"Horsehair" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... judge, an't it please your honour, and take you notice, Master Horsehair. You wan't ewidence, do you, beyond the man's confession: here, I'll give it you. Look at this here wice:" and he stretched forth his well-known huge ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... could play them. His first European tour took place in 1805, and astonished the world. The most marvelous stories were told of him. It was popularly supposed that he could play upon anything, provided only the catgut and the horsehair were furnished him. His first appearance in France was in 1831, and in the same year he played in London. The height of his fame was reached in 1834, at which time Berlioz, the French composer, presented him with a ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... we entered an old house of the past generation. As we passed through the wide hall, I noted the high ceilings, the old-fashioned marble mantels stained by time, the long, narrow rooms and dirty-white woodwork, and the threadbare furniture of black walnut and horsehair. ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... for Papa did not approve of the birds being disturbed. Then there was a beautifully-formed mossy little cup-shaped nest in the fork of a tree, just inside the coppice, smooth, round, and soft-edged, with the horsehair and wool lining all plaited together, and made as even as possible. It was so low down that, by bending the branch, the boys could look at it, which they did, while the poor chaffinches, in the horse-chestnut tree close by, cried "pink-pink-pink" in a state of the ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn
... this is stretched and tacked (also to the upper side) a piece of unbleached muslin. A second piece of muslin is tacked to the back edge and part way along the side edges, leaving for the time the corners unfinished. In the pocket thus formed horsehair or other stuffing is pushed, care being taken to distribute it evenly and not too thick. When the pocket is filled, the muslin is tacked farther along the sides and more hair put in, until the front is reached, when the muslin is tacked to the front edge. The corners are now ...
— Handwork in Wood • William Noyes
... very cosy when Mary had made up the fire and lighted the lamp. She seated Joan in the worn horsehair easy-chair; out of which one had to be careful one did not slip on to the floor; and spread her handsome shawl over the back of the ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome
... of sculpture; the other is not so good, but has suffered in re-painting, the eyelid being made too red; if this were remedied, as it easily might be, the figure would gain greatly. Cav. Prof. Antonini has very successfully substituted plaster hair for the horsehair, which had in great measure fallen off. The motive of this incidental group is repeated, but with less success, in Giovanni D'Enrico's Nailing to ...
— Ex Voto • Samuel Butler
... tells you how to act with all descriptive particulars. Consult index for agitated fear of aconite, melancholy of muriatic, priapic pulsatilla. Virag is going to talk about amputation. Our old friend caustic. They must be starved. Snip off with horsehair under the denned neck. But, to change the venue to the Bulgar and the Basque, have you made up your mind whether you like or dislike women in male habiliments? (With a dry snigger) You intended to devote ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... horsehair become a snake? The Hedge hog—What it is, how it lives, and where it is found. Illustrated. The Sponge—Its origin, growth, and uses. Educational Matters-Cornell, Harvard, Yale, Michigan. Cathedral of Rheims-The Coronation place of the old French ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... inside. The furniture of the other three rooms—an ante-chamber, a waiting-room, and a private office—would not have fetched three hundred francs altogether at a distress-warrant sale. You know enough of Paris to know the look of it; the stuffed horsehair-covered chairs, a table covered with a green cloth, a trumpery clock between a couple of candle sconces, growing tarnished under glass shades, the small gilt-framed mirror over the chimney-piece, and in the grate a charred stick or two of firewood which ...
— A Man of Business • Honore de Balzac
... his ill luck, the Spartan warrior seized his foe by the horsehair crest of his helmet, and began to drag him towards the Grecian lines; but at this point Venus came to the aid of her favorite. Standing unseen beside him, she broke the helmet strap under his chin, and thus released him from the grasp of the wrathful Menelaus. Then she ...
— The Story of Troy • Michael Clarke
... old-fashioned iron stove, with the fire lighted. On the left, towards the back, a single smaller door. In front, on the same side, a window, covered with thick curtains. Between the window and the door a horsehair sofa, with a table in front of it covered with a cloth. On the table, a lighted lamp with a shade. Beside ...
— John Gabriel Borkman • Henrik Ibsen
... midst of one's greatest joy—the deepest lake is the old crater on top of the highest mountain. Sappy's eyes were not the sinister black beads of the wily Red-man, but a washed-out blue. His ragged, tow-coloured locks he could hide under wisps of horsehair, the paint itself redeemed his freckled skin, but there was no remedy for the white eyelashes and the pale, piggy, blue eyes. He kept his sorrow to himself, however, for he knew that if the others got an inkling of his feelings on the subject his name would have been promptly ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... top of the first flight of stairs, and if the visitor is admitted he will find a welcome which is not necessarily cold. There are several rooms, some dark and mostly stuffy—a reception-room adorned with horsehair chairs, wool-work stools, and a stove that is never lit—German bad taste without German domesticity broods over that room; also a living-room, which insensibly glides into a bedroom when the refining influence of hospitality is absent, and real bedrooms; and last, ...
— Where Angels Fear to Tread • E. M. Forster
... a large flag, was carried on a caisson, and his horse, led by an orderly, was covered with a large blanket of black cloth. Over this was the saddle, and on top of the saddle rested his helmet—the yellow horsehair plume and gold trimmings looking soiled by long service. His sabre was there, too, and strapped to the saddle on each side were his uniform boots, toes in stirrups—all reversed! This riderless horse, with its pall of black, ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... a looking-glass or any ornament save a vase, which had been one of Gertrude's childish birthday presents to him, and which he always kept filled with flowers and called them Gertrude's flowers; the uncomfortable horsehair arm-chair and the bare breakfast table with its coarse cloth and clumsy china, had all been bearable while he looked forward to a dainty and pretty, ...
