. Under the influence and enthusiasm ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... away! 440 Such my pursuits, and such my joys of yore, Such were my mates, but now my mates no more. Placed out of Envy's walk, (for Envy, sure, Would never haunt the cottage of the poor, Would never stoop to wound my homespun lays) With some few friends, and some small share of praise, Beneath oppression, undisturb'd by strife, In peace I trod the humble vale of life. Farewell, these scenes of ease, this tranquil state; Welcome the troubles which on empire ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... a jacket of black and white homespun is extremely appropriate. It is smart when worn with a waistcoat of white flannel, white shirt and collar and gayly figured tie of silk foulard. Trousers of white flannel would complete this excellent costume for the elderly man, and with a panama hat that ...
— Book of Etiquette • Lillian Eichler
... a vest made of soft reindeer skin to put on over my underwear, and two sets of thick underwear of homespun, for these are much warmer than those that ...
— The Land of the Long Night • Paul du Chaillu
... his jerkin and rolled up the sleeves of his shirt of coarse homespun fabric, in order to give his thick muscular arms unimpeded play in wielding the hammer and turning the mass of glowing metal on the anvil. He wore woollen breeches and hose, both of which had been fashioned by the fingers of his buxom mother, Herfrida. A ...
— Erling the Bold • R.M. Ballantyne
... helping themselves to tea at the table. On the hearth, with his back to the fire, stood a great, burly man with a short, grizzled beard and tumbled gray hair, rather bald, dressed in a rough suit of light-brown homespun, with huge shooting boots, whom I saw at once to be my host. The talk stopped as I entered, and I was aware that I was being scrutinised with some curiosity. Father Payne did not move, but extended a hand, which I advanced and shook, and said: "Very ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... they quite outrival, Plain barnyard Spuytenduyvil, By peacock Riverdale, Which thinks all else it conquers, And over homespun Yonkers Spreads out its flaunting tail! There's new-named Mount St. Vincent, Where each dear little inn'cent Is taught the Popish rites,— Well, ain't it queer, wherever These saints possess the river ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... any musical accomplishments, and that I was one of that unfortunate number. I asked him to get the ladies to sing for me, and to this they acceded quite readily. One girl, with a fair soprano, who seemed to be the leader of the crowd, sang "The Homespun Dress," a song very popular in the South, and having the same tune as the "Bonnie Blue Flag." ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... tall as her three sisters-in-law; and that her abundant brown hair was short and curly and kept close to her head, almost like a boy's. Were not her shoulders a trifle square-set for a woman?—but perhaps that appearance was owing to her costume, for she wore a Norfolk jacket of gray homespun that looked as if it could afford a good defence against the weather. She was entirely in gray, in fact; for her short-skirted dress was of the same material; and so also was the Tam o' Shanter, adorned with salmon flies, that ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... man of very homespun extraction, who hovered in Boston on the ambiguous verge between the social and the scholastic worlds; the sort of young man whom one asked to tea rather than to dinner. He was an earnest student, and was attached to the university by an official, though unimportant, tie. ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... is a gentleman in purple and fine linen, otherwise broadcloth; and sometimes in hodden gray, otherwise homespun or slop-shop; and sometimes he cuts the poor little chap with a silver knife, which is rhetoric, and sometimes with a wooden spoon, which is raw-hide. Am I ...
— What Answer? • Anna E. Dickinson
... their unpacking, and Judith, who was naturally very orderly, soon had everything in its place. Her mother's parting gift had been couch-cover, cushions, and hangings for the new room—homespun of a lovely deep blue for cover and cushions, and a delightful ...
— Judy of York Hill • Ethel Hume Patterson Bennett
... had seen many years, and whose manner might imply that all these chances of life and death came in the gross, and that existence was a medley at best. The other, a witness, was young. More than once the "valley man" cast a covert glance at her as, clad in a brown homespun dress, she leaned against the log wall, her face, which was very pale, half turned toward it, as if to hide the features already much obscured by the white sunbonnet drawn far over it. One arm was lifted, and her ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... I know'd to win dat gal, I sho would need some othah means 'Sides a-hangin' 'round big meetin' in a suit o' homespun jeans. ...
— Fifty years & Other Poems • James Weldon Johnson
... stopped, and Hilda must open her eyes, whether she would or no. In the porch, under the blossoming clematis, stood a tall, broad-shouldered man, dressed in rough homespun, who held out his great brown hand and said ...
