"Straw" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... night's lodging, but no one noticed them. Though hungry, they could not procure any thing for supper, not even a cup of coffee, nor could they find beds; after some time, however, they asked for a few bundles of straw, which would probably have been granted, had not Coleridge, out of patience at seeing his friends' forlorn situation, imprudently asked one of them, if there lived any Christians in Hesse Cassel? At this speech, which ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... Iranian, and other international trafficking organizations operate out of Istanbul; laboratories to convert imported morphine base into heroin are in remote regions of Turkey and near Istanbul; government maintains strict controls over areas of legal opium poppy cultivation and output of poppy straw concentrate; lax enforcement ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... our little boat we were received with a warm welcome by the teacher and his wife, the latter being also a native, clothed in a simple European gown and a straw bonnet. The shore was lined with hundreds of natives, whose persons were all more or less clothed with native cloth. Some of the men had on a kind of poncho formed of this cloth, their legs being uncovered; others wore clumsily ...
— The Coral Island • R.M. Ballantyne
... resorted unto, being of note for having the choicest in their kind of all sorts, surpassing all other markets in London." "All these things have we at London," says Shadwell, in his "Bury Fair," 1689; "the produce of the best corn-fields at Greenhithe; hay, straw, and cattle at Smithfield, with horses too. Where is such a garden in Europe as the Stocks' Market? where such a river as the Thames? such ponds and decoys as in Leadenhall market for ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... was. Then Thumbling, seeing his father, cried out, "See, father, here I am, with the cart, all right and safe; now take me down." So his father took hold of the horse with one hand, and with the other took his son out of the ear; then he put him down upon a straw, where he sat as merry as you please. The two strangers were all this time looking on, and did not know what to say for wonder. At last one took the other aside and said, "That little urchin will make our fortune if we can get him, and carry him about from town to town as a show; we must ...
— My Book of Favorite Fairy Tales • Edric Vredenburg
... will be packing in boxes with straw, hay or other materials, hauling to the railway and ...
— Dinosaurs - With Special Reference to the American Museum Collections • William Diller Matthew
... past and gone now; but I was very fond of Tolly Hackett, and she was of me. We used to take our little evening walks together through the coffee plantation: very romantic little strolls they were, she in white muslin with a blue sash and blue shoes; I in a flannel jacket and trousers, straw hat and cravat, a Virginia cigar as long as a walking-stick in my mouth, puffing and courting between times; then we'd take a turn to the refining-house, look in at the big boilers, quiz the niggers, and come back to ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... astonishment and delight, just as I was nearly fainting, the puma gave a furious growl and a tremendous bound, leaving me free, and as I struggled to my feet, panting and exhausted, I caught sight of Pete twenty yards away in the act of picking up his straw hat, with which he returned to me, ...
— Through Forest and Stream - The Quest of the Quetzal • George Manville Fenn
... my letter of October last, I have not slept above three or four nights in a bed, but after walking a good deal all the day, I have lain down before the fire upon a little hay, straw, fodder, or a bearskin, whichever was to be had, with man, wife, and children, like dogs and cats; and happy is he who gets the berth nearest the fire. Nothing would make it pass off tolerably but a good reward. A doubloon is my constant gain every day ...
— Boys' Book of Famous Soldiers • J. Walker McSpadden
... of wrong lent him speed, and he was gaining in the chase when he heard a girl's voice, "There goes one of them now!" and then a man seemed to be calling after him, "Stop, there!" He turned round, and a policeman, looking gigantic in his belted blue flannel blouse and his straw helmet, bore down upon the country boy with his club drawn, and ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... himself absently with his white straw hat, pausing from time to time to exchange a word of greeting—secure in the affability of one who is not only a judge of man but a Bassett of Virginia. From his classic head to his ill-fitting boots he upheld the traditions of ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... in the sitting-room of her own particular suite, one of three small and rather stuffy rooms, on the second floor. These rooms consisted of an anteroom, covered with a cretonne paper of blue and brown, a carpetless floor, a table, and some common, straw chairs placed against the wall. From the anteroom two doors led into two bedrooms, one on either side. Another door, opposite the ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot
... stirring; not a beast. Not a man, except the two felons. A right glorious night it was for rapine and midnight murder. The house-dog had slunk in his straw, and the watchman was dozing away, under some shed, or stoop, or in some dark door-way. There was nothing to stand in the way of these enterprising men, save the fierce storm, and what cared they for that? ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... our leather breeches, and saddle-reek for the only musk we wear. Lord! But yonder stands a handsome girl—and my condition mortifies me so that I could slink off to the mews for shame and lie on straw with the hostlers." ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... and before he slept that night made careful notes of all the Spaniard's suggested military dispositions, both of attackers and attacked, writing underneath them the proverb about the corn and the straw. There existed no real reason why he should have done so, as he was only a civilian engaged in business, but Pieter van de Werff chanced to be a provident young man who knew many things might happen which could not precisely be foreseen. As ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... there rushed upon the little group a most surprising figure. At the first flash of thought Dickory supposed that a boy from the skies had dropped among them, but in an instant he recognised the face he had seen above the bushes. It was Lucilla, the daughter of the house! Upon her head was a little straw hat, and she wore a loose tunic and a pair of sailor's trousers, which had been cut off and were short enough to show that her feet and ankles were bare. Around her waist she had a belt of skins, from which ...
— Kate Bonnet - The Romance of a Pirate's Daughter • Frank R. Stockton
... guards permission to approach her caravan? Oh! language never can adequately express the sentiments of the heart; but picture to yourself my poor mistress, with a chain round her waist, seated upon a handful of straw, her head resting languidly against the panel of the carriage, her face pale and bathed with tears, which forced a passage between her eyelids, although she kept them continually closed. She had not even the curiosity to open her eyes on hearing the bustle ...
— Manon Lescaut • Abbe Prevost
... she says to me at the start, 'Never you mind about company for 'em,' sh-she—'I'm company enough.' And I says, 'All right —fix it your own way, child;' and that she was right is shown by the fact that to this day they don't care a straw for any company ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... rascals as these, than for any other cause. And Thad chanced to know just why he had doubly earned this reputation for ugliness during the last year or so; Jim Hasty's running away with his little girl, Lina, had been the last straw that broke the camel's back; since it had made Old Cale feel reckless, and as though he cared no longer for anything in ...
— The Boy Scouts in the Maine Woods - The New Test for the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... think much of the property, I suppose," said Will, "for it is evident that in regard to agriculture it is not worth a straw?" ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains - Wandering Will in the Land of the Redskin • R.M. Ballantyne
... archangels, and all the company of Heaven, we laud and magnify His glorious name"—well for us, if our attempt be not only an insult, and His ears open rather to the inarticulate and unintended praise, of "the Swallow, twittering from her straw-built shed." ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin
... accident? An' wasn't it a week later that the poor little ladies was put ashore on the other side of the island, with nothin' before 'em but to walk home acrost the mountains on their weeny-teeny little straw sandals which wouldn't hang together a mile? Don't I know? 'Tis the beast he is, this Wolf Larsen—the great big beast mentioned iv in Revelation; an' no good end will he ever come to. But I've said nothin' to ye, mind ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... the judges in their big wigs and long robes, and facing the whole crowded court! It was enough to frighten a body into fits, but we took it quietly as we could, and your mamma looked as meek as Moses in her little, battered straw hat and gray cloak, seeming to say, "I didn't ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... Hendrik Shippe's best boat, and he had entrusted it to the care of Tobias Jeffers, his ablest boatman. There was not a smarter looking craft in Termonde, nor one better fitted for hard work. It was a pleasure to watch her glide along, her waist well under water, laden with corn, wood, straw, or provisions; to see, too, her big brown hull set off with red and blue lines, her prows ornamented with the long smooth-scaled gold-fish, her shining bridge and her little cloud of smoke curling out ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Polish • Various
... him are losing courage.—At this moment Barrere, remarkable for expedients, proposes to the Convention to adjourn, and hold the session "amidst the armed force that will afford it protection."[34163] All other things failing, the majority avails itself of this last straw. It rises in a body, in spite of the vociferations in the galleries, descends the great staircase, and proceeds to the entrance of the Carrousel. There the Montagnard president, Herault-Sechelles, reads the decree of Henriot, which enjoins ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... me no more with it. It fatigues you, and that gives me more pain than your letters can give me satisfaction. Dictate a few words on your health to your secretary; it will suffice. I don't care a straw about the King and Queen of Naples, nor whether they visit your little Great Duke and Duchess. I am glad when monarchs are playing with one another, instead of scratching: it is better they should be idle than mischievous. As I desire you not to write, I cannot be alarmed at ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... ready and as it should be if called on for sudden service. On one side, at a short distance from the bivouac, a party of men cut, with their sabres and foraging hatchet, brushwood to renew the fires; in another direction, a train of carts laden with straw, driven by unwilling peasants and escorted by a surly commissary and a few dusty dragoons, made their appearance, the patient oxen pushing and straining forwards in obedience to the goad that tormented their flanks, the clumsy wheels, solid circles of wood, creaking ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... not the wife he ought to have, but he would not believe me, and father was anxious, and so I married him, meaning to do the best I could. It was splendid at Saratoga, only Guy danced so ridiculously and would not let me waltz with those young men. As if I cared a straw for them or any other man besides ...
— Miss McDonald • Mary J. Holmes
... man," I began, "don't you get to thinking that when you hide your own head in the sand no one can see the colour of your feathers. You might as well try to cover up Bunker Hill Monument with a wisp of straw. Don't you suppose I know you love Gwen Darrow? That's what's the ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... evidence that the process of flaying took place until the culprit was dead, the real object of the excoriation being, not the infliction of pain, but the preservation of a memorial which could be used as a warning and a terror to others. The skin of Mani, stuffed with straw, was no doubt suspended for some time after his execution over one of the gates of the great city of Shahpur; and it is possible that this fact may have been the sole ground of the belief (which, it is to be remembered, was ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 7. (of 7): The Sassanian or New Persian Empire • George Rawlinson
... boats of the underworld, and a vast variety of children's toys, including wooden dolls with strings of mud beads to represent hair, porcelain elephants, and wooden cats; and there are children's balls made of blue glazed porcelain, and of leather stuffed with chopped straw. There are many games and amusements, such as stone draught boards, and draughtsmen in porcelain and wood. There are bells of bronze and some remarkable musical instruments like a harp, the body of which is in the form ...
— Chats on Household Curios • Fred W. Burgess
... was filled with a sickening anguish at the knowledge that he was not able to offer one smallest saving straw to the girl in the ...
— Tharon of Lost Valley • Vingie E. Roe
... national trade unions, more than thirty from 1863 to 1873 National Trades Union New England Congress, policies of railroad brotherhoods railway unions Retail Clerks International Union Shirt, Waist and Laundry Workers' International Union Trades and Labor Congress of Canada United Felt, Panama and Straw Hat Trimmers United Garment Workers United Mine Workers United Textile Workers Women's Department, Knights of Labor Women's Labor Reform Associations Women's National Labor League Women's state labor ...
— The Trade Union Woman • Alice Henry
... I'm a Smouse in the wilderness wide, The veld is my home, and the wagon's my pride: The crack of my 'voerslag' shall sound o'er the lea, I'm a Smouse, I'm a Smouse, and the trader is free! I heed not the Governor, I fear not his law, I care not for civilisation one straw, And ne'er to 'Ompanda'—'Umgazis' I'll throw While my arm carries fist, or my foot bears a toe! 'Trek,' 'trek,' ply the whip—touch the fore oxen's skin, I'll warrant we'll 'go it' through thick and through thin— Loop! loop ye oud skellums! ot Vikmaan trek jy; I'm a Smouse, ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... sugar, one teaspoonful each cloves, cinnamon and allspice. Boil vinegar and sugar together, skim and add spices. Take the blossom end from the apples and put as many in at a time as will lie on the top of the vinegar without crowding and cook until easily pierced with a straw. Seal in ...
— My Pet Recipes, Tried and True - Contributed by the Ladies and Friends of St. Andrew's Church, Quebec • Various
... or the climate, or the mode of cultivation, or all combined, certain it is that nowhere else does one see flowers of such brilliant colours, perfect forms, and delicious fragrance; and the quantities as well as varieties of them are perfectly wonderful. Delicate pink and straw-coloured tea-roses, camellias, and jonquils mingled their high-born beauties with the more homely charms of wild-flowers that grew under the shadow of the great solemn stone-pines on the heights around, ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... eyes, reverting from the south, dropped, to follow those slender windrows, Chaff, straw, splinters of wood, weeds, and the sea-gluten, Scum, scales from shining rocks, leaves of salt-lettuce, left ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... been captured as well as the conspirators, and instead of receiving the promised crespine, she was bitterly rueing her folly, locked in a small turret room whose only furniture was a bundle of straw and a rug, with the pleasing prospect of worse usage when her mistress should return. The morning after their arrival at home, Lady Foljambe marched up to the turret, armed with a formidable cane, wherewith ...
— The White Lady of Hazelwood - A Tale of the Fourteenth Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... be, he can always spare time to visit his tailor. The fare I paid my taxi-driver was too monstrous for words; but then he'd missed his lunch, and one has to miss so many things in war-times that when a new straw of inconvenience is piled on the camel, the camel expects to be compensated. Anyway, I was on that boat-train when ...
— The Glory of the Trenches • Coningsby Dawson
... basket on each end of a pole, and offers you a choice lot; long slippery eels, beautiful shrimp, as pink as the sunset, and juicy oysters whose shells have been scrubbed until they are gleaming white. Around the baskets are garlands of paper roses to hide from view the ugly rough edges of the straw. ...
— Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... the father of the family sets fire to a wisp of straw, and with it makes the sign of the cross around his house, which prevents these evil spirits from approaching. The other members of the family place a few extra lights before the image of the Virgin; and the horse-shoe nailed to the door completes ...
— Tales from the Lands of Nuts and Grapes - Spanish and Portuguese Folklore • Charles Sellers and Others
... the women who liked journeying were sitting in motley confusion upon the straw which covered the bottom of the vehicle, and the boisterous mirth of the travellers gave ample proof that the huge jugs of wine carried with them as the Emperor's provision for the journey ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Ann to be "the last straw." "She might have better put me in the primary grade in the beginning," the ranch girl said, spitefully. "Then I wouldn't have been among those who despise me. I hate them all! I'll just get away ...
— Ruth Fielding on Cliff Island - The Old Hunter's Treasure Box • Alice Emerson
... declaring he "don't care a straw"— That "the ills of a bachelor's life Are blisses, compared with a mother-in-law And a boarding-school miss for a wife!" So he smokes and he drinks, and he jokes and he winks, And he dines and he wines, all alone, With a thumb ever ready to snap ...
— Songs of Friendship • James Whitcomb Riley
... consolation to the wounded and dying. When we reached the Harbour the British had retreated to their shipping, leaving part of the dead and wounded upon the field of battle. These, with the others, were brought in from the field; the dead were stretched side by side in rows, and the wounded on beds and straw in as comfortable a condition as could be expected. We were conducted by a friend to the several hospitals, where I saw the distress of about eighty wounded. I cannot describe my feelings to hear the groans of the wounded and dying, some pierced through the body, others ...
— Neville Trueman the Pioneer Preacher • William Henry Withrow
... men's breath, our lives upon Less than their breath; our durance upon days[bi] Our days on seasons; our whole being on Something which is not us![56]—So, we are slaves, The greatest as the meanest—nothing rests Upon our will; the will itself no less[bj] Depends upon a straw than on a storm; 360 And when we think we lead, we are most led,[57] And still towards Death, a thing which comes as much Without our act or choice as birth, so that Methinks we must have sinned ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... into which it led was wide enough for a pallet of straw laid lengthwise, with passage room between it and the opposite wall. The foot of the bed was within two feet of the door. Between the stones, in the opposite end near the ceiling, was a crevice, little wider than two palms. This noted, ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... Shelldrake's boy-of-all-work, awaited us at the door. He had been sent on two or three days in advance, to take charge of the house, and seemed to have had enough of hermit-life, for he hailed us with a wild whoop, throwing his straw hat half-way up one of the poplars. Perkins was a boy of fifteen, the child of poor parents, who were satisfied to get him off their hands, regardless as to what humanitarian theories might be tested upon him. As the Arcadian Club recognized no such thing as caste, he was ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... or—or—something when we arrive. If she sees us like this, she'll be certain sure to put us to bed at once," continued Darby, with sad conviction, glancing anxiously at his soiled sailor suit, which a few hours before was white, his straw hat with the brim dangling by a thread; and, worst of all, at Joan's torn pinafore, scratched legs, and shoeless foot—for in the flurry and fervour of the chase one small slipper had somehow ...
— Two Little Travellers - A Story for Girls • Frances Browne Arthur
... noteworthy raid by the Waikato tribe. Afterwards, when the Ngatiawa decided to abandon their much-harried land, Barrett moved with them to Cook's Straits, where, in 1839, the Wakefields found him looking jovial, round, and ruddy, dressed in a straw hat, white jacket, and blue dungaree trousers, and married to a chief's daughter—a handsome and stately woman. It was Dicky Barrett who directed Colonel Wakefield to what is now Wellington, and who, in consequence, may ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... There, in their most immutable height of heaven, In ipso caelo, in the ethereal realm, Beyond all planets, red as Mars it burned, The one impossible glory. "But it's true!" Pratensis gasped; then, clutching the first straw, "Now I recall how Pliny the Elder said, Hipparchus also saw a strange new star, Not where the comets, not where the Rosae bloom And fade, but in that solid crystal sphere Where nothing changes." Tycho smiled, and showed The record ...
— Watchers of the Sky • Alfred Noyes
... around each other, stand watching the black-cat in the plum-tree. Then there is Daffy-down-dilly, who has come up to town, with "a yellow petticoat and a green gown," in which attire, aided by a straw hat tied under her chin, she manages to look exceedingly attractive, as she passes in front of the white house with the pink roof and the red shutters and the green palings. One of the most beautiful pictures in this ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson
... about them, still, both occupations dissipate the time wonderfully. They are scrubbing down the waist, washing the decks with brushes and squeejees and lashins of blue Mediterranean; they wear dungaree tunics, and trousers of dark blue and faded pale blues, with red cloth round their straw skull-caps, and are all in shadow—that colourful, melting, warm shade you have in the ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... enough now: but it has too often the defects of photography; it is bleared, coarse, and ill-favoured. As we all know, in the new realism a young woman and her lover talk thus: "Old gal! why so glum?" said he—"It's my luck!" says she, and flings her straw hat on the floor. That is the new photographic style, but it does not please us of an older generation. Now Trollope makes his people utter such phrases as the characters he presents to us actually use in real life—or rather such phrases as they did use thirty years ago. And yet, ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... suit of fresh white flannels and over his shoulders, for fear of the evening air being chilly after this hot day, he had a little cape of a military cut, like those in which young ladies at music-halls enact the part of colonels. He had a straw-hat on, with a blue riband, a pink shirt and a red tie, rather loose and billowy. His face was pink and round, with blue eyes, a short nose and very red lips. An almost complete absence of eyebrow was made up for by a firm little brown moustache clipped very short, and brushed upwards ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... that condition I will gather flowers And once a day come straw them at his feet, And once a day pay tribute of choyce thanks To you the furtherer of my happinesse: Till then I place the picture where ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. III • Various
... warm golden gourds; golden, within, Under the eaves, peer'd rows of Indian corn. We shot beneath the cottage with the stream. 20 On the brown, rude-carved balcony, two forms Came forth—Olivia's, Marguerite! and thine. Clad were they both in white, flowers in their breast; Straw hats bedeck'd their heads, with ribbons blue, Which danced, and on their shoulders, fluttering, play'd. 25 They saw us, they conferred; their bosoms heaved, And more than mortal impulse fill'd their eyes. ...
— Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems • Matthew Arnold
... had changed his dress, and looked like another boy. Mrs. Wilford adjusted a few stray locks of his hair, and as he put on his new straw hat, and left the house, her eye followed him with a feeling of motherly pride. He was a good boy, and had the reputation of being a very smart boy, and she may be pardoned for the parental vanity with which she regarded him. While ...
— Haste and Waste • Oliver Optic
... yet diagnosed. We continued to visit him, instructing him and praying with him. On one of these occasions on leaving him we both made a good mistake. We broke down and wept. Morris speaking to me in English said, "I love this man's soul like my own father's and wouldn't lay a straw in the way of his getting saved; I would like to shake his hand, but may not." "As far as I am concerned," I said, "I wouldn't be afraid to take his hand in both mine, but for the sake of the public we cannot do it; but he is a man of understanding, we will go and explain to him and I'm ...
— Personal Experiences of S. O. Susag • S. O. Susag
... week of packing followed—not just packing clothes, like when you go to the seaside, but packing chairs and tables, covering their tops with sacking and their legs with straw. ...
— The Railway Children • E. Nesbit
... Jenny Naylor, his granddaughter, had company, and after they had been playing around the orchard for an hour or two, and had slid down the straw-stacks to their heart's content, the children all went to the well to get a drink. A bucket of water was soon hauled up, and Tommy Barrett with a tin-cup ladled out the refreshment to the company. When they had all drank ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton
... background of fanners, corn measures, piles of sacks, and spare implements of the finer sort; and the congregation, who had come up a ladder cautiously like hens going to roost—being severally warned about the second highest step—sat on bags stuffed with straw, boards resting on upturned pails, while a few older folk were accommodated with chairs, and some youngsters disdained not the floor. It was pleasanter in the barn, a cool, lofty, not unimpressive place ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... little village here near Cambridge the homely, summer- sounding name of which is Haslingfield. It is a straggling hamlet of white-walled, straw-thatched cottages, among orchards and old elms, full of closes of meadow-grass, and farmsteads with ricks and big-timbered barns. It has a solid, upstanding Tudor church, with rather a grand tower, and four solid corner ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson
... upon. Ride on toward Paris and send me back a dozen patriots, no matter where you find them. There are some in the neighborhood who have tasted blood in burning a chateau, whisper that there are aristocrats in Tremont. They shall find me by that farm yonder, snatching an hour's sleep in the straw maybe. Then get you to Villefort, where Mercier and Dubois are waiting. Bid them watch that road. Possibly the messenger was not ...
— The Light That Lures • Percy Brebner
... fulness of time somebody will want to be driven somewhere. (This nobody ever does, since the distance to any house is so small, and a porter follows with luggage on a barrow.) It carries on its floor a quantity of fresh straw, in the manner of the stage coaches, in which the problematic passenger, should he ever appear, will no doubt bury his feet. On its side, just below the window that is not made to open, it carries the legend that shows that it belongs to the Comber Arms, a ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... Duchemin was no more; and a little stain, artfully applied, had toned the newly exposed flesh to match the tan of the rest. The rough tweed walking-suit had been replaced by a modest and commonplace blue serge, the cap and heavy brown boots by a straw boater and plain black shoes, the loose-throated flannel shirt by one of plain linen with stiff cuffs and a fold collar and neat foulard tie. So easily was Madame de Sevenie's buccaneer metamorphosed into the semblance of ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... natural that having slept too much he should now sleep too little. She prescribed exercise and usefulness. One day she made him wash all the dishes, and prune all the rose-vines, and tie them in readiness for straw jackets when winter should set in, and she made him split wood in the cellar, and after dinner she made him go to the piano and play Irish music for her until the sweat stood out on his forehead. Then ...
— If You Touch Them They Vanish • Gouverneur Morris
... passing by, "is like to shame your silly fears. Some wag hath sent ye a truss of straw—for a scrubbing wisp, maybe." But there was, in the hurried and unusual hilarity of her speech, something so forced and out of character, that it did not escape even the notice of her domestics. Some, however, went immediately ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... member of the class—a forlorn-looking child, who sat shyly apart from the others, shrinking from proximity with their neat, tasteful summer attire, as if she felt the contrast between her own dress and appearance and that of her school-fellows. Poor Nelly Connor's dingy straw hat and tattered cotton dress, as well as her pale, meagre face, with its bright hazel eyes gleaming from under the tangled brown hair, showed evident signs of poverty and neglect. She was a stranger there, having only recently come to ...
— Lucy Raymond - Or, The Children's Watchword • Agnes Maule Machar
... was for a summer residence, she selected fine straw-matting, instead of woollen carpets for it. She put it down with great care, perfectly smooth and even. The wall was covered with the same cool material, delicately woven. ...
— The Nest in the Honeysuckles, and other Stories • Various
... myself at the entrance to the stables, and face to face with Silas Meadowcroft once more. He had his elbows on the gate of the yard, swinging it slowly backward and forward, and turning and twisting a straw between his teeth. When he saw me approaching him, he advanced a step from the gate, and made an effort to excuse himself, with a ...
— The Dead Alive • Wilkie Collins
... may be shamming; but beyond a certain length of time he cannot live without eating. Not the faintest sound nor glimmer of light penetrates those awful walls. In the same clothes he wears on entering, unwashed, uncombed, without even a blanket or handful of straw to lie upon he languishes in sickness, lives or dies with no means of making his condition known to those outside. He may count the lagging hours, sleep, rave, curse, pray, long for death, dash his brains out, go mad if he likes—nobody knows ...
— A Plea for the Criminal • James Leslie Allan Kayll
... of his great book is this—that his interest in every trait of his hero, large and small, is so strong that he had none of that stiff propriety or chilly reserve which mars almost all English biographies. He did not care a straw whether this characteristic or that would redound to Johnson's credit. He saw that Johnson was a large-minded, large-hearted man, with an astonishing power of conversational expression, and an extremely picturesque figure as well. He perceived that he was big enough to be described ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson
... were those! I felt the firm trip-hammer of all their pulses beat through the whole fight, for we stood in platoon, shoulder to shoulder. I felt my kindred with every one of them. They had more steel in their nerves and more iron in their blood than other men. Not a man cared a straw for his life, so he saved from wrong and bondage the lives of them that ...
— Who Spoke Next • Eliza Lee Follen
... my grandmother and grandfather had few pretensions. It was a log hut, or cabin, built of clay, wood, and straw. At a distance it resembled—though it was smaller, less commodious and less substantial—the cabins erected in the western states by the first settlers. To my child's eye, however, it was a noble structure, ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... the effects of her first unhappy passion, she seemed to have vowed a state of perpetual chastity. She was long deaf to all the sufferings of her lovers, till one day, at a neighbouring fair, the rhetoric of John the hostler, with a new straw hat and a pint of wine, made a ...
— Joseph Andrews Vol. 1 • Henry Fielding
... the pile when completed is similar to a truncated cone, and when burning the kiln looks like a small volcano. When the kiln has been filled with ore, the whole is covered with ginesi with a view of preventing the escape of the fumes. The ore is then ignited by means of bundles of straw, impregnated or saturated with sulphur, being held above the thin portion of the top of the kiln, which is at once closed with ginesi, and the "calcarone" is left to itself for about a week. During the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 647, May 26, 1888 • Various
... one sad. His kind face beamed with smiles, when Pennellini, chief among the youngsters in his affections, appeared on the top of the nearest bridge, and thence descended directly towards his little table. Then it was that he drew out the straw which ran through the centre of his long Virginia, and lighted the pleasant weed, and gave himself up to the delight of making aloud those comments on the ladies which he had hitherto stifled in his breast. ...
— A Fearful Responsibility and Other Stories • William D. Howells
... afloat by new issues of currency, until its purchasing power was reduced almost to nothing. Preposterous sums were demanded for the simplest articles: hundreds of dollars for a basket of fruit, and thousands of dollars for a straw hat. ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... to show you the roses needed for the tables; I'll be with you by-and-by to cut the ferns. Do you think you could make yourself of that much use? You're not worth a straw here" ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... or from the North. Taste asserted itself, perhaps all the more in such discouraging circumstances, and feminine refinement and love of adornment worked marvels out of the slenderest materials. A home-made straw hat ornamented with feathers of barnyard fowls and domestic birds was often as jaunty and as pretty as any Parisian bonnet. Simple dyes were made to give to coarse cotton stuffs a lively contrast or ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... could be imagined than the dungeon. Dripping stone-walls, a truckle-bed with a mouldy straw-mattrass, rotting litter scattered about, a floor glistening and slippery with ooze, and a deep pool of water, like that outside, at the further end,—these constituted the materials of the frightful picture presented to the gaze. ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 2 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... large bedstead and straw, but I think the 'armonium and a little kerosene in one corner ...
— The Defence of Duffer's Drift • Ernest Dunlop Swinton
... were prancing on the lawn in front of Turtle Lodge. Jimmie had his camera over his back and a jointed steel rod done up in a neat little case in his hands, on his feet long rubber boots. Betty wore a big straw hat; she carried a little rod like Jim's and a pretty little knapsack, which held part of the luncheon. They were waiting for Jack and Ben Gile, who were to go with them to fish a stream that lay far back from the pond. It was to be a great ...
— Little Busybodies - The Life of Crickets, Ants, Bees, Beetles, and Other Busybodies • Jeanette Augustus Marks and Julia Moody
... practice in judging accurately of the breadth and length of objects. Thus, to accustom your mind to such things, let one of you draw a straight line at random on a wall, and each of you, taking a blade of grass or of straw in his hand, try to cut it to the length that the line drawn appears to him to be, standing at a distance of 10 braccia; then each one may go up to the line to measure the length he has judged it to be. And he who has come nearest ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... surprise contemplating his heated comrade, "how you fly out against this unfortunate Polonius—a being that never was, nor will be. And yet, viewed in a Christian light," he added pensively, "I don't know that anger against this man of straw is a whit less wise than anger against a man of flesh, Madness, to be mad ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... is impatient of uncertainly, and would rather presume the guilt of a friend from its longing to pour itself out in pity and tenderness, than restrain itself while judgment scrutinizes evidence and decides by a straw's weight. ...
— Two Days' Solitary Imprisonment - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... hundred yeere of Grace, as they haue doone and are like to doo in this, . . . it is to be feared that the fennie bote, broome, turfe, gall, heath, firze, brakes, whinnes, ling, dies, hassacks, flags, straw, sedge, reed, rush, and also seacole, will be good merchandize euen in the citie of London, whereunto some of them euen now haue gotten readie passage, and taken up their innes in the greatest merchants' parlours . . . . I would wish that I might liue no longer than to see foure things in ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... forth e'en now. What martyrdom endurest thou! What kind of life is this to be living, Ennui to thyself and youngsters giving? Let Neighbor Belly that way go! To stay here threshing straw why car'st thou? The best that thou canst think and know To tell the boys not for the whole world dar'st thou. E'en now I hear one ...
— Faust • Goethe
... Nemu, whisper in my ear what is doing?" The dwarf felt as if he could not avoid the influence of her eye, he went up to her, and said softly—"The pavilion, in which the king and his people are sleeping, is constructed of wood; straw and pitch are built into the walls, and laid under the boards. As soon as they are gone to rest we shall set the tinder thing on fire. The guards ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... all here is a possible chance of escape and rescue,' and, like a drowning man catching at a straw, we could not seriously think of allowing the opportunity to slip; besides, there proved in the end to be little chance of our having our own will in the matter, since the savages never once asked us if we ...
— Cast Away in the Cold - An Old Man's Story of a Young Man's Adventures, as Related by Captain John Hardy, Mariner • Isaac I. Hayes
... mates shoved them away, and dragged the lunatic down the deck and into a room in the 'midship house. I could not help marking the strength of Mr. Pike and Mr. Mellaire. I had heard of the superhuman strength of madmen, but this particular madman was as a wisp of straw in their hands. Once into the bunk, Mr. Pike held down the struggling fool easily with one hand while he dispatched the second mate for marlin with which to tie ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... dear," he said aloud, stretching himself with a long, hypocritical yawn, "it is ridiculous for two fellows like you and me to wear masks in each other's presence. We don't care a straw for the whole Sieges business, do we, Fritz, except for the dollars and cents of it? I am deucedly sleepy, and I ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... Elena in that scene like the most ardent lover, "clutches at his feeling like a drowning man at a straw." ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... and beard, spat upon him, struck him with their fists, wounded him with sharp-pointed sticks, and even ran needles into his body; but when Caiphas left the hall they set no bounds to their barbarity. They first placed a crown, made of straw and the bark of trees, upon his head, and then took it off, saluting him at the same time with insulting expressions, like the following: 'Behold the Son of David wearing the crown of his father.' ...
— The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ • Anna Catherine Emmerich
... much to-day, and this last announcement was the one straw too many. Utterly crushed, she buried her face in her hands, and remained silent. She could not reproach her husband, for the deception had been equal, and now, when this last hope had been swept away, the world indeed seemed ...
— Dora Deane • Mary J. Holmes
... with a cloth, and thereupon flesh and diverse viands and a cup full of mare's milk. And men put a mare beside him with her foal, and an horse saddled and bridled. And they lay upon the horse gold and silver, great quantity. And they put about him great plenty of straw. And then men make a great pit and a large, and with the tent and all these other things they put him in earth. And they say that when he shall come into another world, he shall not be without an house, ...
— The Travels of Sir John Mandeville • Author Unknown
... chapel, then, clasping her hands, murmured to herself, 'No! no! speed is my best hope;' and at once mounted the stairs, and entered a room, where the large stone crucifix, a waxen Madonna, and the holy water font gave a cell-like aspect to the room; and a straw pallet covered with sackcloth was on the floor, a richly curtained couch driven into the ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... comes from a President I helped to elect. . . . If the President of the United States operating through his major generals can initiate a State government, and can bring it here and force us, compel us, to receive on this floor these mere mockeries, these men of straw who represent nobody, your Republic is at an end . . . talk not to me of your ten per cent. principle. A more absurd, monarchial and anti-American principle was never ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... of laws, Sold his bed and lay upon straws; Sold the straw, and slept on grass, To buy ...
— The Little Mother Goose • Anonymous
... your eyes, your veil, your knife and fork; Your tenfold worship of your widowhood; As he who sees he must yield up the flag, Hugs it oath-swearingly! straw-drowningly. To be reasonable: you sent this gentleman Referring him to me . ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Assistant or a maid at the present wages," some one says. "But I do wish I had some one who could get and serve dinner every night. I am so tired by evening that cooking is the last straw." ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... said Troffater. "I hope you'll lick the rascal. He's guilty's a dog. But don't ax me, now, what I know! I wouldn't go afore Fabens for a fat turkey, I wouldn't. And then agin, why should I want to hurt Sculpin, or lay a straw in his way? Mebby he'll dew better, sense the trap liked to ketch 'im; and I'm sure I don't ...
— Summerfield - or, Life on a Farm • Day Kellogg Lee
... between their lower end and the heavy tan-colored shoes; the nether garment held usually by only one suspender, that was strung over a coarse homemade shirt; the head covered in winter with a coonskin cap, in summer with a rough straw hat of uncertain shape, without ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... but in a little bamboo corral nearby she found three Chinese ponies. Evidently they had made their escape from the scene of battle and had drifted into this yard for refuge. There was a small stack of rice straw just outside the corral. From this Marie soon made a stoutly-twisted rope which she hastily arranged in the form of a bridle. Placing it over the head of the largest pony she mounted him and ...
— The Woman with a Stone Heart - A Romance of the Philippine War • Oscar William Coursey
... you to her now. Only one moment, please." The opportunity of leading this handsome savage as it were in chains across the parade, before everybody, her father, her mother, her sister, and HIS—was not to be lost. She darted into the house, and reappeared with the daintiest imaginable straw hat on the side of her head, and demurely took her place at his side. "It's only over there, at Major Bromley's," she said, pointing to one of the vine-clad cottage quarters; "but you are a stranger here, you know, ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... was rather short, even for a ten-year-old, and to reach the plow handles I was obliged to lift my hands above my shoulders; and so with the guiding lines crossed over my back and my worn straw hat bobbing just above the cross-brace I must have made a comical figure. At any rate nothing like it had been seen in the neighborhood; and the people on the road to town, looking across the field, laughed and called to me, and ...
— The Elson Readers, Book 5 • William H. Elson and Christine M. Keck
... consequences of exposure to rain. When advised, especially by women, to defend himself against the treacheries of the weather, he always protested confidently that he would 'be all right.' Thus with a stick and a straw hat he would affront terrible dangers. It was a species of valour which the event often justified. Indeed he generally was all right. But to-night, afoot on the way from South Kensington Station in a region quite unfamiliar to him, he was intimidated ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... the farmer lay down on a sort of shake-down, as the Scotch call it, or bed-clothes disposed upon some straw, but, as will easily be believed, ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... it," said Aurelia. "Soon came Miss Herries in a straw hat, and the prettiest green petticoat under a white gown and apron, as a dairy-maid, but the cow would not stand still, for all the man who led her kept scolding her and saying 'Coop! coop!' No sooner had Miss Herries seated herself on the stool than Moolly swerved away, and it was ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of the big hospitals in Antwerp, Brussels, or Ghent. Luther and I, closely followed by the two guards that had trailed us from the time we had got inside the station, climbed into a freight car, apparently used as a box stall on the out trip, and bare except for a pile of damp straw in one corner. Interminable journey. Most of the time we stood on sidings waiting for the outbound traffic. Made fair time to Louvain,—i.e., an hour and a half,—and stayed there two hours, for which I was thankful, ...
— The Log of a Noncombatant • Horace Green |