— The Girls of St. Olave's • Mabel Mackintosh
... a sport often indulged in by the native Californians, who were among the most skilful horsemen in the world and marvelously expert with their lassos or reatas, as they called the long rope, usually made of hide or woven horsehair, which they used to catch their horses and cattle; and Thure Conroyal and Bud Randolph had become as expert as any native with their reatas, and, consequently, felt equal to the roping of even as ferocious and as huge a beast as El Feroz ...
— The Cave of Gold - A Tale of California in '49 • Everett McNeil
... into the unknown recesses of the house, and sat gingerly on greasy horsehair-seated chairs, in the parlour, while the bubbling cry of the rasher and eggs arose to heaven from the frying-pan, and the reek filled the house as with a grey fog. Potent as it was, it but faintly foreshadowed the flavour of ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... manipulate the vessel, until it has the desired shape. More coils of clay are then added, and the shaping continues until the vessel is complete. Now it is put out into the sun to dry, and when reasonably solid, it is ready for the painting and decoration. With a rude brush made of horsehair or yucca fibre, and paints gathered and ground by herself, she works out the design that her imagination has already created and pictured upon her piece of work. Some of these designs represent ...
— The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It, • George Wharton James
... wood, with rows of labeled cardboard cases on the shelves, stood between the two crazy windows. A gaunt, painted wooden bedstead, of the kind seen in school dormitories, a night-table, picked up cheaply somewhere, and a couple of horsehair armchairs, filled the further end of the room. The wall-paper, a Highland plaid pattern, was glazed over with the grime of years. Between the window and the grate stood a long table littered with papers, and opposite ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... Every article of furniture stood in exactly the same place it had always stood. Nothing was ever suffered to be disturbed. The tassels of the crazy cushion lay just so over the arm of the sofa, and the crochet antimacassar was always spread at precisely the same angel over the horsehair rocking chair. No speck of dust was ever visible; no fly ever ...
— Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... not reply. She wore a silken brocade with little broidered roses here and there, a bodice of the same, cut square over a girl-like neck, white, and not yet filled up. Her long gloves were held up to the sleeve by tightens of plaited white horsehair, which held a red rosebud in each tie; and her hair was braided with a ribbon, and set high in coils on her head, with but little powder. As she came to meet us she dropped a curtsey, and kissed my aunt's hand, as was expected ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... shield Which Sohrab held stiff out; the steel-spiked spear Rent the tough plates, but failed to reach the skin, And Rustum plucked it back with angry groan. Then Sohrab with his sword smote Rustum's helm, Nor clove its steel quite through; but all the crest He shore away, and that proud horsehair plume, Never till now defiled, sank to the dust; And Rustum bowed his head; but then the gloom Grew blacker, thunder rumbled in the air, And lightnings rent the cloud; and Ruksh, the horse, Who stood at hand, uttered a dreadful cry;— No horse's cry was that, most like the roar Of some ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various
... the same, I had this sense of guilt and expiation, this anxious doubt that perhaps all that great, gloomy, mediaeval business of saints and nuns, and bones, and relics, and miracles, and icons, and calvaries, and cells, and celibacy, and horsehair shirts, and blood, and dirt, and tears, was true after all! What if the world of beauty I had been content to live in was a Satanic show, and the real thing was that dead, topsy-turvy world down there in the cold, gray lake under the reeking mists? I ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... of a Melicerta, which animal I will describe to you, and when we get home we will look at it under the microscope. The case is about the twelfth part of an inch long and about the thickness of a horsehair, and of a reddish colour generally, though the colour depends on the nature of the material out of which the case is made. Let us sit down and put the bottle on this large stone, and I dare say some of the creatures will soon show their heads at ...
— Country Walks of a Naturalist with His Children • W. Houghton
... also bristled with nails, lest he should be tempted to dress his wounds. Saint Rose of Lima treated herself no better, she bound a chain so tightly round her body that it penetrated the skin, and hid itself under the bleeding pad of flesh, she wore also a horsehair girdle set with pins, and lay on shards of glass; but all these trials are nothing in comparison of those inflicted on herself by a Capuchin nun, the venerable Mother ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... in pots were protected wholly from the light, or had light admitted from above or on one side as the case might require, and were covered above by a large horizontal sheet of glass, and with another vertical sheet on one side. A glass filament, not thicker than a horsehair, and from a quarter to three-quarters of an inch in length, was affixed to the part to be observed by means of shellac dissolved in alcohol. The solution was allowed to evaporate until it became so thick that it set hard in two or three seconds, and it never injured the tissues, even the tips ...
— Outlines of Lessons in Botany, Part I; From Seed to Leaf • Jane H. Newell
... Residency, Harry returned to the farm where he had left his horse and, early next morning, put on his disguise again, painted lines round his eyes, touched some of the hairs of his eyebrows with white paint, mixed some white horsehair with the tuft on the top of his head, and dropped a little juice of a plant resembling belladonna—used at times, by ladies in the east, to dilate the pupils of their eyes and make them dark and ...
— At the Point of the Bayonet - A Tale of the Mahratta War • G. A. Henty
... buzzard and tie together some of the flight feathers of the wing, so that it can fly only with difficulty and cannot go far before it falls exhausted to the ground. To the feet of the bird of which the powers of flight have been thus curtailed a bundle of feathers is tied. Among the feathers several horsehair nooses are set. When a bird of prey, of the kind on which the falconer has designs, is seen the buzzard is thrown into the air. It flaps along heavily, and is immediately observed by the falcon, which ...