— Queen Hildegarde • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... china, tripped up to him, and smiled, and gave him her hand, and led him out to a minuet. And he danced it perfectly—poor little August in his thick, clumsy shoes, and his thick, clumsy sheepskin jacket, and his rough homespun linen, and his broad Tyrolean hat! He must have danced it perfectly, this dance of kings and queens in days when crowns were duly honoured, for the lovely lady always smiled benignly and never scolded ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... horses and fewer servants, but he has still more than he requires, and his mode of life has undergone no perceptible alteration. Maria Petrovna complains that she is no longer supplied with eggs, chickens, and homespun linen by the peasants, and that everything is three times as dear as it used to be; but somehow the larder is still full, and abundance reigns in ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... machine. Nobody wove jeans any more—but a good carpet-loom now, that might be made useful. Unwilling to hang the bedding on bushes for fear of a chance tear from twig or thorn, she rigged a line in the back yard, and spread quilt and homespun blanket, coarse white sheets and pillowcases that were yellowing with age, out for the glad gay wind to play with, ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan
... comical that she likes it." . . . . . . . The song grew momentarily more distinct: among the leaves there were fugitive glimpses of blue and white, and at last Clarsie appeared, walking lightly along the log, clad in her checked homespun dress, and with a ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... it may have been that glimpses of home gatherings in the firelight may have given to these men of war many a twinge of homesickness for hearths across the border, where women who had been clad in satin and brocade sat spinning homespun, and were content to drink spring water from the hills, while the tea they had loved to sip in their Colonial drawing-rooms was floating about the Boston beaches. If the Boys in blue and buff encountered any of the ...
— Famous Firesides of French Canada • Mary Wilson Alloway
... clad in a thick grey overcoat of some shaggy kind of cloth which looked like homespun. He wore a felt hat, and carried a thick oak stick, and there was nothing in his appearance to indicate that he belonged to any higher grade than that of the shepherds and guides with whom Hammond had made himself familiar during his previous visit. And yet there was something ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... haply with her jewelled hands She smooths her silken gown,— No more the homespun lap wherein I shook the ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... in October, 1808, Franz in his homespun grey suit, spectacles shielding his bright, near-sighted eyes, his bushy black hair covered by an old fashioned hat, presented himself for examination by the Court Capellmeister and the singing master. The other boys jeered at his odd appearance, but he kept his good ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... Sir Tiglath," Lady Enid went on, with pleasant ease, and a sort of homespun self-possession that trumpeted, like a military band, her sensibleness, "Mr. Vivian consulted me as to what to do; whether to give the whole thing up, or to make an appeal to you at the risk of disturbing you and taking up ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... so snug—just soft enough, but not too soft—not the kind of suffocatingly soft feather-bed in which you get down into a hole and never get out of it all night. It was springy as well as soft, and though the linen was not perhaps so fine as what Lena was accustomed to at home, it was real homespun for all that—and through everything there was the delicious wild thymy sort of scent of lavender which Mrs. Denny had promised her. Lena went to sleep really burrowing her nose, which was rather a snub one to ...
— Hoodie • Mary Louisa Stewart Molesworth
... which streamed in through the holes in the tops of the shutters I distinguished the green painted chairs backed up stiffly against the wall, the striped homespun carpet, andirons crossed in the fireplace, with shovel and tongs to match, the big Bible on the table under the glass, a waxwork on the high mahogany desk in the corner, and a few shells and other ornaments upon ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... that we had reached the last purpose for which the homespun woolen yarn was required? We were mistaken, for here is the entry: "To-day dyed the yarn for back-hall carpet. Remember to tell the weaver that I prefer ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... was, what his name was, where the place from which he came was, Who had brought him from the battle, and had left him at our door, He could not speak to tell us; but 'twas one of our brave fellows, As the homespun plainly showed us ...
— Poems of American Patriotism • Brander Matthews (Editor)
... and I were left to tell secrets. When he was sure we were alone he took from his trunk a long, flat box. Inside was the most wonderful shirt I have ever seen; it looked like a cross between a nightshirt and a shirt-waist. It was of homespun linen. The bosom was ruffled and tucked, all done by hand,—such tiny stitches, such patience and skill. Then he handed me an old daguerreotype. I unfastened the little golden hook and inside was a face good to see and to remember. It was dim, yet clear in outline, just as if she ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... our own great and complex organisation, and bring ourselves mentally into the attitude of a simple agricultural people, requiring little beyond what was produced on each man's own farm or petty holding. Such people are mainly fed from their own corn and meat, mainly clad from their own homespun wool and linen. A little specialisation of function, however, already existed. Salt was procured from the wyches or pans of the coast, and also from the inland wyches or brine wells of Cheshire and the midland counties. Such names as Nantwich, ...
— Early Britain - Anglo-Saxon Britain • Grant Allen
... quite old but hearty, with a stubbly fringe of white beard around a ruddy face. He had come on a wood-sled for the greater convenience of bringing Sylvia's goods. There were a feather-bed, bolster, and pillows, tied up in an old homespun blanket, on the rear of the sled; there was also a red chest, and a great bundle of bedclothing. Sylvia sat in her best rocking-chair just behind ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... women as they disappeared into the woods with their sleds. The November forests listened in the frost to the speech of these foreign women, echoed it, without understanding it. Ahead of them, walked an old man to lead the way. They wore Icelandic homespun skirts, and had them tucked up at the waist. Around their heads, they had tied Icelandic woollen shawls. They say they are such good walkers. They intend to take lodging somewhere for the ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... deem, I know not, but the door was opened wide, And the King's name a voice long silent cried, And Phoebus on the very threshold trod, And yet in nothing liker to a god Than when he ruled Admetus' herds, for he Still wore the homespun coat men used to see Among the heifers in the summer morn, And round about him hung the herdsman's horn, And in his hand he bore the herdsman's spear And cornel bow, the prowling dog-wolfs fear, Though empty of its shafts the quiver was. He to ...
— The Earthly Paradise - A Poem • William Morris
... ALIVE that day. Judah was hot, but I was hotter; and, before the cartridge box was empty, he pulled down his homespun blue and white frock sleeve over his wrist, and rested me upon it when he took aim. He was a gentle-hearted fellow, though as ...
— Who Spoke Next • Eliza Lee Follen
... when they returned to him, had not budged from his resting-place. The fingers still lay, starfish-wise, upon the folds of that soiled homespun; his eyes still stared out of the leafy bower; his face still wore ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... that I spent it all on dress! I'd buy—I'd buy—oh,—silk stockings, and long gloves, and French cambric underclothes, and chiffon nightgowns like those Yvonne wears (but they aren't decent: still that doesn't matter so long as you're not married, and they are so pretty)! And a homespun tailor-made suit with a seam down the back and open tails: and—and—one of those real Panamas that you can pull through a wedding ring: and—oh! dear, I am greedy! It must be because I never have any clothes at all that I'm always ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... sceptically, but they knew of the visit to Purvy's store, and they were willing to admit that in part at least he had erased the blot from his escutcheon. Then, too, except for cropped hair and a white skin, he had come back as he had gone, in homespun and hickory. There was nothing highfalutin in his manners. In ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... fishing-boats, but also a snug farm, adjoining the brown house, together with some fresh, juicy pasture-lots on neighboring islands, where he raised mutton, unsurpassed even by the English South-down, and wool, which furnished homespun to clothe his family ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... Rania? I need not ask Marguerite, lest she might miss a chance of seeing 'Farmer Phil' and lose effervescence of the hayseed. Do you know he is always associated, in my mind, with homespun and hayseed." ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... stayed on with Capt. Posey, and I washed and ironed with them later when I was big enough. I done some cooking, too. I could card and spin and make homespun dresses. My ma ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves • Works Projects Administration
... once more. Judith Browne did not like to see her husband in this mood. She knew well how vain every exercise of her wifely arts of diversion would prove when he once fell into this train of black thoughts; but she could not refrain from essaying the hopeless task by holding up her apron of homespun cloth full of cotton rolls, pretty in their whiteness and roundness and softness, meantime coquettishly turning her still girlish head on one side, and saying: "Now, Mr. Browne, why don't you praise my cotton? Did you ever see ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston
... Witness their Constitution, their Parliament, their 30,000 schools in active operation; witness their museums and hospitals; witness their colleges and universities. 'But,' you would also have said, 'give us a race whose women are homespun and refined, courteous and winsome, not tottering on tortured feet, nor immured in zenanas and harems, but who freely mingle in social life, and adorn all they touch;' and such, without controversy, are the women of Japan. Above all, 'give us a reverent and a religious people, who yet ...
— Religion in Japan • George A. Cobbold, B.A.
... in the depot. The passengers now swarmed forth by hundreds—a curious and motley crowd of men, women, and children; good-looking people, and ill-looking ones; the fine lady in silk, and the rough backwoods-man in homespun; the middle-aged woman in black, with three trunks and four bandboxes, and the smooth-faced dandy, whose sole ...
— Oscar - The Boy Who Had His Own Way • Walter Aimwell
... him now,—his form, and face, and motions, His homespun habit, and his silver hair,— And hear the language of his trite devotions Rising ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... received a curt 'Yes' and a stare. Apparently his suit of brown Connemara homespun did not commend him to these aristocrats. They turned their backs on ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... daring logicians would grant that every man should have liberty to lead his life as he chooses, so long as he hurts neither himself nor any other individual nor the State, then one might follow their argument; but a plain homespun proposal like that of mine is not enough for your advanced thinker. In England he says, "Let us have deliverance from all restrictions;" in Russia he says, "Anarchy is the only cure for existing evils." For centuries past the earth has been deluged ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... the fickle element. All that lay in the past. And in a degree he was saved from the disgrace of being a landsman by the smell of tar and bloaters that heralded his coming, by the blue jersey and the brown homespun trousers which he wore all the week, and by the saving word which distinguished him from the poor inland lubbers who had no dealings with ...
— The Last Hope • Henry Seton Merriman
... her, and as they were going to visit the first lady of the land, they thought that they should dress themselves in their finest clothes. Arrayed in silks, satins, and ruffles, they were shown into the presence of Mrs. Washington, and were utterly amazed to find her wearing a striped homespun apron, and busily engaged in knitting stockings. She received them, however, with as much dignity and courtesy as if she had had a crown on her head and a scepter in her hand; and in the course of conversation she said that it was the duty ...
— Stories of New Jersey • Frank Richard Stockton
... heavy lashes hung low in the slumbrous, dreamy way that sees all and reveals nothing. Instinctively I started up, with wild thoughts thronging to my lips. At the same moment Mr. Sutherland did the most chivalrous thing I have seen in homespun or broadcloth. ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... The whole 10 family went barefoot in the summer, but in winter the pioneer wore moccasins of buckskin and buckskin leggins or trousers; his coat was a hunting shirt belted at the waist and fringed where it fell to his knees. It was of homespun, a mixture of wool and flax called linsey-woolsey, 15 and out of this the dresses of his wife and daughters were made. The wool was shorn from the sheep, which were so scarce that they were never killed ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... handiwork; so is the harness; the home-spun cloth of his suit is made by his wife from the wool of his own sheep: it is an excellent fabric but, alas, the young people now prefer the machine-made cottons and cloths of commerce and will no longer wear homespun. Sometimes the habitant makes his own boots, the excellent bottes sauvages of the country. The women make not only home-spun cloth, but linen, straw hats, gloves, candles, soap. When there are maple trees, the habitant provides his own ...
— A Canadian Manor and Its Seigneurs - The Story of a Hundred Years, 1761-1861 • George M. Wrong
... them homespun words, coarse as they were, cheered my drooping spirits, and the real Connecticut nasal twang with which they were uttered sounded like music to my ears; how it brought up home and far-off friends to my mind, and how it sent up a tear of mingled joy ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... wide on its hinges and Gila entered, trig and chic as usual, in a stylish little coat-suit of homespun, leather-trimmed and short-skirted, high boots, leather leggings, and a jaunty little leather cap with a bridle under her chin. Only her petite figure and her baby face saved her from being taken for a tough ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... wear homespun clothes, made frae wool ta'en frae sheep that ha' grazed and been reared on ma ain land. All the food I ha' need to eat frae ane end o' the year to the other is raised on my farm. The leather for ma shoon can be tanned frae the skins ...
— Between You and Me • Sir Harry Lauder
... Lights came to Edinburgh but he was entertained at Baxter Place. There at his own table my grandfather sat down delightedly with his broad-spoken, homespun officers." ...
— The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson for Boys and Girls • Jacqueline M. Overton
... past! If I were a dove and dwelt in the monstrous chestnuts, where the bees murmur all day about the flowers; if I were a sheep and lay on the field there under my comely fleece; if I were one of the quiet dead in the kirkyard—some homespun farmer dead for a long age, some dull hind who followed the plough and handled the sickle for threescore years and ten in the distant past; if I were anything but what I am out here, under the sultry noon, between the deep chestnuts, among the graves, where the fervent ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... do their part to stimulate. She submitted to this possibility, and waited for his coming, which began to seem unreasonably delayed. The door opened at last, and a tall, powerfully framed man of thirty-five or forty, dressed in an ill-fitting suit of gray Canada homespun appeared. He moved with a slow, pondering step, and carried his shaggy head bent downwards from shoulders slightly rounded. His dark beard was already grizzled, and she saw that his mustache was burnt ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... therefore, to confront a tribunal (not the official but the popular) already prepared for its condemnation. Before it stood John Bull, burly, dogged and determined not to be humbugged—his judgment made up and his sentence ready to be recorded. Nothing disconcerted, the brown, rough, homespun Yankee in charge jumped on the box, starting the team at a smart walk, setting the blades of the machine in lively operation, and commenced raking off the grain in sheaf-piles ready for binding,—cutting a breadth of nine or ten feet cleanly ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... afternoon in March, 1905, there entered the writer's office in the Criminal Courts Building, New York City, a ruddy, stoutly-built man, dressed in homespun garments, accompanied by an attractive and vivacious little woman, who, while unable to speak a single word of English, had no difficulty in making it obvious that she had a story to tell of the most ...
— True Stories of Crime From the District Attorney's Office • Arthur Train
... also contrasted Lawyer Wilson's appearance with that of her father; the former, well dressed in the style of a gentleman of the time, in broadcloth, with fine linen, and a tall silk hat carefully placed on the floor of the pew; while Deacon Baxter wore homespun made of wool from his own sheep, spun and woven, dyed and finished, at the fulling-mill in the village, and carried a battered felt hat that had been a matter of ridicule these dozen years. (The Deacon would be buried in two coats, Jed Morrill always said, for he owned just ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... on,—district nursing, classes in sanitation and hygiene, social clubs and entertainments for people of all ages, and a department of fireside industries, through which is created an outside market for the beautiful coverlets, blankets and homespun, woven by the mountain women, as well as for their ...
— Sight to the Blind • Lucy Furman
... ago, and died when their time came. Some of them may have had fine equipage and caparisoned postillion, but the most of them were only footmen. My father started in life belonging to the aristocracy of hard knuckles and homespun, but had this high honor that no one could despise. He was the son of a father who loved God, and kept His commandments. What is the House of Hapsburg or Stuarts, compared with being son of the Lord God Almighty? Two eyes, two hands, and two feet, were the capital my father started with. ...
— Forty Years in South China - The Life of Rev. John Van Nest Talmage, D.D. • Rev. John Gerardus Fagg
... a mouthful of schooling but what I got at home. It's all homespun. I make no boast of scholarship; but as for navigating, or for finding my way about the 'arth, I'll turn my back on no man, unless it be to leave him behind. Now we have people with us that think a great deal of their geometry and astronomies, ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... rich burgomaster's daughter Hilda van Gleck, with her costly furs and loose-fitting velvet sack; and, nearby, a pretty peasant girl, Annie Bouman, jauntily attired in a coarse scarlet jacket and a blue skirt just short enough to display the gray homespun hose to advantage. Then there was the proud Rychie Korbes, whose father, Mynheer van Korbes, was one of the leading men of Amsterdam; and, flocking closely around her, Carl Schummel, Peter and Ludwig van Holp, Jacob Poot, and a very small boy rejoicing in the tremendous ...
— Hans Brinker - or The Silver Skates • Mary Mapes Dodge
... fur coat, another long coat, a dozen hats and from four to ten house dresses. In this day of week-ends in the country, no trousseau, no matter how town-bred the bride, is complete without one or two "country" coats, of fur, leather or woolen materials; several homespun, tweed or tricot suits or dresses; skirts with shirt-waists and sweaters in endless variety; low or flat heeled shoes; woolen or woolen and silk mixture ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... and children had white homespun linen skirts, embroidered at the edges, and the men had trousers of the ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 33, June 24, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... ambush of laurel bushes close beside the path, a tall, slender form stood forth, the lissome figure of a girl in the budding charm of womanhood. There was a lithe, curving beauty in the lines that the scant homespun gown outlined so clearly. The swift movement by which she revealed herself was instinct with grace. As she rested motionless, with arms extended in a gesture of appeal, there was a singular dignity in the pose, a distinction of personality that was in no ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... by the bridge a man was plowing. He was an elderly man, sturdy and stolid of figure, and clad in blue homespun. There was nothing clerical in his garb or manner, yet he was the vicar and school-master of the parish. His low-crowned hat was drawn deep over his slumberous gray eyes. The mobile mouth beneath completed the expression ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... America with him where he went; what he gained he occupied, and his advanced posts became colonies. The very homeliness of his genius was its distinction. His kingship was conspicuous by its workday homespun. Never was ruler so absolute as he, nor so little conscious of it; for he was the incarnate common-sense of the people. With all that tenderness of nature whose sweet sadness touched whoever saw him with something of its own pathos, there ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... of princes than in the homely loyalty of shopkeepers and the sturdy gallantry of their apprentices. The lively, easy, honest improvisation of the opening scenes has a certain value in its very crudity and simplicity: the homespun rhetoric and the jog-trot jingle are signs at once of the date and of the class to which these plays must be referred. The parts of the rebels are rough-hewn rather than vigorous; the comic or burlesque part of Josselin is very cheap and flimsy farce. The peculiar powers ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... he said, "and in them are homespun and jeans. One can't lead his 'fluttered folk and wild' in a ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... thus his tale, Then rising took down from its nail The sword that hung there, dim with dust, And cleaving to its sheath with rust, And said, "This sword was in the fight." The Poet seized it, and exclaimed, "It is the sword of a good knight, Though homespun was his coat-of-mail; What matter if it be not named Joyeuse, Colada, Durindale, Excalibar, or Aroundight, Or other name the books record? Your ancestor, who bore this sword As Colonel of the Volunteers, Mounted upon his old gray mare, Seen here and there and everywhere, ...
— Tales of a Wayside Inn • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... enterprise. At the time of the conquest, and in fact for many years previously, the principal products of the country were beaver skins, timber, agricultural products, fish, fish oil, ginseng (for some years only), beer, cider, rug carpets, homespun cloths—made chiefly by the inmates of the religious houses—soap, potash, leather, stoves, tools and other iron manufactures—made in the St. Maurice forges—never a profitable industry, whether carried on by companies or ...
— Canada under British Rule 1760-1900 • John G. Bourinot
... mendicant, but a landowner—and a landowner possessed of fully a thousand serfs, the superior of all his neighbours in wealth of flour and grain, and the owner of storehouses, and so forth, that were crammed with homespun cloth and linen, tanned and undressed sheepskins, dried fish, and every conceivable species of produce. Nevertheless, such a phenomenon is rare in Russia, where the tendency is rather to ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... wild figure, in the midst of a strange, wild scene: his clothes, originally of some homespun cloth, now patched so freely with dressed deerskin as to leave little of the original material; moccasins on his feet, a beaver cap upon his head, his leather belt stuck round with hunting knives, and the pistol to be used at close quarters ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green
... reindeer. The ladies, therefore, were very anxious to display these powerful attractions to the greatest advantage; and the best rooms in the house, instead of being adorned with caricatures of Dame Nature, in water-colors and needlework, were always hung round with abundance of homespun garments, the manufacture and the property of the females; a piece of laudable ostentation that still prevails among the heiresses of ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... flannel and blue hickory shirts. Four sewing-machines stood near the wall where grated windows admitted sunshine, and their hymn to Labor was the only sound that broke the brooding silence. The room was scrupulously clean and tidy, and the inmates, wearing the regulation uniform of blue-striped homespun, appeared comparatively neat; but sordid, sullen, repulsively coarse and brutish were many of the countenances bent over the daily task, and now and then swift, furtive glances from downcast eyes betrayed close kinship with ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... explore the woods again In my own aboriginal way, As before I knew how culture could frown On a hoydenish gait and a homespun gown Or dreamed that the strata of proud "upper-ten" Would ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... write. For this a British author bids again The heroine rise, to grace the British scene: Here, as in life, she breathes her genuine flame, She asks, What bosom has not felt the same? Asks of the British youth—is silence there? She dares to ask it of the British fair. To-night our homespun author would be true, At once to nature, history, and you. 20 Well pleased to give our neighbours due applause, He owns their learning, but disdains their laws; Not to his patient touch, or happy flame, 'Tis to his British heart he trusts ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... hair so high. She had a pretty new frock—a rich warm brown ground, with little flowers in green and yellow and a kind of dull red sprinkled all over it. It had come from New York, and was called delaine. She had discarded her homespun woolen. And, oh, how stylishly pretty she was, quite like the young ladies ...
— A Little Girl in Old Boston • Amanda Millie Douglas
... was her name, received us with that mixture of respect and ease, which shewed she was accustomed to converse with her superiors. She was dressed in a blue homespun gown, (the sleeves of which were drawn up to her elbows and the lower part tucked through her pocket-hole,) a black stuff petticoat, black stockings and shoes with the soles more than half an inch thick. She wore also, ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... active, agile, unmuscular race, mostly preserve the old national dress. Some men still wear, and both sexes once wore, the ridiculous carapuca, or funnel-cap with a rat-tail for a tassel. The rest of the toilet consists of homespun cottons, shirts and knickerbockers, with buff shoes or boots broad-soled and heelless. The traveller who prefers walking should always use this chaussure, and the 'little girl in topboots' is still a standing joke. The women affect parti-coloured petticoats of home-made baize or woollen stuff, ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... was a square, ruddy-faced man of sixty, with neatly trimmed, snow-white whiskers. He had on a soft Alpine hat of pearl gray, a modishly cut gray homespun suit, a tie in which glimmered an opal pin, wore tan gloves, and had slung over one shoulder by a narrow black strap ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... beds—in most cases merely a few boards with a straw mattress placed thereon—the straw sandal on the foot, wooden chopsticks in place of knives and forks, the small variety of foods and of cooking utensils, the simple homespun cotton clothing—much of this finds favor in the eye of the English traveler. The Chinese, of all Orientals, teach us how to live without furniture, without impedimenta, with the least possible ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... ground were littered with garments and furs and weapons, and odds-and-ends of spoil, as if a ship had been overturned on the spot. The lean little man whom Rolf had pointed out stood in the midst of it all, examining and directing. He was dressed in coarse homespun of the dingy colors of trading vessels, gray and brown and rusty black, which contrasted oddly with the mantle of gorgeous purple velvet he was at that moment trying on. His little freckled face was wrinkled into a hundred shrewd puckers, and his eyes were two ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... himself in bed, and knowing no fear looked steadily. What he saw thrown into relief against the shadows was the figure of a hillman of the west, and one that in an instant he knew. The Covenanter was dressed in rough homespun hodden gray, stained heavily with the black of the peat holes in which he had been hiding, and torn here and there where the rocks had caught him as he was crawling for shelter. Of middle age, with hair hanging over his ears and beard uncared ...
— Graham of Claverhouse • Ian Maclaren
... alone. One difference I noticed about her, however; that she was clothed in garments such as I had never seen her wear before. They were close fitting, save for a flowing cape, and made of some grey material, not unlike a coarse homespun or even asbestos cloth. Still they became her very well, and when I remarked upon them, all she answered was that part of our road would be rough. Even her feet were shod with high buskins ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard
... and tears should mingle with each other. Where could I get one? There had been many written, and as I looked back into the dramatic history of the past a long line of lovely ghosts loomed up before me, passing as in a procession: Job Thornberry, Bob Tyke, Frank Ostland, Zekiel Homespun, and a host of departed heroes "with martial stalk went by my watch." Charming fellows all, but not for me, I felt I could not do them justice. Besides, they were too human. I was looking for a myth—something intangible and impossible. But he would not come. Time went on, and ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles
... imitative sense, Deem taste in dress the proof of excellence; And spurn the meanness of your homespun arts, Since homespun habits would obscure their parts; Whilst all, which aims at splendour and parade, Must come from Europe, and be ready made. Strange! we should thus our native worth disclaim, ...
— The Contrast • Royall Tyler
... folded bit of Britain, Laid by in lavender and hid The year—let's say—Tom Jones was written; An old farm manor-house it is With fantails fluttering on the gables, A place of men and memories And solid facts and homespun fables. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 29, 1914 • Various
... into the parlor, would have given him half-glad, half-indifferent greeting, and then found either occasion to laugh at him or would have turned elsewhere for amusement. We looked, I say, in vain. Before me stood my pattern of neatness in a rough uniform of brown homespun. A dark flannel shirt replaced the snowy cambric one, and there was neither cravat nor collar to mark the boundary line between his dark face and the still darker material. And the dear little boots! O ye gods and little fishes! they were clumsy, and mud-spattered! ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... her interrogatively the colour faded from her face. The relief of hearing that homespun plan had chilled her blood, and she was faint for an instant with the sickness of hearty youth that only knows it feels odd to itself and concludes the strangeness is of the soul. But she did not answer, for Anne was ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown |
