"Silken" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... window! The fresh crimson and blues of the everlasting Turkey carpet (Turkey carpet being the ne plus ultra of carpetry in the Five Towns, when that carpet was bought, just as sealskin was the ne plus ultra of all furs)! The silken-polished sideboard, strange to the company, but worthy of it, and exhibiting a due sense of its high destiny! The sombre bookcase and corner cupboard, darkly glittering! The Chesterfield sofa, broad, accepting, acquiescent! The flashing ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... Drum-beating, pipe-blowing, and shouting all died away. The sound of hurried footsteps alone was heard. All at once into sight came the imperial chair of state. In this chair was the king, but not yet could Yung Pak get a glimpse of his royal master. Yellow silken panels hid him from the view of the curious crowd, and over the top was a canopy of the same description, ornamented with ...
— Our Little Korean Cousin • H. Lee M. Pike
... sensitive woman is, what fearful and wonderful nervous systems these delicate creatures have to manage; I, with what I was pleased to term my high organization and special training—I, like any brutal hind, had berated my wife. I, who was punctilious to draw the silken portiere for her, who could not let her pick up so much as her own lace handkerchief, nor allow her to fold a wrap of the weight of a curlew's feather about her own soft throat—I had belaboured her with the bludgeons ...
— The Gates Between • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... gentlemen. Among these, however, were some not unworthy to be perceived by him; and besides these, there were some foreign officers; one in particular, from Spain, of high rank and birth, of the sangre azul, the blue blood, who have the privilege of the silken cord if they should come to be hanged. This Spaniard was a man of distinguished talent, and for him Horace might have been expected to shine out; it was his pleasure, however, this day to disappoint expectations, and to ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... of the army, as her lieutenant-general. It is curious to find Katherine—the pacific, domestic, and unpretending Katherine—describing herself as having "her heart set to war," and "horrible busy" with making "standards, banners, badges, scarfs, and the like."[97] Nor was this mere silken preparation—mere dalliance with the pomp and circumstance of war; for within a few weeks afterwards, her general defeated the Scots in the famous battle of Floddenfield, where James IV. and most of his nobility ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... The lining was silken, of a deep, rich, golden hue. And already it was torn, although but the tiniest bit in the world, by one of the sharp spikes. Her temper, however, ever ready it seemed, flared out again; the crinkling merriment went from her eyes, ...
— Man to Man • Jackson Gregory
... my best that night, at least every one said I did, and I had my mirror to tell me so too. My gown was a wondrous figured thing from the Indies—a soft, clinging, silken stuff that became me well. Royalty sent an armful of great purple blossoms, strange in shape and smelling ravishingly. My clever Prue spent hours on my hair, with the little Lafitte for the finishing ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald
... conventional flower. The girdle of fine green leather, richly embroidered in gold, followed exactly the lower line of this close garment round the hips, and the long end fell straight from the knot almost to the ground. The silken skirt in many folds was of the same colour as the rest, but without embroidery. The mantle of state, of a figured cloth of gold lined with straw-coloured silk, hung in wide folds from her shoulders, her hair falling over it, and it was loosely ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford
... whom we see about is a simple cotton tobe, covering them from neck to heels. The colour of these tobes is generally blue-black, dyed with indigo; some are glazed with gum. Many, however, are white, and ornamented in front about the neck with silken embroidery,—a costume which gives them a very chaste and elegant appearance. Sometimes the tobes are variegated in colour, as are the trousers; but the sombre, or pure ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 1 • James Richardson
... given; but the Bunkers were too much bewildered by the appearance of the gorgeous boat, with its silken flags and bright colors, its gilded name and its graceful shape, to heed the cheers of ...
— The Boat Club - or, The Bunkers of Rippleton • Oliver Optic
... led us on with courteous determination through his specimens of all the schools, and made us observe the characteristics of each school and each master, till at last we rested in the last room, where hung a single picture covered with a silken curtain. This at last, with sacred and reverent ceremony, was drawn aside, and revealed a portrait by Raphael,—the portrait of a lady, young and beautiful, and glowing with a tender sentiment which recalled to my remembrance these heads by Allston, not alone in the sentiment, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... stool, because she is eldest, and a Miss; Billy on my left, in a little cane elbow-chair, because he is eldest, and a good boy; my Davers, and my sparkling-ey'd Pamela, with my Charley between them, on little silken cushions, at my feet, hand-in-hand, their pleased eyes looking up to my more delighted ones; and my sweet-natured promising Jemmy, in my lap; the nurses and the cradle just behind us, and the nursery maids ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... hair, piled in a silken crown on her shapely head, shaded a face that made those who saw it for the first time, catch their breath in instant admiration. Her radiance was of a glorious, compelling, and wholly distinct type, as refreshing as some view of green mountains from out ...
— Hidden Gold • Wilder Anthony
... a lady's ringlets brown Flow thy silken ears adown Either side demurely Of thy silver-suited breast, Shining out from all the ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... yode tho, {81} Where sat one with a silken hood; I did him reverence, for I ought to do so, And told my case as well as I could, How my goods were defrauded me by falsehood. I got not a mum of his mouth for my meed, And for lack of Money I might ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... maidens of the plain Salute me lowly as they go; Envious they mark my silken train, Nor think a Countess ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... raise her brows a little, it seemed so crude and horrible; she could have laughed outright at herself for having the nerve to put it. She couldn't imagine what the colonel would have thought of her. Anne, she knew, would have crumpled up into silken disaster like a flower under ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... Square. It was May, and the square garden shot up like a veil of green in front of his window, but, in spite of the sunshine, a fire crackled and sputtered in the grate of the sick-room. In a deep-red plush armchair sat the great statesman, his head leaning back upon a silken pillow, one foot stretched forward and supported upon a padded rest. His deeply-lined, finely-chiselled face and slow-moving, heavily-pouched eyes were turned upwards towards the carved and painted ceiling, with that inscrutable expression which had been the despair and the admiration of his Continental ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle
... felt, as indeed she looked, thoroughly out of harmony with her surroundings. She waited there, in her cheap black clothes, like some little servant seeking a situation; but her welcome, when it came, after a rustling of silken skirts on the stairs, assured her that she was acknowledged as a member of the family. Sophia took her tenderly to her heart and murmured, 'Oh, my dear, how like your father!' Caroline patted her cheek and said, 'Yes, yes, Reginald's daughter, so she is!' And a moment later, Rose ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... a lady," replied the girl, her accent decisive. "And she's young, as far as I could see, but she had a thick veil over her face. Her hair is lovely, just like silken threads of pale gold," concluded Penelope as Mr. ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 4, April, 1891 • Various
... pretty group was rustling past the office, all muslin frills and silk sashes and flowers of every colour, and the prettiest and best dressed of them all came running up the steps to his side, with a swish of silken skirts and a whiff of ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... and beloved counsellor' of Henry I, is supposed to have begun the Castle of Tiverton, and he attached to it 'two parks for pleasure and large and rich demesne for hospitality.' His grandson, William Rivers, was one of the four Earls who carried the silken canopy at the second coronation of King Richard I, after his return from Palestine. William's daughter, Mary, married Robert Courtenay, Baron of Okehampton; and so it was that, when the House of Rivers became extinct in the male line, their possessions passed to the Courtenays, ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... no doubt, had been justified in looking upon the hazy landscapes in the great tapestries as their own: and children's children had knelt, in times gone by, beside the carved stone mantel. The big, gilded chairs with the silken seats might appropriately have graced the table of the Hotel de Rambouillet. Would not the warriors and the wits, the patient ladies of high degree and of many children, and even the 'precieuses ridicules' themselves, turn over in their ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... fast, Esther arose from the earth and dust, and made preparations to betake herself to the king. She arrayed herself in a silken garment, embroidered with gold from Ophir and spangled with diamonds and pearls sent her from Africa; a golden crown was on her head, and on ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... received visitors, the men smoked their cigaritos, and the children made merry. In the long summer evenings sweet strains of Spanish music from violin and guitar filled the air, and the hard earthen floor of the courtyard resounded to the tap-tap of high-heeled slippers, the swish of silken skirts, and the jingle of silver spurs, as the young people took part in the graceful ...
— History of California • Helen Elliott Bandini
... sat there that night fingering her silken hair, she had asked herself whether in truth this man was master of her heart; she had probed her young bosom, which now, by a sudden growth, became quick with a woman's impulse, and she had owned to herself that she did love him. He was dearer to her, ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... employment of another kind. I learned to look with interest on the workings of certain insects, and to understand some of at least their simpler instincts. The large Diadem Spider, which spins so strong a web, that, in pressing my way through the furze thickets, I could hear its white silken cords crack as they yielded before me, and which I found skilled, like an ancient magician, in the strange art of rendering itself invisible in the clearest light, was an especial favourite; though its great size, and the wild stories I had ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... a little folded paper a long tress of dark silken hair, and, without trusting himself to kiss it, held it firmly in the candle. It crisped and sparkled, and sent out a pungent odor, then turned and writhed between his fingers, like a living thing in pain. What part of us has earthly immortality but our hair? It dies not with death. When all ...
— Malbone - An Oldport Romance • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... I waste time in telling overmuch about it. We visited the shrine, where the Maid passed a night in fasting and vigil, and laid thereon a little simple offering, such as her humble state permitted. The next day she was presented to the Duke of Lorraine, as he lay wrapped in costly silken coverlets upon his great bed in one of the most sumptuous apartments ...
— A Heroine of France • Evelyn Everett-Green
... waves down to her heel Flow'd like an Alpine torrent which the sun Dyes with his morning light,—and would conceal Her person if allow'd at large to run, And still they seem resentfully to feel The silken fillet's curb, and sought to shun Their bonds whene'er some Zephyr caught began To offer his young ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... "Silken-handed stroke a nettle, And it stings you for your pains. Grasp it like a man of mettle, And it soft as ...
— Fifty-Two Story Talks To Boys And Girls • Howard J. Chidley
... indifferent subjects till they came to a little silver stream, threading its silent way through the silken grass. They crossed and seating themselves beneath the shade of a thrifty apple tree, picked up some of the delicious fruit that lay scattered in rich profusion ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna
... day completed, he came to the door to greet his visitor. The farmer's eyes flashed at the sight of his handsome figure. He was only twenty-eight years old, of medium height, with a long, silken, bronzed beard and ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon
... said Genvil, composedly, "I am not in my saddle, because I have some regard for this old silken rag, which I have borne to honour in my time, and I will not willingly carry it where men are unwilling ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... a beautiful silken bond, is sometimes apt to snap. The new arrangement was violently opposed. What right, asked grumblers, had the Synod to saddle individual congregations with the debts of the whole Church? The local managers of diaconies ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... a distant part of the room, Miss O'Day arose. As she moved through the room with her head high and eyes straight before her, her shoulders and arms gleamed through their transparent covering, and the rustle of her silken petticoats ...
— Elizabeth Hobart at Exeter Hall • Jean K. Baird
... a man, and wished a wife, as many do, merely as an ornament, or silken toy, I would take —— as soon as any I know. Her fantastic, impassioned, and mutable nature would yield an inexhaustible amusement. She is capable of the most romantic actions;—wild as the falcon, and voluptuous as ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... are in safety." At first the king's daughter was not willing; yet at last she allowed herself to be persuaded, and climbed into the basket. But before she did so, she took a long pin from her hair, broke it into two halves and gave him one and kept the other. She also divided her silken kerchief with him, and told him to take good care of both her gifts. But when the other man had drawn up the king's daughter, he took her along with him, and left the youth in the cave, in spite of all his calling ...
— The Chinese Fairy Book • Various
... Harry, "to put the letters in the box," and very gently he tied with the silken thread one quill under the wing of each pigeon. Only one feather was used to tie the thread to, and the light quill, the thin paper, and the soft silk made a parcel so very small and light in weight that the pigeons were no way inconvenienced by ...
— The Bobbsey Twins in the Country • Laura Lee Hope
... laughing with sky and hills.... The many-tunnelled cliff-route from Villefranche to Cap D'Ail, where moments of darkness tease one to longing for the sight of the azure coves dotted with white-winged yachts and foam-slashed motor-boats.... Europe's silken, jewelled fringe! ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... know what there is about it, but it makes you wish you could go on forever and never break the spell. And it makes you tremble, too, for fear you should say anything wrong. You seem so close to children when you are telling them stories; just as if a little, little silken thread spun itself out from one side of your heart through each of theirs, until it came back to be fastened in your own again; and it holds so tight, so tight, when you have done your best and the children are pleased ...
— Polly Oliver's Problem • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... the ally of Malachy, a few years later, against Ivar of Waterford; and curious enough to find Ivar's son called Gilla-Patrick—servant of Patrick. Kellachan of Cashel had married a Danish, and Sitrick "of the Silken beard," an Irish lady. That all the Northmen were not, even in Ireland, converted in one generation, is evident. Those of Insi-Gall were still, perhaps, Pagans; those of the Orkneys and of Denmark, who came to the battle of Clontarf in the beginning of the next century, chose to ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... back her head, her eyes searching the rafters. Straight as knife cuts hung the broken strings of the unused nets, threaded here and there with wheels of silken cobwebs. Up through these Tessibel stared. Up and up, above the curling of the chimney smoke, up among the stars, up where the hands of love—God's hands, were ever spread in benediction over her own wild, beautiful world. She smiled as ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... room, leaning on his cane. He had laid aside his buff and blue uniform, with the epaulets and sword knots, and was clad in a suit of silken black. His hose and shoes were of the same color, against which his blouse, cuffs and periwig were ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... carried to him from France. Nevertheless, Brandon thought himself the richest man in all the earth, and surely he was one of the happiest. Such a woman as Mary is dangerous, except in a state of complete subjection—but she was bound hand and foot in the silken meshes of her own weaving, and her power for bliss-making was ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... of vegetation, not even the silken tasia ornamenting its sides, though a solitary tree did rise in lonely grandeur from its ...
— Jack North's Treasure Hunt - Daring Adventures in South America • Roy Rockwood
... what cursed old antediluvian, who lived before the invention of spinning-jennies, she learned this craft, Heaven only knows; but there she sits, with her work pinned to her knee—not the pretty taper silken fabric, with which Jeannette of Amiens coquetted, while Tristram Shandy was observing her progress; but a huge worsted bag, designed for some flat-footed old pauper, with heels like an elephant—And there ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... women could turn their eyes. Her vitality and happiness seemed to shine from her skin, almost to light up the dark and heavy figure of Socknersh in his Sunday blacks, as he staggered and stumbled, for he could not dance. His big hand pawed at her silken waist, while the other held hers crumpled in it—his hair was greased with butter, and his skin with the sweat of his endeavour ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... of a joyful dawn blew free In the silken sail of infancy, The tide of time flow'd back with me, The forward-flowing time of time; And many a sheeny summer morn, Adown the Tigris I was borne, By Bagdat's shrines of fretted gold, High-walled gardens green and old; True Mussulman ...
— The Arabian Nights - Their Best-known Tales • Unknown
... chamber put the soul deliciously at ease, cast out sad thoughts, and left a sense of pure and equable happiness. The silken coverings, brought from China, gave forth a soothing perfume that penetrated the system without fatiguing it. The curtains, carefully drawn, betrayed a desire for solitude, a jealous intention of guarding the sound ...
— The Alkahest • Honore de Balzac
... afterwards a hundred of its glittering points, angles, and facets. She felt herself up-borne by money. Without Haney's bank-book she would have been merely one of those minute insects who timidly sought to cross the street, and yet philosophers marvel at the race men make for gold! So long as silken parasols and automobiles mad with pride are keenly enjoyed, so long will Americans—and all others who have them not—struggle for them; for they are not only the signs of distinction and luxury, they are delights. A private car is not merely display; it is comfort. ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... generations yet to come will be unable to tell whether they look upon the grave of a prince or upon that of a peddler—the narrow house of him who retired to the straw pallet of poverty, will not then be known from that of him who reclined upon the silken couch of affluence— ...
— Nick Baba's Last Drink and Other Sketches • George P. Goff
... a debate with this lordly hostelry, counting that a supper and a night there would do for it. They hurried on to the line of promenaders, a river of cross-currents by the side of seated groups; and the willowy swish of silken dresses, feminine perfumery, cigar-smoke, chatter, laughter, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... drawn up by a pulley to the top of my great hall, and afterwards to be spread open by the engine it was placed upon, in such a manner, that it formed a very splendid and ample canopy over our heads, and covered the whole court of judicature with a kind of silken rotunda, in its form not unlike the cupola of St. Paul's. I entered upon the whole cause with great satisfaction as I sat under the shadow ...
— Isaac Bickerstaff • Richard Steele
... abdomen. Their food appears for the most part to be of a vegetable nature. Some species, however, are alleged to be carnivorous, and a North American form of the genus Hydropsyche is said to spin around the mouth of its burrow a silken net for the capture of small animal organisms living in the water. Before passing into the pupal stage, the larva partially closes the orifice of the tube with silk or pieces of stone loosely spun together and pervious ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... and many other cities, till we came to the great Emperor's court. There for two years or more we lived in pomp and merriment, for it was a wonderful court, full of mimes, magicians, philosophers and poets; and the Empress's ladies spent their days in mirth and music, dressed in light silken garments, walking in gardens of roses, and bathing in a great cool marble tank, while the Emperor's eunuchs guarded the approach to the gardens. Oh, those baths in the marble tank, my Father! I used to lie awake through the whole hot southern ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... he was in the wigwam he did not leave her a moment. With his own hands he adorned her with chains, and strings of teeth and pearls, and he found a special pleasure in combing her black, soft, silken hair. He gambolled with her like a child and rocked her on his knees, telling her stories. Of his other wives he demanded the utmost respect in their treatment ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... They were compelled to sue for pardon on their knees. As an additional penalty, the magistrates were forbidden to appear in public without a halter on their necks, as a badge of their ignominy. The rope was worn; but, in the lapse of time, it became a silken cord, tied in a true-lover's knot, and was regarded as an ornament which the magistrate ...
— Dikes and Ditches - Young America in Holland and Belguim • Oliver Optic
... did you know that, sir?" demanded the Frenchman in his high, thin voice. As he spoke, he restored his fiddle to its case with great care, then as carefully brushed all leaf and mould from his faded silken clothes. ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... manner of sentimental and delightful appointments, and sending the bride and bridegroom out in it,—as a wedding present, he said, but in truth the car was a repository of wedding presents, for all the rugs and portieres and silken curtains and brass plaques and pretty pottery with which it was adorned, and the flower-stands and Japanese kakemonos, were to disembark at St. Helen's and help to decorate Elsie's new home. All went as was planned, and Clarence's life ...
— In the High Valley - Being the fifth and last volume of the Katy Did series • Susan Coolidge
... covered with a white velvet carpet with pink roses all over it and there are pink silk curtains at the windows. The walls are hung with gold and silver brocade tapestry. The furniture is mahogany. I never saw any mahogany, but it does sound SO luxurious. This is a couch all heaped with gorgeous silken cushions, pink and blue and crimson and gold, and I am reclining gracefully on it. I can see my reflection in that splendid big mirror hanging on the wall. I am tall and regal, clad in a gown of trailing white lace, with a pearl cross on my breast and ...
— Anne Of Green Gables • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... maid obeyed, helped her mistress to put on a silken dressing gown, and loosened the masses of her hair. The Princess passed a hand across her brow, as if to ...
— Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... first action, the hammer rests in a silken fork, dropping the whole distance of the rise of every blow. The check in the second action, the "paramartello," is next in importance to the escapement. It catches the back part of the hammer at different ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 385, May 19, 1883 • Various
... stopped when some distance still from the city. A gilded barge with a dragon's head and silken curtains had come to meet them. Not far away they saw a landing, with boats ...
— Little Sky-High - The Surprising Doings of Washee-Washee-Wang • Hezekiah Butterworth
... little strength to think, As one who reels on the outermost brink, To the innermost gulf descending. In that truce the longest and last of all, In the summer nights of that festival— Soft vesture of samite and silken pall— The beginning came ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... had seen him frequently before, away up in the mountains of eastern Kentucky, but did not then observe him particularly. Now I paid more attention. He was nearly six feet in hight, of powerful frame, black hair, and long, black, silken beard, Roman features, a high and expansive forehead, and a voice fine and soft as a woman's. He gave me the impression of a man who combined intellect and refinement with the most cool and dauntless courage. Yet his ...
— Daring and Suffering: - A History of the Great Railroad Adventure • William Pittenger
... thou mend'st apace! And now, my love, Will we return unto thy father's house, And ruffle it as bravely as the best, With silken coats, and caps, and golden rings, With ruffs, and cuffs, and farthingales, and things; With orange tissue trimmed with true-blue bravery, Eschewing wearing of the green,—that's knavery. See GRUMIO there! He waits thy loving leisure To ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, December 12, 1891 • Various
... the ancient nobility as founders of the constitution, and invoking the house to follow their brilliant example, he thus concluded:—"Those iron barons—for so I may call them when compared with the silken barons of modern days—were the guardians of the people; yet their virtues were never engaged in a question of such importance as the present. A breach has been made in the constitution—the battlements are dismantled—the citadel is open to the first invader—the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... troops He would give to the other. Arjuna chose the unarmed Krishna; Duryodhana, the mighty army ready to fight; so the word of the Avatara was pledged that He would not fight. Unarmed He went into the battle, clad in his yellow silken robe, and only with the whip of the charioteer in His hand; twice, in order to stimulate Arjuna into combat, He had sprung down from the chariot and gone forth with His whip in His hand as though He would attack ...
— Avataras • Annie Besant
... make their own. For six days and nights the rough barbarians trooped through the streets of the city on their mission of pillage. Their wagons were heaped with the costly furniture, the rich plate, and the silken garments stripped from the palaces of the wealthy patricians and the temples of the gods. Amidst the license of the sack, the barbarian instincts of the robbers broke loose from all restraint, and the city ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... everything but his own eloquence. But the Indian had placed one hand on his young officer's wrist, and with the other stood pointing at some object coiled underneath Lilian's chair, not half an arm's length from the little foot that dangled in its silken stocking but a hand's-breadth from the floor. At that moment Willett bent impressively, still nearer, and instinctively Lilian moved a hand as though about to edge farther away. It was at this very instant that Harris spoke, his voice, absolutely calm, even ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... Mayor and Bailiffs, for the time being, and "threescore of the chiefest Burghers, should personally appear" every St Scholastica's Day in St. Mary's Church, to attend a mass for the souls of the slain. The tradition that they were to wear halters or silken cords has no authority, but they were each "to offer at the altar one penny, of which oblation forty pence should be distributed to forty poor scholars of the University." The custom, with some modifications, survived the Reformation, and it was ...
— Life in the Medieval University • Robert S. Rait
... but you must come, and Lord Chiltern will tell you. I have gone down to see the horses ever so often;—but I don't care to go now as you never write to me. They are all three quite well, and Fan looks as silken and as soft ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... the Fairy to him. "Get my best coach ready and set out toward the forest. On reaching the oak tree, you will find a poor, half-dead Marionette stretched out on the grass. Lift him up tenderly, place him on the silken cushions of the coach, and bring him here ...
— The Adventures of Pinocchio • C. Collodi—Pseudonym of Carlo Lorenzini
... highest rank lead their own greyhounds in a long silken leash, which passes through the collar, and is ready to slip the moment the huntsman chooses. The well-trained dog goes alongside the horse, and keeps clear of him when at full speed, and in all kinds of country. When a herd of antelopes is seen, a consultation is held, and the most experienced ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 10, Issue 285, December 1, 1827 • Various
... vain sought among them for one he knew. All that "rosebud garden of girls" were perfect strangers to him, but not so the gallants, who fluttered among them like moths around meteors. They, too, were in gorgeous array, in purple and fine linen, which being interpreted, signifieth in silken hose of every color under the sun, spangled and embroidered slippers radiant with diamond buckles, doublets of as many different shades as their tights, slashed with satin and embroidered with gold. Most of them wore ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... lists have been composed—some by zealous enthusiasts, who preferred substitution to loss, and some by the purveyors of the carpet Highlanders, who once a-year illuminate the splendour of a ball-room with the untarnished broadswords and silken hose, never dimmed in the mist of a hill, or sullied in the dew ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume III. • Mrs. Thomson
... your points. If you happen to have an unusual amount of hair, make it count, even though the fashion be to wear but little. We recall the beautiful and unique Madame X. of Paris, blessed by the gods with hair like bronze, heavy, long, silken and straight. She wore it wrapped about her head and finally coiled into a French twist on the top, the effect closely resembling an old Roman helmet. This was design, not chance, and her well-modeled features were the sort to stand the ...
— Woman as Decoration • Emily Burbank
... wandered through illuminated gardens, tenanted by gay groups, where the flush of the roses, the silver stars of the jasmine, the crimson, purple, orange, and blue of the variegated parterre were revealed as if the brightest blaze of day flashed upon their silken leaves. Amid all this pomp of beauty and splendour the bride moved along, surpassing all that was fair and resplendent around her by the exceeding loveliness of a face and form to which every eye and every heart paid involuntary homage. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 264, July 14, 1827 • Various
... her pensive face, The light'ning smile, the animated grace— The portrait well the lover's voice supplies; Speaks all his heart must feel, his tongue would say: Yet ah! not all his heart must sadly feel! How oft the flow'ret's silken leaves conceal The drug that steals the vital spark away! And who that gazes on that angel-smile, Would fear its charm, or think it ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... fabric, silken-soft, though spun from fibre of colored glass. And some wheeled devices, which might have been toys. Lester and Hines picked up only token pieces of the fabric. Frank took a three inch golden ring that glinted with mineral. Except that it looked decorative, he had no ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... In Which Silken Ladies Ascend One Stairway, and a Lonely Wayfarer Ascends Another and Comes Face to ...
— Contrary Mary • Temple Bailey
... the first ball rolled around, Olga combed her long golden hair and twined it with a wreath of snowy water-lilies, and then she stood before the old dame in her dress of tow. To her wonderment and grief she saw there was no silken robe in waiting, only a string of beads to clasp around her white throat. Each bead in the necklace was like a little shrivelled seed, and Olga's eyes ...
— The Legend of the Bleeding-heart • Annie Fellows Johnston
... prevent ourselves from all right understanding of history, by attributing much influence to these poetical symbolisms in the formation of a national style. The human race are, for the most part, not to be moved by such silken cords; and the chances of damp in the cellar, or of loose tiles in the roof, have, unhappily, much more to do with the fashions of a man's house building than his ideas of celestial happiness or angelic virtue. Associations of affection have far higher power, and forms which can be ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... to take little flights of fancy at first, dwelt all day in his dreamy way on fields and rivers lying in the sunlight where it strikes the world more brilliantly further South. And then he began to imagine butterflies there; after that, silken people and the temples they built to ...
— The Book of Wonder • Edward J. M. D. Plunkett, Lord Dunsany
... a silken cord had suddenly been severed, and I had been dragged from a world of sweet infinitude down to a sphere mundane and everyday, to something I had known before.... "....Or what is Nature? Ha! why do I not name thee God? Art thou not the 'Living Garment of God'? O Heaven, is it in very deed, He, ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... Roland, "my stepsire Gan, In vain ye seek for a meeter man." The Franks exclaim, "He is worth the trust, So it please the king it is right and just." Count Ganelon then was with anguish wrung, His mantle of fur from his neck he flung, Stood all stark in his silken vest, And his grey eyes gleamed with a fierce unrest Fair of body and large of limb, All in wonderment gazed on him. "Thou madman," thus he to Roland cried, "What may this rage against me betide? I am thy stepsire, as all men know, And thou doom'st me on hest ...
— The Harvard Classics, Volume 49, Epic and Saga - With Introductions And Notes • Various
... furiously angry with the people of Belfast for making their churches comfortable. This was her form of worship, and never were any devotees more luxuriously placed than we were. If her soul can soar to spiritual heights from the depths of silken cushions, surely a linen-draper may find it possible to pray in ...
— Gossamer - 1915 • George A. Birmingham
... take care of them!' At this command of king Yudhishthira the just, Vidura and Sanjaya and Sudharma and Dhaumya and Indrasena and others, procuring sandal, aloe and other kinds of wood used on such occasions, as also clarified butter and oil and perfumes and costly silken robes and other kinds of cloth, and large heaps of dry wood, and broken cars and diverse kinds of weapons, caused funeral pyres to be duly made and lighted and then without haste burnt, with due rites the slain kings in proper order. They properly burned upon ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... of his discourse, But listen with respect to his remarks Upon the various seasons he remembers; For well he knows the many divers signs Which do fortell high winds, or rain, or drought, Or ought that may affect the rising crop. The silken clad, who courtly breeding boast, Their own discourse still sweetest to their ears, May grumble at the old man's lengthened story, But here it ...
— Poems, &c. (1790) • Joanna Baillie
... past eventful Ages then recite, And give the fifth, new-born of Time, to light; 10 The silken tissue of their joys disclose, Swell with deep chords the murmur of their woes; Their laws, their labours, and their loves proclaim, And chant their virtues to ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... fall of the curtain the reader and the writer rose in unison, a drop of that full tide of life which ebbed by many channels out of the vast auditorium, and in two or three minutes left it dry. They stayed in their duplex personality to glance at the silken evanescences from the boxes, and then, being in the mood for the best society, they joined the shining presences in the vestibule where these waited for their carriages and automobiles. Of this company the interlocutors felt themselves so ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... ticketed. And as it was our first appearance at church since—well, since—perhaps there was just a little consciousness of our relations that made Bessie seem to retire absolutely within herself, and be no more a part of the silken crowd than was the grave, plain man who ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... her out; and, oh, great God! what a task for a mother, and under what circumstances must it have been performed! There, however, did the corpse of this fair and unhappy child lie; her light and silken locks blown upon her still and death-like features by the ruffian blast, and the complacency which had evidently characterized her countenance when in life, now stamped by death, with the sharp and wan expression of misery and the grave. Thus surrounded lay the dying mother, and it was not ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton
... periwigs surmounted by fur caps or beaver hats or hoods; and with their many-caped great-coats or full round cloaks were dressed with a sufficient degree of comfort, though they did not possess the warm woollen and silken underclothing which now make a man's winter attire so comfortable. They carried muffs too, as the advertisements of the times show. The "Boston News Letter" of 1716 offers a reward for a man's muff lost on the Sabbath day in the street. In ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... foliage of the mulberry and the orange. On the table were some six or eight books, among which was a copy of the Psalms of David. "It is very fine," said my friend Mr Bonar, glancing up at the gilded canopy and silken hangings of the bed, and poking his hand at the same time into its soft woolly furnishings, "but nothing but ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... Saturnian Reign, the Golden Age on earth again, when figs are grown on thistles, and pigs betailed with whistles and, wearing silken bristles, live ever in clover, and cows fly over, delivering milk at every door, and Justice never is heard to snore, and every assassin is made a ghost and, howling, is ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... a gentle silken rustle, dressed already for the reception of the guests who were expected to arrive an hour later. She had accorded him this one tete-a-tete—this and no other. She was transfigured in his eyes, and did ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... In the case of silken garments the evidence met with does not warrant a statement either for or against them; yet there appears to be no reason why this non-conductor should be more of a safeguard than any other. No doubt an abundance of gold and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... of this saloon and hostelry was occupied by Mr. Hamlin as his private lodgings, and was fitted up with the usual luxury and more than the usual fastidiousness of his extravagant class. As the dusty and travel-worn party trod the soft carpets and brushed aside their silken hangings in their slow progress with their helpless burden to the lace-canopied and snowy couch of the young gambler, it seemed almost a profanation of some feminine seclusion. Gideon, to whom such luxury was unknown, was profoundly troubled. The voluptuous ...
— By Shore and Sedge • Bret Harte
... her waist to a dark blue petticoat, hemmed with scarlet cloth, which descended to her ankle, but not to such undue length as to conceal her little naked feet, peeping out, like white mice, from beneath. Her silken, fair hair flowed uncontrolled over her right shoulder, off which her boddice, though fitting almost close to the throat, had fallen slightly and left bare; and silver bracelets clasped her wrists, while the image of the Saviour, carved in ivory, was suspended from her neck. ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... bridge, and so get to it; but, glancing down on the river just as she turned, she saw a little boat fairly gilt and painted, and with a long slender paddle in it, lying on the water, stretching out its silken painter as the stream drew it downwards, she entered it, and taking the paddle made for the other side; the moon meanwhile turning the eddies to silver over the dark green water: she landed beneath the shadow ...
— The World of Romance - being Contributions to The Oxford and Cambridge Magazine, 1856 • William Morris
... volumes (being the folio edition printed by Bulmer) are at once beautiful and secured by green velvet binding, with embossed clasps and corners of solid silver, washed with gold. Each volume is preserved in a silken cover—and the whole is kept inviolate from the impurities of bibliomaniacal miasmata, in a sarcophagus-shaped piece of furniture of cedar and mahogany. What is the pleasure experienced by the most resolute antiquary, when he has obtained ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... loves of men. Enough of the Roman stock in her line had given structural firmness and stature to a type which at her age would have developed weight and duskiness, but she was taller and more slender than the women of her race, and supple and alive and splendid. About her hips was knotted a silken scarf of red and white and green with long undulant fringes that added to the lithe grace in her movements. Under it was a glistening garment of silver tissue that reached to the small ankles laced about by the ribbons of white sandals. For sleeves there were netted fringes through ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller
... May, 1672, Peter, son of Alexis, was born in the palace of the Kreml at Moscow. He was reared at first in strict seclusion behind the silken curtains that guarded the windows of the Terem, where the women lived. Then rebellion broke out after his father's death; for Alexis had children by two marriages, and the offspring of his first wife, Mary Miloslavski, were jealous of the influence acquired ...
— Heroes of Modern Europe • Alice Birkhead
... not dreamed of in her wildest imaginings, as she had listened to tales of royalty. A tall, fair woman whose bright hair was a mass of puffs and short dainty curls held by combs that sparkled with jewels, and the silken gown that was strewn with brocaded roses on a soft gray ground. It had dainty ruffles around the bottom that barely reached her ankles, and showed the clocked and embroidered stockings and elegant ...
— A Little Girl in Old Quebec • Amanda Millie Douglas
... Mainwaring Thornton, of London, also a guest of Hugh Mainwaring and distantly connected with the two cousins. He was the youngest of the three Englishmen and the embodiment of geniality. He was a blond of the purest type, and his beard, parted in the centre, was brushed back in two wavy, silken masses, while his clear blue eyes, beaming with kindliness and good-humor, had the frankness ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... Then from the silken reptiles will he fly, To the bold cliff in bounding transports run, And stretch'd o'er many a wave his ardent eye, Embrace the enduring ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... the coffee trees, stirring the monkey-pods, and sighing through the sugar-cane. On the lanai the hush still reigned. Then it came, the first feel of the mountain wind, faintly balmy, fragrant and spicy, and cool, deliciously cool, a silken coolness, a wine-like coolness—cool as only the mountain wind of ...
— The House of Pride • Jack London
... was the homeliest and simplest of men. On the bench he wore his baggy old alpaca coat as though it were a silken robe. And, as has been heretofore remarked, he had for his official and his private lives two different modes of speech. As His Honor, presiding, his language was invariably grammatical and precise and as carefully accented as might be expected of a man whose people ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... and hath sent for Mr. Pierce to let him blood Found him a fool, as he ever was, or worse Goes down the wind in honour as well as every thing else Had a good supper of an oxe's cheek Hanged with a silken halter How highly the Presbyters do talk in the coffeehouses still I and she never were so heartily angry in our lives as to-day Ill humour to be so against that which all the world cries up Lady Castlemaine hath all the King's Christmas presents Lay chiding, and then pleased with my wife in bed ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Diary of Samuel Pepys • David Widger
... shade of my Lord Mayo might hover about them to safeguard propriety, but Mr Harry drew as near as the rampart of the lady's hoop would permit, bending his head to catch her murmurs, and his nostrils inhaling the faint perfume of silken hair rolled back from the whitest brow in the world. They made a pair that many would have remarked, but for ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... thoughts of the little maiden as she remained there fixed as a statue? Did she revert to the period at which her infant memory could retrace silken hangings and marble halls, visions of splendour, dreamings of courtly state, or was she thinking of her father, as her quick ear caught the least swell of the increasing breeze? Was she, as her eye was fixed as if attempting to pierce the depths of the ocean, wondering at what might ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat
... find out her name,' said Effie, 'perhaps it is on the purse.' Harry drew the silken purse from his pocket, and after examining it closely, found engraved on one of the rings the name ...
— Effie Maurice - Or What do I Love Best • Fanny Forester
... the drapery begins to flutter; you feel that it is lifted by the breeze! A moment ago it hung as heavily and stiffly as if it were held out by pins. Do you see how the satin sheen that I have just given to the breast rends the pliant, silken softness of a young girl's skin, and how the brown-red, blended with burnt ochre, brings warmth into the cold gray of the deep shadow where the blood lay congealed instead of coursing through the veins? Young man, young man, no master could teach ...
— The Unknown Masterpiece - 1845 • Honore De Balzac
... you feel a touch on your shoulder. You spin on your heel, feeling at your hip for an imaginary sword. But 'tis not Master Francois Villon, in tattered doublet, with a sonnet. Nor yet is it a jaunty blade, in silken cloak, with a challenge. It is your friend of the obscene photograph collection. He has followed you all the way from 1914 clear back into the Middle Ages, biding his time and hoping you will change your mind about investing in his ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... gesture of her outstretched hand is not without an appealing dignity. The hair, like that of the Madonna, is parted in the centre, and stands off from the forehead, and then falls in rich tresses about her shoulders. It has not the soft and silken texture of the Madonna's hair, which is rendered with as great a skill as one sees in the Virgin of the Annunciation. In both these latter cases Donatello succeeds in giving to the hair an indescribable suggestion of something full of elasticity and lustre. But St. Justina's hair at ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford
... answering, pushed her pail aside, and continued to stare as Miss Bart swept by with a murmur of silken linings. Lily felt herself flushing under the look. What did the creature suppose? Could one never do the simplest, the most harmless thing, without subjecting one's self to some odious conjecture? Half way ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... the days long gone. This fishing party is under the fair October skies when "the morn, like an Eastern queen, is sumptuously clad in blue and gold; the sheen of her robes in dazzling sunlight, and she comes from her tent of glistening, silken, celestial warp, beaming with tender smiles." "It is a day of days for flatback, provided the moon is right." But "Billy Ivins swears that the planetary bodies have nothing to do with fish—it's all confounded superstition." So they cast in their hooks, "Sutherland's ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... annals of his house. Colonel Starr and his little suite met this wonderful cavalcade a quarter of a mile from the city, and the Maharajah and the Colonel dismounted. Whereupon the magnificent Rajput, in his diamond aigrettes and his silken swathings, and the broad shouldered British officer, in his Queen's red coat, solemnly kissed each other. They exchanged other politenesses, spoke of the health of the Viceroy and of his 'good friend' the Maharajah, ...
— The Story of Sonny Sahib • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... envied him. Ay! when he bore the standard at the head of the regiment he marched like a victorious demi-god! No one else could support so well as he the heavy pole, plated with gold, and the large embroidered silken banner, which might have served as a sail for a stately ship; but he held the staff with his right hand, as if the burden intrusted to him was an easily-managed toy. Meantime, with inimitable solemnity, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... wore stout "rig and furrow" woollen hose of an invisible blue mostly, when they were not black outright; and Dandie, at sight of this daintiness, put two and two together. It was a silk handkerchief, then they would be silken hose; they matched - then the whole outfit was a present of Clem's, a costly present, and not something to be worn through bog and briar, or on a late afternoon of Sunday. He whistled. "My denty May, either your heid's fair turned, ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... guest at Madame Lepelletier's table. There are three rooms, divided by silken portieres, which are now partially swung aside. The lamps in the other rooms are burning low, there is a sweet, faint perfume, a lovely suggestiveness, a background fit for a picture, and this cosey apartment, hung with shimmering silk, and lighted from a cluster of intense, velvety ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... the Guards is ringing out the most seductive of valses. Silken robes sweep the grass, and soft laughter floats upon the summer air. The polo-players are once more in the full tide of battle. The gaily-coloured jerseys are now here, now there, in pursuit of the ever-flying sphere, for ...
— Belles and Ringers • Hawley Smart
... However, the artist had retained since his youthful days, which had been spent in the camp of the Romanticists, the habit of wearing a special costume, and it was in flowing trousers, in a dressing-gown secured at the waist by a silken cord, and with his head covered with a priest's skull-cap, that ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... gentleman and Mr. Carleton Key, who attended the ladies. Abandoning the only four chairs in the room to the others, Mrs. Grey sank down upon a hassock with a sigh of satisfaction, and was lost for a moment in the rising swell of silken-crested waves of crinoline. Emerging in another moment as far as the shoulders, she turned a look of intelligence and inquiry upon her husband, who said, "When you came in, Tomes ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... over the leaves of the book. [440] What a rare tale is that of the Ensorcelled Prince, alias The Young King of the Black Isles, who though he sat in a palace where fountains limbecked water "clear as pearls and diaphanous gems," and wore "silken stuff purfled with Egyptian gold," was from his midriff downwards not man but marble! Who is not shocked at the behaviour of the Three Ladies of Baghdad! In what fearful peril the caliph and the Kalendars placed themselves when, in spite of warning, they would ask questions! ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... prejudice, it clearly disclosed the minority's estimate of the cardinal object of Dean Richmond's majority. "Waiving all questions of the merits or demerits of Mr. Douglas as a candidate," he said, his silken white hair bringing into greater prominence the lines of a handsome face, "his pretensions were pressed upon the convention in a tone and temper, and with a dogged and obstinate persistence, which was well calculated, if it was not intended, to break up the convention, or force ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... dinner, there was Blanche's image glaring upon him with its clear grey eyes, and winning smile. There was her tune ringing in his ears, "Yet round about the spot, ofttimes I hover, ofttimes I hover," which poor Foker began piteously to hum, as he sat up in his bed under the crimson silken coverlet. Opposite him was a French Print, of a Turkish lady and her Greek lover, surprised by a venerable Ottoman, the lady's husband; on the other wall was a French print of a gentleman and lady, riding and kissing each ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... directed, Captain Delano now noticed for the first, that, suspended by a slender silken cord, from Don Benito's neck, hung a key. At once, from the servant's muttered syllables, divining the key's purpose, he smiled, and said:—"So, Don Benito—padlock and key—significant ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... had rejected him merely kept away; but she came as if she would face down the shame of her faith in him before the eyes of her little world. Sometimes Dylks involuntarily put his hand to the black silken cap which replaced the bandage Nancy Billings had tied over the place where the hair had been torn out. When he did this, the girl moved a little; her face hardened, and she stole ...
— The Leatherwood God • William Dean Howells |