— A Bird Calendar for Northern India • Douglas Dewar
... "Horsehair coats have made their appearance," says The Outfitter. Surely this is nothing very new. We have often ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 8th, 1920 • Various
... resumed its wonted appearance; the dining-room furniture has been replaced; the tables are as nicely polished as formerly; the horsehair chairs are ranged against the wall, as regularly as ever; Venetian blinds have been fitted to every window in the house to intercept the prying gaze of Mrs. Joseph Porter. The subject of theatricals is never mentioned in the Gattleton family, ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... Gabrielle became familiar with a number of dining-rooms furnished in mahogany and horsehair and hung with opulent studies of still life in oils and engravings after Mr. Frith. The meal was usually served by the whiskered coachman, who wore, for the occasion, a waistcoat decorated with dark blue and yellow stripes, and there was always cake for lunch. After the port, which generally ...
— The Tragic Bride • Francis Brett Young
... wall opposite were pictures of Tenney's father and mother, painful enlargements from stiff photographs, and on the neighboring wall a glazed framing of wax flowers and a hair wreath. The furniture was black walnut upholstered with horsehair. Tenney was of the more prosperous line of farmers. And yet he had not begun so. All this represented the pathetic ideal of one who toiled and saved and bought after the ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... curious questions you were talking about, and others like them. You know they find their way almost everywhere. They do not worry me in the least. When I was a little girl, they used to say that if you put a horsehair into a tub of water it would turn into a snake in the course of a few days. That did not seem to me so very much stranger than it was that an egg should turn into a chicken. What can I say to that? Only that it is the Lord's doings, and marvellous in my eyes; and if our philosophical ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... are firmly sewn together and the short ones turned in with a narrow hem through which you run a cord to draw them up. A disc of stout cardboard is put inside the case after you have gathered up the one end; you then stuff the case as full as possible with bran, sawdust or horsehair, lay a second disc of cardboard in at the top and draw ...
— Encyclopedia of Needlework • Therese de Dillmont
... protracted worry of this misunderstanding (which had been a long one) had made me almost hysterical. I clearly remember the feeling of lying with my face against the horsehair sofa in the little dining-room, feebly repeating, 'You shouldn't, you know. You shouldn't!' amid my tears, my hair being softly stroked the while by the two sisters, who comforted me, and blamed themselves with a depth ...
— Mrs. Overtheway's Remembrances • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... of these great insect destroyers; if more than one pair, there will be continual warfare as often as one encroaches on the domains of the other. Their nests are made of strips of vegetable fibre, weeds, etc., and lined with horsehair or catkins. They are sometimes quite bulky and generally very substantially made. The three to five eggs are laid the latter part of May, and are of a creamy ground color splashed with reddish brown and lilac. Size .95 x .70. Data.—Worcester ...
— The Bird Book • Chester A. Reed
... he lay back on the lumpy pillow, murmuring them again. The lumps of knotted flock under his head reminded him of the lumps of knotted horsehair in the sofa of her parlour on which he used to sit, smiling or serious, asking himself why he had come, displeased with her and with himself, confounded by the print of the Sacred Heart above the untenanted sideboard. He saw her approach him in a lull of the talk and beg him to sing one ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... afternoon and lay on the horsehair sofa in the sitting-room, and held a sort of levee of her visitors. Tom was subdued, and the twins were envious—nothing uncommon ever happened to them! They knew too much or were too cautious, but they sat on two stools by the window and followed Mrs. Beauchamp's movements ...
— Troublesome Comforts - A Story for Children • Geraldine Glasgow
... started up in alarm. He was not prepared for a lady's visit; the three top buttons of his violet tunic were unbuttoned, contrary to regulations, and he had laid aside his horsehair cravat. Athalie remained standing at the door with hanging arms and her head down: ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... according to custom, a large umbrella in hand, while her arm was loaded with an immense horsehair bag. She entered the little cabinet, where we were seated, like a shower of hail:—"Here you are at last," she exclaimed, "I have been into every room, in search of you, Do you know, my dear, that the ...
— The Wedding Guest • T.S. Arthur
... hour later he sipped his rather dire martini and listened to his mother talk. Not to the words especially, for she was one of those nearly-extinct well-bred women, brought up in the horsehair amenities of the late Victorian era, who could talk charmingly and vivaciously and at considerable length without saying anything. It was pleasant merely to sit and sip and let the words flow ...
— A World Apart • Samuel Kimball Merwin
... of the bell-rope. They therefore slipped out of the church, and up into the belfry, where they hid. In a few moments a man appeared who began to work at something. They sprang on him and seized his wrists, and found in one of his hands a thin line of horsehair, to one end of which a hook was attached. The holder being frightened, dropped the line and fled, and although M. de Laubardemont, the exorcists, and the spectators waited, expecting every moment that the cap would rise into the air, it remained quite firm on the owner's head, to the no small ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... him leaning back in a high chair of black horsehair, in an apartment commanding a view southward of James River and Chesterfield. On a table beside him were books and papers—the furniture of the room was plain ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... and flapjacks was soon followed by the spreading of blankets on the nearest stretches of sand. The Navahos went off to one side. Slade ordered Lennon to keep near him and carefully encircled their bedding-down place with the coils of a horsehair lariat. ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet
... wealth in the dingy hole that serves him for a shop, where a Double-Bass, a couple of Violoncellos, a Tenor or two hanging on the walls, and half-a-dozen Fiddles lying among a random collection of bows, bridges, coils of catgut, packets of purified resin, and tangled horsehair in skeins, serve for the insignia of his profession. But Borax never does business in his shop, which is a dusty desert from one week's end to another. His warehouse is a private sanctum on the first floor, where you will find him in his ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... him on the old horsehair sofa, while Esther, whose fears had all flown to the winds now that something practical was to be done, dashed some brandy into a tumbler and brought it to him. The stimulant had a marvellous effect upon him, for the colour ...
— The Mystery of Cloomber • Arthur Conan Doyle
... to move some of the books and papers which were strewn on the table. Lisle sat on the end of the horsehair sofa and watched him. "I can't think how you can endure that blue thing and those awful flowers continually before your eyes," he ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... in black with his name, and two sitting-rooms. They are not very large rooms, it is true, but in one of them he gives his lessons, and the grand piano fills it up entirely, so that you can only sit on the little black horsehair sofa at the end, and it is very hard to get past the piano on either side. Ercole is as broad as he is long, and takes snuff when he is not smoking. But ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford
... however, always admitted of the hair being parted from the forehead to the back of the head in two equal masses, and of being plaited or waved over the ears. Nets were again adopted, and head-dresses which, whilst permitting a display of masses of false hair, hid the horsehair or padded puffs. And, lastly, the escoffion appeared—a heavy roll, which, being placed on a cap also padded, produced the most clumsy, outrageons, and ungraceful shapes ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... lengthened, and wrinkles, painted in the cheeks, transformed the grieving face to a bestial one twisted into a mean laugh. He was naked, and where the loincloth should have been, there was a virile member projecting from a bush of horsehair. In front of the tabernacle the chalice, covered with a pall, was placed. The choir boy folded the altar cloth, wiggled his haunches, stood tiptoe on one foot and flipped his arms as if to fly away like a cherub, on pretext of reaching up to light the black ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... favourite instrument was the violin, a small and curiously shaped apparatus fitted with four strings, which, when rubbed or scraped with horsehair tightly stretched on a narrow wooden frame, were made to produce sounds imitating the cries of various animals, especially the mewing of a cat, to perfection. But as the timbre of the instrument did not lend itself to successful mechanical ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 153, November 7, 1917 • Various
... to come out upon my guards as La Jongleuse, and, in the fright and confusion which should follow, make my escape through the corridors and to the entrance doors, past the sentinels, and so on out. It may be seen now why I got the woman's garb, the sheet, the horsehair, the phosphorus, the reeds, and such things; why I secured the knife and pistol may be guessed likewise. Upon the lid of a small stove in the room I placed my saltpetre, and I rubbed the horsehair on my head with phosphorus, also on my hands, and face, and feet, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... in dark colours. Broad doorway, hung with black crape, in the wall at back, leading to a back Drawing-room, in which, above a sofa in black horsehair, hangs a posthumous portrait of the late General GABLER. On the piano is a handsome pall. Through the glass panes of the back Drawing-room window are seen a dead wall and a cemetery. Settees, sofas, chairs, &c., handsomely upholstered ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 100, April 25, 1891 • Various
... earthenware, horsehair, bridle reins, ropes, and domestic utensils, is remarkably ingenious. They formerly cultivated cotton and manufactured cotton cloth of a very strong quality. The men understood spinning and weaving, and passed the winter ...
— Building a State in Apache Land • Charles D. Poston
... source of sarcasm and ridicule in the Spanish fashion of Miss Montenero's dress, especially her long veils—veils were not then in fashion, and Lady Anne of course pronounced them to be hideous. It was at this time, in England, the reign of high heads: a sort of triangular cushion or edifice of horsehair, suppose nine inches diagonal, three inches thick, by seven in height, called I believe a toque or a system, was fastened on the female head, I do not well know how, with black pins a quarter ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... feature was no longer white and smooth as in the days of his youth, and the kindly open glance of his blue eyes had grown a little hard, as if from much peering through the smoke of battles. The ebony crop on Colonel Feraud's head, coarse and crinkly like a cap of horsehair, showed many silver threads about the temples. A detestable warfare of ambushes and inglorious surprises had not improved his temper. The beaklike curve of his nose was unpleasantly set off by deep folds on each side of his mouth. The round orbits of his eyes radiated fine wrinkles. ...
— The Point Of Honor - A Military Tale • Joseph Conrad
... and realised that he was cold and sitting cramped on an uncomfortable horsehair chair. He had dozed. He glanced for the yellow line between the folding doors. It was still there, but it seemed to quiver. He judged the candle must be flaring. He wondered ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells
... Swingly and Horsehair," interrupted Sam, mentioning the janitor of Oak Hall and the driver for the institution. "Don't forget ...
— Dave Porter in the Far North - or, The Pluck of an American Schoolboy • Edward Stratemeyer
... back your old ring; I won't wear it any longer;" and Tommy plucked off a horsehair pledge of affection which Nan had given him in return for one made of ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... a large hall with bare walls, a noble enough apartment in its unadorned simplicity, in spite of the mean horsehair chairs that stood round it. Above the fire-place, instead of a mirror, was a Mater dolorosa that caught the eye by its dazzling whiteness. Big marble tears stood arrested in mid-career down the cheeks, while the features expressed the pious absorption of ...
— The Aspirations of Jean Servien • Anatole France
... flinging her arms round me sobbed louder than I. It would have been wicked to offer further resistance. She brought down pillows, covered them with a red shawl, and propped me up till the horsehair sofa became an easy couch, and with mixed tears and smiles I contrived to swallow a few mouthfuls, a feat which she exalted to an ...
— Miscellanea • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... it. He don't talk of paying, and going away. I shall be just left with him and the Lupexes on my hands; and then the bailiffs may come and sell every stick about the place. I won't say nay to them." Then she threw herself into the old horsehair armchair, and gave way to ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... Antoinette and her court, powdered wigs and patches, paniers and enormous hats, surmounting the horsehair erections, heavy with powder and grease, lace, ribbon flowers and jewels, are quaint, delightful and diverting, but not to be compared with the Greek or ...
— Woman as Decoration • Emily Burbank
... old friends in the regiments near by. As I passed a group of Arabs that had just finished work on the roads, I noticed that they were playing a game that was new to me. A stake was driven into the ground, with a horsehair rope ten or twelve feet in length attached to it. An old man had hold of the end of the rope. About the stake were piled some clothes, and the Arabs were standing around in a circle just out of reach of the man with the rope. The object was to dart in and snatch up something from the heap without ...
— War in the Garden of Eden • Kermit Roosevelt
... end was evidently the study, and here Christie took a good look as she dusted tidily. The furniture was nothing, only an old sofa, with the horsehair sticking out in tufts here and there; an antique secretary; and a table covered with books. As she whisked the duster down the front of the ancient piece of furniture, one of the doors in the upper half swung ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... loved to supply. As Francesca turned to watch the fourth act of the play, her mind was singing a paean of thankfulness and exultation. It was as though some artificer sent by the Gods had reinforced with a substantial cord the horsehair thread that held up the sword of Damocles over her head. Her love for her home, for her treasured household possessions, and her pleasant social life was able to expand once more in present security, and feed on future hope. She was still young enough to count four or five years as a long ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... seems to me twofold: First, that Man is a Spirit, and bound by invisible bonds to All Men; secondly, that he wears Clothes, which are the visible emblems of that fact. Has not your Red hanging-individual a horsehair wig, squirrel-skins, and a plush-gown; whereby all mortals know that he is a JUDGE?—Society, which the more I think of it astonishes me the ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... clothes that would make you think—if anything," drawled the languid Miss Devine. She was a tall, handsome girl, engaged at the moment in futile efforts to recline with elegance and comfort combined upon a horsehair sofa. Miss Kite, by reason of having secured the only easy-chair, was unpopular that evening; so that Miss Devine's remark received from the rest of the company more approbation than ...
— Passing of the Third Floor Back • Jerome K. Jerome
... yourself, Ellen Melville!" she rebuked herself. "She's a better woman than ever you'll be, with the grand work she's done at the Miller's Wynd Dispensary." But that the doctor was a really fine woman made the horsehair texture of her manner all the more unpleasing, for it showed her sinisterly illustrative of a community which had reached an intellectual standard that could hardly be bettered and which possessed certain moral energy, and yet was content ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... hats that go down over their shoulders. This is the kind of hat they wear when they are in mourning, after the death of a father or mother. Some wear hats made of straw. These hats look like large flowerpots turned upside down. Some have hats made of horsehair. ...
— Big People and Little People of Other Lands • Edward R. Shaw
... this fish should assuredly take us back to the far-off schoolboy times when we used to "snatch a fearful joy" by surreptitious visits to the mill stream, and when, with a little hazel rod, length of whipcord, and rude hooks whipped to twisted horsehair, we would hurry home to breakfast with a dozen roach strung through the gills upon a twig of osier. They were all best ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... knight clothed in a mantle of black glossy bearskin, bordered with costly fur, but without any ornament of shining metal. His very helmet was covered with dark bearskin, and, instead of plumes, a mass of blood-red horsehair hung like a flowing mane profusely on every side. Well did Froda and Edwald remember that dark knight, for he was the uncourteous guest of the hostelry. He also seemed to remark the two knights, for he turned his unruly ...
— Aslauga's Knight • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... time the procession had drawn nigh, and two mounted troopers, glittering in casques of highly polished bronze, with waving crests of horsehair, corslets of burnished brass, and cassocks of bright scarlet cloth, dashed by as hard as their fiery Gallic steeds could trot, their harness clashing merrily from the rate at which they rode. Before these men were out of sight, a troop of horse rode past in serried order, five ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... across the barren sea, so that they whirr out of every bush as ye come near it. Who will now run down into the village, and cut off the mane and tail of my dead cow which lies out behind on the common?" (for there was no horsehair in all the village, seeing that the enemy had long since carried off or stabbed all the horses). But no one would go, for fear was stronger even than hunger, till my old Ilse spoke, and said, "I will go, for I fear nothing, when I walk in ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... back against the hard, horsehair sofa, and pulled up the blind. The room was instantly filled with gray and lavender shadows, while without the Fens stretched out in unbroken lines as though all the rest of the world were made up of nothing else. Lonely? Merriton had known the loneliness of Indian nights, far away ...
— The Riddle of the Frozen Flame • Mary E. Hanshew
... towards a big horsehair sofa, beneath the deer heads and assegais from Zululand. He did it on tiptoe, aware that this mysterious and suggestive way of walking has a marked effect on children in the dark. "I did not shoot it," he said, "because I lived with it. It was the most extraordinary ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... is accomplished by means of a halter of horsehair, which is passed round under the neck of the horse, and both ends braided into the mane, on the withers, thus forming a loop which hangs under the neck and against the breast. This being caught by the hand, makes a sling, into which the elbow falls, taking the weight of the body ...
— The Dog Crusoe and his Master • R.M. Ballantyne
... cotton and fine wool all about the room, and even endeavoured to construct small nests of wool and horsehair. But the incorrigible little creature seemed to take an especial delight in eluding them, and in laying eggs ...
— Skipper Worse • Alexander Lange Kielland
... by the Ulai, while the flower of the Elamite nobility was ranged around him. The equipment of his soldiers was simpler than that of the enemy: consisting of a low helmet, devoid of any crest, but furnished with a large pendant tress of horsehair to shade the neck; a shield of moderate dimensions; a small bow, which, however, was quite as deadly a weapon as that of the Assyrians, when wielded by skilful hands; a lance, a mace, and a dagger. He had only a small body of cavalry, but the chariotry formed an important force, and presented ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 8 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... Lintons looked at each other, and then at the hopeless little room. The furniture was black horsehair, very shiny and hard and slippery; there was a gimcrack bamboo overmantel, with much speckled glass, and the pictures were of the kind peculiar to London lodging-houses, apt to promote indigestion in the beholder. There was one little window, looking ...
— Captain Jim • Mary Grant Bruce
... the surname; but she got up, and they went off just in the usual way to the parlor; and when they was there, she sat down in her old corner of the horsehair sofa and looked at him. But he didn't sit down—not at first. He walked about fierce ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... retreat is very small, and as neat as though an old maid lived in it. The furniture looks as good as new, but is subdued to a tone of sober maturity, and chimes in so well with the general effect that one scarcely notices it. The polished table is mounted in dark morocco; behind the horsehair-covered arm-chair is a gray marble mantel-piece, overshadowing an open grate with polished bars and fire-utensils in the English style. During the winter months a lump of cannel-coal is always burning there; ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... and walrus whiskers that emitted a rasping Bueno after every play. There was talk of Paris and possible new volumes of verse, homage to Walt Whitman, Maragall, questioning about Emily Dickinson. About us was a smell of old horsehair sofas, a buzz of the poignant musty ennui of old towns left centuries ago high and dry on the beach of history. The group grew. Talk of painting: Zuloaga had not come yet, the Zubiaurre brothers had abandoned their Basque coast towns, seduced by the bronze-colored people and the saffron hills ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... patient and delightful of nurses. I remember the haven of peace and comfort it seemed to me when I was unwell, to be tucked up on the study sofa, idly considering the old geological map hung on the wall. This must have been in his working hours, for I always picture him sitting in the horsehair arm-chair by the corner ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... Lear was in the parlour, and no less a personage than Miss Le Pettit of Ignores was seated on the best horsehair armchair, her bonneted head, with its drooping feather, leaning gracefully against the lace antimacassar, and her small prunella boots elegantly crossed on the smiling cheeks of the beadwork cherub that adorned the footstool, and ...
— The White Riband - A Young Female's Folly • Fryniwyd Tennyson Jesse
... affair which served them as both under her arm and swung Abe's figured old carpet-bag in her hand with the manner of one setting out on a pleasant journey. Abe, though resting heavily on his stout, crooked cane, dragged behind him Angy's little horsehair trunk upon a creaking, old, unusually large, toy express-wagon which he had bought at some forgotten ...
— Old Lady Number 31 • Louise Forsslund
... my rooms. Walls all decorated with horsehair bridles—scores of them—hundreds of them. They're no use to me, and they cost like Sam Scratch. But there's a lot of convicts making them, and I go on buying. Why, I've spent more money in a single night on whiskey than would get the ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... solemn voice, sad and low, but yet sufficiently audible,—a sort of whisper that Macready would have envied, and the galleries have applauded with a couple of rounds. "Resigned it! Good heavens!" And the dignitary of the church sank back horrified into a horsehair arm-chair. ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope
... old fiddle in his trunk; got out his clothes (they were not so many that they made his head ache); put them on the top of his books; and went into the workroom for his case of instruments. There was a ragged stool there, with the horsehair all sticking out of the top like a wig: a very Beast of a stool in itself; on which he had taken up his daily seat, year after year, during the whole period of his service. They had grown older and shabbier in company. ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... mile square, because there was nothing in it except some rows of books, on unpainted white-pine bookshelves, a cracked marble-top table, a rag rug, a hairless horsehair sofa and two or three chairs. Yes, there was a picture on the wall, a colored crayon drawing of a cluster of pansies. I looked around for the portrait of Andrew Jackson and the pinecone hanging basket but ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... baseballs are specially constructed for indoor play, being much larger and more elastic than those for outdoor play. This ball is generally composed of a core of packed leather strips, around which is placed curled horsehair tied on with string. The cover is of leather, preferably horsehide, somewhat softer in quality than that used on the outdoor baseball. The dimensions of the ball vary from 15 to 17 inches in circumference, or about 5 inches in diameter. ...
— Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium • Jessie H. Bancroft
... When the coat and waistcoat were taken off, Mrs. Furze invariably drew down the blinds. She had often remonstrated with her husband for appearing in his shirt-sleeves, and objected to the neighbours seeing him in this costume. There was a sofa in the room, but it was horsehair, with high ends both alike, not comfortable, which were covered with curious complications called antimacassars, that slipped off directly they were touched, so that anybody who leaned upon them was engaged continually in warfare with them, picking them up from the floor or spreading them out ...
— Catharine Furze • Mark Rutherford
... to open his beak to speak (and, being such a large beak, opening it took some time), when the Welcome Swallow fussed into court, and said that "nothing could be done until they had some horsehair!" ...
— Dot and the Kangaroo • Ethel C. Pedley
... intensified as a fresh spurt of the desert wind sweeps the dust away, displaying in clear light the line of marching horsemen. No question as to their character now. There they are, with their square-peaked corded caps, and plumes of horsehair; their pennoned spears sloped over their shoulders; their yellow cloaks folded and strapped over the cantles of their saddles; sabres lying along thighs, clinking against spurs and stirrups—all the picturesque panoply ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... a shuffling step approach the door, it was unlocked, and a gray old woman, with a huge horsehair wig upon her head, ...
— The Girl from Sunset Ranch - Alone in a Great City • Amy Bell Marlowe
... the tables for dinner she stole out to the porch for a breath of fresh air. Already the approach of an Arizona summer was beginning to make itself felt during the middle of the day. Yeager sat beneath the wild cucumber vines pleating a horsehair hatband for Daisy Ellington. ...
— Steve Yeager • William MacLeod Raine
... nicely aght o' mi hands. What to do wi thi nah aw connot tell, unless aw cut off t'other ear to match, an' tee a bunch o' horsehair to thi tail an' see if aw connot mak a galloway aght on thi; an' if aw doo that, aw expect tha willn't be able to keep thi maath shut, an' that voice o' thine 'll let ivvery body know. But hahivver aw mun try an' bandage that heead o' thine up an' then see what aw can do, for ther'll be noa hawkin' ...
— Yorksher Puddin' - A Collection of the Most Popular Dialect Stories from the - Pen of John Hartley • John Hartley
... of the world and leave not one person behind to be sorry because you have gone. Miss Emily was dead and buried before Diana and I heard of it at all. The first I knew of it was when I came home from Orchard Slope one day and found a queer, shabby little black horsehair trunk, all studded with brass nails, on the floor of my room at Green Gables. Marilla told me that Jack Leith had brought it over, and said that it had belonged to Miss Emily and that, when she was dying, she asked them to send ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... and sparkling black eyes, amongst whom were several gumbie—men and flute—players, and John Canoes, as the negro Jack Pudding is called; the latter distinguishable by wearing white false faces, and enormous shocks of horsehair, fastened on to their woolly pates. Their character hovers somewhere between that of a harlequin and a clown, as they dance about, and thread through the negro groups, quizzing the women and slapping the men; and at Christmas time, the grand negro carnival, they ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... simplicity of her nightgown, the very cream of silk, she might have been Andromache harnessing Hector. Only there was no baby for him to leave with her, no baby to shrink in fright from the horsehair crest of the helmet that he ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... Chamberlain and the Master of the Household. He was dressed in the ancient costume of his people, a flowing blue garment reaching to the ankles, with a robe of softer cream colour underneath. On his head was a quaint Korean hat, with a circle of Korean ornaments hanging from its high, outstanding horsehair brim. On his chest was a small decorative breastplate. Tall, clumsily built, awkward, ...
— Korea's Fight for Freedom • F.A. McKenzie
... the mantle that he'll wear, Embroidered by his bride! Admire his burnished helmet's glare, O'ershadowed by the dark horsehair That waves ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... beautifully cut; there were walnuts and, in a far Corner, cigars of a well-known brand and cigarettes from a famous tobacconist. Beyond that little oasis, however, were all the evidences of a hired abode. A hole in the closely drawn curtains was fastened together by a safety pin. The horsehair easy-chairs bore disfiguring antimacassars, the photographs which adorned the walls were grotesque but typical of village ideals, the carpet was threadbare, the closed door secured by a latch instead of the usual knob. One side of the room ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... spoken by Thenard, for he was just standing there, a little, oldish man, terribly convincing in his simplicity, absolutely without prejudice, as ready to acknowledge the soul and its attributes as to refuse them, standing there twiddling his horsehair watch-chain, and speaking from the profundity of his knowledge with, at his elbow, a huge army of facts, instances, and cases, not one of which did not support his ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... endure." He said; and straight th' officious courser kneels, To take his wonted weight. His hands he fills With pointed jav'lins; on his head he lac'd His glitt'ring helm, which terribly was grac'd With waving horsehair, nodding from afar; Then spurr'd his thund'ring steed amidst the war. Love, anguish, wrath, and grief, to madness wrought, Despair, and secret shame, and conscious thought Of inborn worth, his lab'ring ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... out, left him standing on the verandah. After a lengthy absence, he returned, and with a "Well, come along in then!" opened the door of a parlour. This was a large room, well furnished in horsehair and rep. Wax-lights stood on the mantelpiece before a gilt-framed pierglass; coloured prints ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... include frozen and chilled beef and mutton, hides, sheepskins, wool, and such things as horsehair, tallow, jerked beef, etc., represented a value of ...
— Argentina From A British Point Of View • Various
... very like a schoolboy's, furnished with the bed and fittings remaining from his bachelor days, as shabby and worn as he was, dusted perhaps once a week—that horrible room where everything was in a litter, with old socks hanging over the horsehair-seated chairs, the pattern outlined in dust, was that of a man to whom home is a matter of indifference, who lives out of doors, gambling in ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... borders the blackbird whistles his early-morning song, they remind me of sundials and lavender and old delightful things. But in their cheap glass bowl upon the three- legged table, above which the cloth-covered canary maintains a stolid silence, they remind me of antimacassars and horsehair sofas and all that is depressing. It is hard that the goldfish himself should have so little choice in the matter. Goldfish look pretty in the terrace pond, yet I doubt if it was the need for prettiness which brought them there. Rather the need for some thing to throw things to. No one of ...
— Not that it Matters • A. A. Milne
... the Governor-General!" Turning round, Chichikov stared in horror at the spectacle presented; for in the doorway there was standing an apparition wearing a huge moustache, a helmet surmounted with a horsehair plume, a pair of crossed shoulder-belts, and a gigantic sword! A whole army might have been combined into a single individual! And when Chichikov opened his mouth to speak the apparition repeated, "You are ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... as they set snares for fig-birds, and stuffed themselves to the throat with grapes and custard-apples. The fat beccaficoes beloved of the epicurean fell by hundreds into the limed horsehair traps. Greek, Egyptian and negro girls, laughing under garlands of hibiscus, periwinkle and tuberoses, coaxed the fat morsels out of the black men to carry home for a supper treat, while acrobats, comic singers, sellers ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... great oriel window stood a round mahogany table, bearing a bouquet of wax flowers under a glass shade. Cases of stuffed birds ornamented every available recess; mahogany and horsehair chairs were set stiffly round the walls at even distances. A heap of folded moth-eaten rugs and wraps disfigured a side-table, and beneath it stood a ...
— Peter's Mother • Mrs. Henry De La Pasture
... think any more than you did," said Priscilla stopping in front of the gate as a sign he was to open it for her. He did, and they walked through the garden and into the house in silence. Then she went into the parlour and dropped into a horsehair armchair, and leaning her head against its prickliness ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... sleeping and instant waking, was up and standing back from the little window with his six-shooter in his hand before Rabbit had stopped to whirl and look for what had scared him. So Starr was in time to see a "big four" Stetson hat with a horsehair hatband sink from sight behind the high board fence at ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... poles, and without so much as a "How," they began tearing off their packs and setting up their lodges. The packs consisted of old kettles, stale meat, old elk skins made into robes, parflesakes filled to the brim with pemmican, made of elk fat, choke cherries, and jerked elk half dried and half horsehair. Several young puppies, too young to walk, were tied with soft thongs just under the fore legs ...
— The Sheep Eaters • William Alonzo Allen
... goes on to say that these Indians were well made, with very good countenances, but hair like horsehair, their colour yellow; and that they painted themselves. They neither carried arms, nor understood such things, for when he showed them swords, they took hold of them by the blade, and hurt themselves. ...
— The Life of Columbus • Arthur Helps
... about the mattress, it is on account of Marianne that I ask," Sally explained. "Do you know, she now has some new people in her house and I should so much like to see them, and therefore I wanted so much to know whether you could not sacrifice a mattress so that Marianne could pull the horsehair for a mattress, for Mother will not let me go into the house ...
— Erick and Sally • Johanna Spyri
... Muttering to himself, he led us into the house and lighted two candles in the parlour. We had never entered the parlour before, and accordingly looked about with interest and curiosity. The furniture, which had belonged to Pap's father-in- law, a Spanish-Californian, was of mahogany and horsehair, very good and substantial. In a bookcase were some ancient tomes bound in musty leather. A strange-looking piano, with a high back, covered with faded rose-coloured silk, stood in a corner. Some half ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... ecole was to be followed by an exhibition of "transportation throughout the ages," headed by a Gaulish chariot driven by a trooper with a long horsehair moustache and mistletoe wreath, and ending in a motor of which the engine had been taken out and replaced by a large placid white horse. Unluckily a heavy rain began while this instructive "number" awaited its turn, and we had to leave ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... natural to some people," said Bud, "and then, too, he may have been in Mexico. Some of the Greasers are pretty slick with the horsehair. But ...
— The Boy Ranchers on the Trail • Willard F. Baker
... when all was said. He felt he would like to creep into The Rigs, into the sitting-room where his mother had always sat (the other larger rooms, the "good room" as it was called, was kept for visitors and high days), and lay his tired body on the horsehair arm-chair by the fireside. He could rest there, he thought. It was impossible, of course. There would be no horsehair arm-chair, for everything had been sold—and ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)
... away!" So speaking, mighty Hector stretched his arms To take the boy; the boy shrank crying back To his fair nurse's bosom, scared to see His father helmeted in glittering brass, And eying with affright the horsehair plume That grimly nodded from the lofty crest. At this both parents in their fondness laughed; And hastily the mighty Hector took The helmet from his brow and laid it down Gleaming upon the ground, and, having kissed His darling son and tossed him up in play, Prayed thus ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... "limbs" and moved with difficulty. She was glad to talk the matter over, though she had from the first no intention of taking me. From my then point of view nothing seemed so desirable as a cot in Mrs. Flannagan's front parlour. I even offered in my eagerness to sleep on the horsehair sofa. Womanlike, she gave twenty little reasons for not taking me before she gave the one ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... one of the troopers took the rammer Ben had brought out, inserted it at the muzzle, and found that it would only go in half-way. So a ragged stick was fetched, run in, twisted round and round, and withdrawn, dragging after it a wad of horsehair, cotton, hay, and feathers, while a succession of trials brought out more and more, the twisting round having a cleansing effect upon the bore of the ...
— The Young Castellan - A Tale of the English Civil War • George Manville Fenn
... not half-conquered yet," she laughed. "And what of Ganesha? Is this mountain of bones and thews a person to be trusted, or shall we show him how much stronger than him is a horsehair in a clever ...
— Caves of Terror • Talbot Mundy
... left a good deal to each other's society, for Dennis was now entirely occupied with the building of the jackdaws' house under Tuvvy's advice and direction. One afternoon the two little girls were sitting together in the play-room, threading beads on horsehair to make a ...
— Black, White and Gray - A Story of Three Homes • Amy Walton
... had died but two months before and if perhaps then her younger sister had felt any pang of pity for the orphaned children, it did not enter her thoughts this morning. She plumped up the pillows on the prim horsehair sofa, painfully recalling the pillow fight she had once seen between her cousin's children. Children were a nuisance, and these two—Myra's dreadful boy and girl—were bound to be ...
— Pearl and Periwinkle • Anna Graetz
... in front of her tent in the sun, watching the cowboys sitting around their camp, weaving horsehair bridles, cleaning their guns, mending their clothes, and doing other things that fall to the leisure of a ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... face, "But neither, Monsieur!" we all shouted together and laughed and became the best friends in the world. Happy country of fraternity! The little soldiers—they were dragoons and wore helmets too big for them and long horsehair plumes—accompanied us with clanking sabres to the gallery of the theatre, and at Paragot's invitation sat one on each side of Blanquette, who, what with the unaccustomed bloodshed of the spectacle ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke |
