"Whalebone" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the development of others along their predetermined line of modification. ("Collected Essays" 2 223.) A whale does not tend to vary in the direction of producing feathers, nor a bird in the direction of producing whalebone. (In "Mr. Darwin's Critics" 1871 ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... long slender rod of wood, whalebone, tortoiseshell, horn or cane, with a carved human hand, usually of ivory, mounted at the extremity. Its name suggests the primary use of the implement, but little is known of its history, and it was unquestionably also employed as a kind of rake to keep in order ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... race, these mountaineers," he said to me, as he tossed the end of another cigarette on Aunt Chloe's now clean-swept floor. Marny spoke in crisp, detached sentences between the pats of his brush. "Big, strong, whalebone-and-steel kind of fellows; rather fight than eat. Quick as lightning with a gun; dead shots. Built just like our border men. See that scout astride of his horse?"—and he pointed with his mahl-stick to a sketch on the ...
— The Underdog • F. Hopkinson Smith
... for him a pair of beautiful whalebone boots! With them he can walk over the sharp rocks and the icy cliffs in comfort ...
— Stories of Birds • Lenore Elizabeth Mulets
... back very slightly arched, and not sloping too suddenly towards the tail, which should be set up tolerably high. This ought to be thick and long, the end well furnished with a double fringe of very long thick hairs or whalebone-looking bristles. The legs should be short in proportion to the height of the animal, but immensely thick, and the upper- portion above the knee ought to exhibit enormous muscle. The knees should be well rounded, and the feet be exactly equal to half the perpendicular ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... reindeer, With sheep and swine beside; I have tribute from the Finns, Whalebone and reindeer-skins, ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... unable to speak. She had known he was less rich; but half!—"maybe less!" The cuirass of steel, whalebone, kid, and linen which molded her body to a fashionable figure seemed to be closing in on her heart and lungs ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... of her own bedroom at home in East Mordan, Illinois, with its old black walnut chamber set and framed photographs and chromos, but she maintained a sort of defiant pride in it even to herself. In Martha Wallingford's character there was an element partaking of the nature of whalebone, yielding, but practically unbreakable, and sometimes wholly unyielding. Martha proceeded to array herself for dinner. She had not a doubt that it would be a grand affair. She therefore did not hesitate about the white silk, which was a robe of such splendour that it might not have disgraced ...
— The Butterfly House • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... to begin with, very largely theoretical. I was able to attack such early necessities of verification as arose with quite little models, using a turntable to get the motion through the air, and cane, whalebone and silk as building material. But a time came when incalculable factors crept in, factors of human capacity and factors of insufficient experimental knowledge, when one must needs guess and try. Then I had ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... about eight or nine feet long. He looked all head. And his head looked all mouth. And his mouth—but you could not see into that for it was very busy nursing. His mother, however, lay with her mouth half open, a vast cavern of a mouth, nearly a third the length of her body—and it looked all whalebone. For, you must know, she was of the ancient and honorable family of the Right Whales, who scorn to grow any teeth, and therefore must live on soup ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts
... thin strip of whalebone and showed it to them. The ends were sharp as needle-points. The strip he coiled carefully, till it disappeared in his hand. Then, suddenly releasing it, it sprang straight again. He picked up a piece ...
— Brown Wolf and Other Jack London Stories - Chosen and Edited By Franklin K. Mathiews • Jack London
... at her watch; she gazed out froth the window; she turned her eyes to the sky; and in the end she retired for a time to her own chamber, and returned shortly after, dressed for going out, with a short black cloak, richly trimmed, cast over her shoulders, and a silk hood, stiffened with whalebone and deeply fringed with lace, covering her head and the ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... the whalebone stung, A madness it did seem! And soon it rose on every tongue That Jack Macpherson rode among The creatures of ...
— Rio Grande's Last Race and Other Verses • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... from his mouth. But the small animals remain inside! For the water is forced through a wonderful sieve, made of fringed plates, which hangs from his upper jaw. Instead of having teeth in his mouth, as many Whales have, the Greenland Whale has this sieve of "whalebone." Of course it is a large sieve, to fill so large a mouth. Yet it is never in the way, being neatly packed away at the top of the mouth, one plate over the other, when ...
— Within the Deep - Cassell's "Eyes And No Eyes" Series, Book VIII. • R. Cadwallader Smith
... large, that stick two or three inches from their hair), made of diamonds, pearls, red, green, and yellow stones, that it certainly requires as much art and experience to carry the load upright, as to dance upon May-day with the garland. Their whalebone petticoats outdo ours by several yards circumference, and ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... and we began to boom end the sail, it shook the ship to her center. The boom buckled up and bent like a whipstick, and we looked every moment to see something go; but, being of the short, tough upland spruce, it bent like whalebone, and nothing could break it. The carpenter said it was the best stick ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... thrust his fist into his mouth, as Mynheer put him down upon the floor. Soon he sat erect, and looked with a sweet scowl at the company. With his lace and embroideries, and his crown of blue ribbon and whalebone (for he was not quite past the tumbling age), he looked like the ...
— Christmas - Its Origin, Celebration and Significance as Related in Prose and Verse • Various
... all this?" gasps Mr. MCLAUGHLIN, struggling affrightedly in his suffocating cage of whalebone and alpaca. "What's this here old ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 18, July 30, 1870 • Various
... strangers than those he had passed in the street. He stood in the doorway, studying the petty manoeuvres of the women and the resigned amenities of their partners. Was it possible that these were his friends? These mincing women, all paint and dye and whalebone, these apathetic men who looked as much alike as the figures that children cut out of a folded sheet of paper? Was it to live among such puppets that he had sold his soul? What had any of these people done that was noble, exceptional, distinguished? Who knew them by name even, except ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton
... the ends of the needle. Both the poles, you find, attract both ends of the needle. Replace the needle by a bit of annealed iron wire; the same effects ensue. Suspend successively little rods of lead, copper, silver, brass, wood, glass, ivory, or whalebone; the magnet produces no sensible effect upon any of the substances. You thence infer a special property in the case of steel and iron. Multiply your experiments, However, and you will find that some other substances, besides iron and steel, are acted upon by your magnet. A rod ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... rows of broad, thin, horny plates, which are from eight to ten feet long (they have sometimes been seen twenty-five feet) in the centre of each side, but which decrease gradually towards the extremities. These are plates of whalebone (sometimes called whale's whiskers), and the industry of man has turned them to a thousand different uses; and you will open your eyes in astonishment when I tell you that 800 or 900 of them have been sometimes counted ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... and wept as much as would have filled an ink bottle when at last he went off to Edinburgh to study his father's profession. Five years after that did I tide at Birtwhistle's, and when I left had become cock myself, for I was wiry and as tough as whalebone, though I never ran to weight and sinew like my great predecessor. It was in Jubilee Year that I left Birtwhistle's, and then for three years I stayed at home learning the ways of the cattle; but still the ships and the armies were wrestling, and still the great shadow of Bonaparte lay across ...
— The Great Shadow and Other Napoleonic Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... But Miss Wollaston herself, if she hadn't been more or less rigidly laced, stayed, gartered, pinched, pried and pulled about; if she could have moved freely in any direction without an admonitory—"take care"—from some bit of whalebone somewhere, wouldn't have felt dressed at all. There ought to be something perpetually penitential about clothes. The biblical story of the fall of man made ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... and hid all but a few tufts of her frizzled, "pepper-and-salt" locks, was evidently a contribution from the family stock of worn-out pillow-cases. She was very aged—upward of seventy—and so thin that, had she not been endowed with speech and motion, she might have passed for a bundle of whalebone thrown into human shape, and covered with a coating of gutta-percha. It was evident she had been a valued house-servant, whose few remaining years were being soothed and solaced by the kind and indulgent ...
— Among the Pines - or, South in Secession Time • James R. Gilmore
... all the creatures of the crown. He tumbles about his unwieldy bulk, he plays and frolics in the ocean of the royal bounty. Huge as he is, and whilst "he lies floating many a rood," he is still a creature. His ribs, his fins, his whalebone, his blubber, the very spiracles through which he spouts a torrent of brine against his origin, and covers me all over with the spray, everything of him and about him is from the throne. Is it for him to question the dispensation of ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... imitated or learned (I would willingly call it theatrical grace, or the grace of the dancing-master). It is the pendant of that sort of beauty which a woman seeks from her toilet-table, reinforced with rouge, white paint, false ringlets, pads, and whalebone. Imitative grace is to true grace what beauty of toilet is to architectonic beauty. One and the other could act in absolutely the same manner upon the senses badly exercised, as the original of which they wish to be the imitation; and at times even, if much art is put into ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... whale on the coasts, it should be divided between the King and Queen; the head only becoming the King's property, and the tail the Queen's. The reason of this whimsical distinction, as assigned by our ancient records, was to furnish the Queen's wardrobe with whalebone. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 544, April 28, 1832 • Various
... now of his son the Lord Castlemain (of which hereafter), went over the same river which we now pass at Ilford; and passing that part of the great forest which we now call Hainault Forest, came into that which is now the great road, a little on this side the Whalebone, a place on the road so called because the rib-bone of a great whale, which was taken in the River Thames the same year that Oliver Cromwell died, 1658, was fixed there for a monument of that monstrous creature, it being at first about ...
— Tour through the Eastern Counties of England, 1722 • Daniel Defoe
... to and fro with her strong forearms rising like springs ingathered, waiting and quivering grievously, and beginning to sweat about it. Then her master gave a shrill, clear whistle, when her ears were bent towards him, and I felt her form beneath me gathering up like whalebone, and her hind legs coming under her, and I knew that I was in ...
— The Ontario Readers - Third Book • Ontario Ministry of Education
... they were loose enough to enable a finger and thumb to be passed between them and the stocking, and in the lining of the breeches was a pocket in which the cards had been placed, being held there by two pieces of whalebone, that closed the pocket. The searchers, among whom were Dick and Boldero, did not have it all their own way; four or five men rushed upon them, and endeavored to pull them off Emerson. The din of voices was prodigious, but Mark, still standing ...
— Colonel Thorndyke's Secret • G. A. Henty
... upon a petition of the Greenland trade, which likewise represented the great consumption of whalebone which would be occasioned by the present fashion, and the benefit which would thereby accrue to that ...
— Isaac Bickerstaff • Richard Steele
... and taken by the Indians of this coast; tho I beleive it is much more frequently killed by runing fowl on the rocks of the coast in violent storms and thrown on shore by the wind and tide. in either case the Indians preseve and eat the blubber and oil as has been before mentioned. the whalebone they also carefully preserve for sale.- Our party are now furnished with 358 pair of Mockersons exclusive of a ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... "William Tell, the Hero of Switzerland." Of course I was William Tell, in spite of Fred Langdon, who wanted to act that character himself. I wouldn't let him, so he withdrew from the company, taking the only bow and arrow we had. I made a cross-bow out of a piece of whalebone, and did very well without him. We had reached that exciting scene where Gessler, the Austrian tyrant, commands Tell to shoot the apple from his son's head. Pepper Whitcomb, who played all the juvenile ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... but I wear his father's likeness somewhere betwixt buckram and Flanders lace," answered Hyacinth, gaily, pulling a locket from amidst the splendours of her corsage. "I call it next my heart; but there is a stout fortification of whalebone between heart and picture. You have gloated enough on the daughter's impertinent visage. Look now at the father, whom she resembles in little, as a ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... compass, still, fortunately, in working order, that he had bought off another boy at school for fivepence, a piece of indiarubber, a strip of whalebone, and half a stick of ...
— The Story of the Amulet • E. Nesbit
... was furnished with hinges, which permitted it to fold together in a small compass, so that more than two persons might sit on one seat of a coach—a feat not easily performed, when ladies were encompassed with whalebone hoops of six feet extent. My curiosity was excited by the first sight of this machine, probably more than another child's might have been, because previous agreeable associations had given me some taste for mechanics, which was still ...
— Richard Lovell Edgeworth - A Selection From His Memoir • Richard Lovell Edgeworth
... vestiges of their former presence. It was not until the twelfth century that, in roaming the icy deserts of the far north in quest of seals and bearskins, the Norse hunters encountered tribes of Eskimo using stone knives and whalebone arrow-heads;[273] and it was not until the fourteenth century that we hear of their getting into a war with these people. In 1349 the West Bygd was attacked and destroyed by Eskimos; in 1379 they invaded the East Bygd and wrought sad havoc; and it is generally believed that some time after ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... parasol had tender whalebone ribs and a slender stick of cherry-wood. It lived with the wilful child in the white-house, just beyond the third milestone. All about the trees were green, and the flowers grew tall; in the pond behind the willows the ducks swam round and round and dipped ...
— Very Short Stories and Verses For Children • Mrs. W. K. Clifford
... English scholar was very glad to find some one who could converse in his native tongue. We hardly saw a ship the whole way, but we saw plenty of whales, not, however, the kind which go to Dundee, where the whalebone fetches from £1200 to ...
— A Girl's Ride in Iceland • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... cracked; the former being much more necessary to a horsewoman than the latter. The crop should therefore be of a serviceable length. It is the very silly fashion at present to have hunting whips that are less than two feet long. Many are made of whalebone, and are covered with catgut, their special advantage being that their flexibility greatly facilitates the process of cracking. A more serviceable crop for a lady is one of stiff cane, the thick end of the handle of which is made rough, ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes
... attended to, and all the village turned out for that. The huge creature had drifted ashore on the farther side of the island, and Ted was much interested in seeing him gradually disposed of. Great masses of blubber were stripped from the sides to be used later both for food and fuel, the whalebone was carefully secured to be sold to the traders, and it seemed to Ted that there was not one thing in that vast carcass for which the Indians did ...
— Kalitan, Our Little Alaskan Cousin • Mary F. Nixon-Roulet
... of bamboo rope of all thicknesses, my laoban went ashore to purchase a towline; he took with him 1000 cash (about two shillings), and returned with a coil 100 yards in length and 600 cash of change. The rope he brought was made of plaited bamboo, was as thick as the middle finger, and as tough as whalebone. ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... complexion of a baby. She would describe him as an unmarried man, of the age of fifty,—he had a prejudice against marrying under fifty,—dressed in nankeen for all weathers, with no other protection than a whalebone umbrella, and likewise remarkable for a fine Roman nose. 'Twas this Clatworthy, by the way, that a discharged gardener advised to go down to Merry-Garden and make a second fortune by picking cherries, "for," said ...
— Merry-Garden and Other Stories • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... prices D'Urville was able to purchase, for the museum, specimens of the arms and native productions of the savages. Amongst them were some clubs, most of them made of casuarina wood, skilfully carved, or embossed in an artistic manner with mother-of-pearl or with whalebone. The custom of amputating a joint or two of the fingers or toes, to propitiate the Deity, was still observed, in the case of a near ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... door opened. His legs were made of whalebone. But there was a new odor in the hallway.... And something new here in her face. He stood looking at the woman with whom he had lived for seven years and when he said her name it sounded like that of a stranger. His features had a habit of smiling. ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... describe my personal appearance on this important day, when, for the first time, I posed as a great chief, and led my people into battle, filled with the same enthusiasm that animated them. My hair was built up on strips of whalebone to a height of nearly two feet from my head, and was decorated with black and white cockatoo feathers. My face, which had now become very dark from exposure to the sun, was decorated in four colours—yellow, ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... a whalebone whale, Hank?" asked the boy, turning to a lithe Yankee sea-dog with a scraggy gray beard who had been busily working over the mechanism ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... Clayton compromise. Stephens had retorted sharply that if Cone had said this he would slap his face. After some correspondence the two men met in Atlanta, September 4, 1848. The trouble was renewed; Judge Cone denounced Mr. Stephens, who rapped him over the shoulders with a whalebone cane. Mr. Stephens was a fragile man, and Judge Cone, with strong physique, closed in and forced him to the floor. During the scuffle Mr. Stephens was cut in six places. His life for a while was despaired of. Upon his recovery he was received with wild enthusiasm by the Whigs, who ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall
... century, and who attempted to carry da Vinci's theories—one of them, at least, into practice. For this Guidotti, who was by profession an artist and by inclination an investigator, made for himself wings, of which the framework was of whalebone; these he covered with feathers, and with them made a number of gliding flights, attaining considerable proficiency. He is said in the end to have made a flight of about four hundred yards, but this attempt at solving the problem ended on a house roof, where Guidotti broke ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... semi-fluid morass, previously impassable by man or beast, is beyond all praise and deserving of eternal record. Only conceive a slender bridge of two minute iron rails, several miles in length, level as Waterloo, elastic as whalebone, yet firm as adamant! Along this splendid triumph of human genius—this veritable via triumphalis—the train of carriages bounds with the velocity of the stricken deer; the vibrations of the resilient moss causing the ponderous engine and its enormous ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... identical with epidermis, hair, wool, feathers, and whalebone, in yielding 'keratin,' a substance intermediate between albumin and gelatine, and containing from 60 to ...
— Diseases of the Horse's Foot • Harry Caulton Reeks
... and to primitive manners. In person this emperor was tall and dignified (statura elevata decorus;) but latterly he stooped; to remedy which defect, that he might discharge his public part with the more decorum, he wore stays. [Footnote: In default of whalebone, one is curious to know of what they were made:—thin tablets of the linden-tree, it appears, were the best materials which the Augustus of that day could command.] Of his other personal habits little is recorded, except that, early in the ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... ringlets, and curls"; they wear the sword, the chapeau under the arm, a frill, and a coat with gilded cuffs; they kiss young ladies' hands with the air of little dandies. A lass of six years is bound up in a whalebone waist; her large hoop-petticoat supports a skirt covered with wreaths; she wears on her head a skillful combination of false curls, puffs, and knots, fastened with pins, and crowned with plumes, and so high that frequently "the chin ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... being simply elongated and deprived of their webs, are transformed into stiff black ribands, a quarter of an inch wide, but curved like a split quill, and resembling thin half cylinders of horn or whalebone. When a dead bird is laid on its back, it is seen that these ribands take a curve or set, which brings them round so as to meet in a double circle on the neck of the bird; but when they hang downwards, during life, they assume a spiral ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... appear, Miss Wimple's Hoop was a shaved-whalebone fact; and the quilted petticoat would never have been missed, but for the officious scrutiny of the eyes, and the provoking prating of the tongues, of a sophisticated few who marvelled greatly at the pliancy and the "perfect ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... of whips was the most important business in Amherst. It gave employment to several persons and furnished the means of support to ten or twelve families. The purchases of ivory, whalebone, and other raw material, were usually made from first hands and in such quantities as often gave the firm control of the market; while in the style and workmanship of their handmade whips, they ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2 • Various
... two workshops in Albion Villa. Ned's study, as he called it, and the drawing-room. In the former shavings flew, and settled at their ease, and the whirr of the lathe slept not; the latter was all patterns, tapes, hooks and eyes, whalebone, cuttings of muslin, poplin and paper; clouds of lining-muslin, snakes of piping; skeins, shreds; and the floor literally sown with pins, escaped from the fingers of the fair, those taper fingers so typical of the minds of their owners: or they ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... in many a speaker who has both a good voice and good matter may be found in the fact that his voice, instead of being as flexible as a piece of whalebone, is as unbending as a bar of iron; or, worse still, perhaps he adopts the dreary monotony of the sing-song tone: the two unvarying notes so suggestive of the up and down movements of a pump-handle. This "cuckoo" tone would ...
— The Young Priest's Keepsake • Michael Phelan
... is richly figured, And the train Makes a pink and silver stain On the gravel, and the thrift Of the borders. Just a plate of current fashion, Tripping by in high-heeled, ribboned shoes. Not a softness anywhere about me, Only whalebone and brocade. And I sink on a seat in the shade Of a lime tree. For my passion Wars against the stiff brocade. The daffodils and squills Flutter in the breeze As they please. And I weep; For the lime-tree is in blossom And one small flower has ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell
... fish-whip, made from the whipray, a fish quite new to us, but indigenous to these waters. With a body shaped like a flounder, it has a tail often ten feet long, tapering from about one inch in thickness at the butt to an eighth of an inch at the small end. When dried this resembles whalebone, and makes a good coach-whip. There is a great variety of fish in and about the Bahamas. We saw, just landed at Nassau, a jew-fish, which takes the same place here that the halibut fills at the North, being cut into steaks and fried in a similar ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... strut, and step clever over a kennel; and Dingley would do well enough if her petticoats were pinned up; but she is so embroiled, and so fearful, and then Stella scolds, and Dingley stumbles, and is so daggled.(14) Have you got the whalebone petticoats among you yet? I hate them; a woman here may hide a moderate gallant under them. Pshaw, what's all this I'm saying? Methinks I am talking ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... boys; there was a little fancy work, made by various invalid neighbors, which Miss Penny undertook to sell "if 'twas so she could," without profit to herself; a little stationery, and a few small wares, thread and needles, hairpins and whalebone—and there were a great many birds. Elmerton was a great place for cage-birds, and Miss Penny was "knowing" about them; consequently, when any bird was ailing, it was brought to her for advice and treatment, and there were seldom less than half a dozen cages in the ...
— Mrs. Tree • Laura E. Richards
... you. It need not. For during the process of drying it must be your pastime constantly to pull and stretch at every square inch of that boundless skin in order to loosen all the fibres. Otherwise it would dry as stiff as whalebone. Now there is nothing on earth that seems to dry slower than buckskin. You wear your fingers down to the first joints, and, wishing to preserve the remainder for future use, you carry the hide to ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... laughed so violently that he coughed up all the creatures; who swam away again very thankful at having escaped out of that terrible whalebone net of his, from which bourne no traveller returns; and Tom went on to the ...
— The Water-Babies - A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby • Charles Kingsley
... hands, which Sancho received with great dignity. The music ceased, and Sancho seated himself at the head of the table, for there was only that seat placed, and no more than one cover laid. A personage, who it appeared afterwards was a physician, placed himself standing by his side with a whalebone wand in his hand. They then lifted up a fine white cloth covering fruit and a great variety of dishes of different sorts; one who looked like a student said grace, and a page put a laced bib on Sancho, ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... Trotter of a grave fault, and that in her penitence she would be glad to assist him in breaking off the match. On the contrary, to find himself arraigned and put on his defense by this tall, slim woman, erect and smartly buckramed in logic and whalebone, was preposterous! But it had the effect of ...
— From Sand Hill to Pine • Bret Harte
... would not speak lest his voice should be recognised afterwards, but he struggled all he knew. The man soon overpowered him; but Marriner came to the rescue. Throwing down the sack of pheasants, he had taken from his pocket an implement of whalebone with a heavy knob of lead at the end, and coming behind the man, both whose hands were holding on to Saurin, he struck him with it on the head as hard as he could. The keeper's grasp relaxed, he fell heavily to the ground, and Saurin was free. The man lay on his ...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough
... in bed for three weeks; flat on her back as much as possible, which was terribly irksome to her, since her strength and vitality were coming back so fast. The irksomeness was added to by a horrible harness largely of whalebone. Rose got the notion, too, that the purpose of all this was not quite wholly hygienic. Harriet had said once: "You know the most distinguished thing about you, Rose, dear—about your looks, I mean—is that lovely boyish line ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... and there are many in the hands of London silversmiths. Figs. 23 and 24 represent two cocoanut cups with feet of silver, one engraved with the owner's initials, the foot being decorated with bead ornament. Fig. 25 is a cocoanut mounted as a flagon with handle of whalebone and rim and foot of silver. The use of such cups seems to have been very generally distributed all over the world, for there are many South American examples, as well as the English varieties. The gourd, ...
— Chats on Household Curios • Fred W. Burgess
... own bravely. The whaling fleets, long after gas came into use, were one of the greatest sources of our national wealth. To New Bedford, Massachusetts, alone, some three or four hundred ships brought their whale and sperm oil, spermaceti, and whalebone; and at one time that port was accounted the richest city in the United States in proportion to its population. The ship-owners and refiners of that whaling metropolis were slow to believe that their ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... buying a whalebone-and-steel-and-snow bull terrier, or a more formidable if more greedy Great Dane. But the Mistress wanted a collie. So they compromised by getting ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... that, would you, Bub," commented Pike, "the minute she sees you commence to open the cook kit she is rustling for firewood. That little devil is made of whalebone for toughness. Why, even the burros are played out, but she is fresh as a daisy after a half ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan
... a whale-ship once. I was gone from home that time more than three years. When we came back, we had our large ship all full of oil and whalebone. We got the oil and the whalebone out of the whales which we had caught. Whales, you know, are very large fish. They sometimes get two or three hundred barrels of oil from one ...
— Jack Mason, The Old Sailor • Theodore Thinker
... got an igloo up there even finer than Upi's—all built of whalebone and ships' timbers. Think of HER in that, Raine—with ME! That's the ...
— The Golden Snare • James Oliver Curwood
... Exhibition Prize Goat's-head Crochet Cotton. No. 4 Penelope Hook; 1 long strip of Whalebone; 1 yard of Satin Ribbon 1 inch in width. 2 yards ditto, 2 ...
— The Ladies' Work-Book - Containing Instructions In Knitting, Crochet, Point-Lace, etc. • Unknown
... resting on its side. This shape was given it, according to Mr. Bonflon, that it might offer the least possible resistance to the element in which it was intended to move. In structure it was composed of a strong flexible frame of whalebone and steel, covered with silk, strengthened and rendered air-tight and water-proof by a coating of India-rubber. Its size, of course, would depend on the proposed tonnage of a particular ship. That of the working-model, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... pleasant savour of food. It resounds with the dull rumble of cruising drays, which bear the names of well-known brands of groceries; it is faintly salted by an aroma of the docks. One sees great signs announcing cocoanut and whalebone or such unusual wares; there is a fine tang of coffee in the air round about the corner of Beach Street. Here is that vast, massy brick edifice, the New York Central freight station, built 1868, which gives an impression of being ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... the leviathan, of fifty or sixty feet in length, which boasts of a mouth big enough to hold a jollyboat and crew, who would doubtless find their quarters exceedingly uncomfortable on account of the forest of whalebone hanging down from the roof, the white whale cannot keep under water long without coming up to breathe; but the one Johannes had so cleverly struck nearly carried out the whole of the line, which ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn
... of nooses, each provided with a wooden peg and all connected with a long string. The tension necessary to keep the nooses open is afforded by a slender slip of antelope's horn (very much resembling whalebone), which forms the core of the loop. Provided with several sets of these nooses, a trained bullock and a shield-like cloth screen dyed buff and pierced with eye-holes, the bird-catcher sets out for the jungle, and on seeing a flock of pea-fowl circles ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... on the back of the neck. Taking a long breath and holding it as long as possible and repeating it while the ice is being applied is an aid. Placing the feet in hot mustard water is of decided use. Another excellent expedient is to wrap absorbent cotton round a smooth probe (piece of whalebone, for example), dip the cotton in an alum-water mixture (half teaspoonful powdered alum in a half cupful of water), and then push it into the bleeding nostril as far as you can with gentle force. A valuable remedy is Peroxide of Hydrogen used full strength and freely dropped into the nostril. If ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Volume IV. (of IV.) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • Grant Hague
... merry), a Maori war-club; a casse-te^te, or a war-axe, from a foot to eighteen inches in length, and made of any suitable hard material—stone, hard wood, whalebone. To many people out of New Zealand the word is only known as the name of a little trinket of greenstone (q.v.) made in imitation of the New Zealand weapon in miniature, mounted in gold or silver, and used as a brooch, ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... proclaims the man," and even more is woman dependent upon her clothes for physical, moral, and intellectual support. An uncorseted body will soon make its influence felt upon the mind. The steel-and-whalebone spine which properly reinforces all feminine vertebra is literally the backbone of a ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... place for rips Our gloves are stitched with special care, And guarded well the whalebone tips Where first umbrellas ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... silvered embroideries, sparkled in the light of a thousand tapers. The beadle strutted in all the glory of his brilliant uniform and flashing epaulets; on the opposite side walked in high glee the sacristan, carrying his whalebone staff with a magisterial air; the voice of the choristers, now clad in fresh, white surplices, rolled out in bursts of thunder; the trumpets' blare shook the windows; and upon the countenances of ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... odd names she knew; but at each the little Man exclaimed, "That is not my name." The second day the Queen inquired of all her people for uncommon and curious names, and called the Dwarf "Ribs-of-Beef," "Sheep-shank," "Whalebone," but at each he said, "This is not my name." The third day the messenger came back and said, "I have not found a single name; but as I came to a high mountain near the edge of a forest, where foxes and hares say good night to each other, I saw there a little house, and before the door a fire was ...
— Grimm's Fairy Stories • Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm
... pursued her and more than once fought for her favors. During her stay in Vienna, the French ambassador, who had fallen a victim to her charms, became so madly jealous of the Portuguese minister, that he drew his sword on Catarina upon one occasion, and had it not been for her whalebone bodice she would have lost her life. As it was, she received a slight scratch, which calmed the enraged diplomat and brought him to his knees. She would pardon him only on condition that he would present her with ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... been placed for her near the weather taffrail, and where she sat down. The schooner was at the time under the two gaff-top-sails, the main boom and sheets eased off a little, those long masts, with the sticks above them running clear away up the sky, almost out of sight, bending like whalebone, and reeling over the long swell when the breeze freshened; and not a sound to be heard save now and then a light creak from the main boom as the broad white sail strained flat and taut over to leeward, or the rush of the water as it came ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... passed, and he made no attempt to take the reins. Victoria had drawn the whalebone whip from its socket, and was urging on the horse as fast as humanity would permit; and the while she was aware that Hilary's look was fixed upon her—in fact, never left her. Once or twice, in spite of her anxiety to get him home, Victoria blushed faintly, as she ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... not another bit of magnetized iron in the ship. The government had been very shy of providing instruments of any kind for Confederate cruisers. Poor Ethan had traded off two compasses only the day before for whalebone spears and skin breeches, neither of which knew the north star from the ace of spades. And this thing proved of more importance than you will think; it really made me feel that the stuff in the books and the sermons about the mariners' needle ...
— If, Yes and Perhaps - Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact • Edward Everett Hale
... over the ice or snow. It was ten feet long, twenty inches broad, and had a kind of rail-work on each side, and was shod with bone. The construction of it was admirable, and all the parts neatly put together; some with wooden pins, but mostly with thongs or lashings of whalebone, which made me think it was entirely the workmanship of ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... starched, but his white neckerchief was not, and its long limp ends straggled over his closely-buttoned waistcoat in a very uncouth and unpicturesque fashion. A pair of old, worn, beaver gloves, a broad-brimmed hat, and a faded green umbrella, with plenty of whalebone sticking through the bottom, as if to counterbalance the want of a handle at the top, lay on a chair beside him; and, being disposed in a very tidy and careful manner, seemed to imply that the red-nosed man, whoever he was, had no intention of going ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... rain out of their necks, faring not a jot the worse for it. Umbrellas are only fit for men-milliners, Cockney travellers, and women. The nature of a hat, we flatter ourselves, is something independent of cotton and whalebone; and instead of the umbrella claiming precedence over the hat, the hat, we take it, should be above the umbrella. An Englishman's hat, then, should be something that will keep the rain off his face and neck when the weather is bad, and shield ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... at 12. At 3.20 p.m. changed to 20 degrees north of east; the first ten miles were over a plain of gums covered with grass two feet long; we had then six miles of spinifex, and a thick scrub of dwarf lancewood, as tough as whalebone. After that we entered upon another gum plain, also splendidly grassed, which continued for four miles, when the gums suddenly ceased, and it became a large open plain to north, as far as I could see. Seeing no appearance of water, I changed my course to 30 degrees north of east, to ...
— Explorations in Australia, The Journals of John McDouall Stuart • John McDouall Stuart
... out of the breast pocket of his faded jumper. It was the tip of a cow's horn securely plugged. Into this plug were inserted two strips of whalebone, and these he grasped, as he had clutched the "legs" of the ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... seem inclined to break it. Hamish had caught up a bit of whalebone, which happened to be lying on the drawers, and was twisting it about in his fingers, glancing at Arthur from time to time. Arthur leaned against the chimneypiece, his hands in his pockets, and, in like manner, glanced at him. Not the slightest ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... too, Wid a whip like a flail and such gaiters, Ohone! But the bullocks, as they eyed me, they seemed for to say too, “You may do your best, Paddy, we’re blest if we go.” “Gee whoa! Redman! come hither, Damper! Hoot, Magpie! Gee, Blackbird! Come hither, Whalebone!” ...
— The Old Bush Songs • A. B. Paterson
... a few things he didn't: the South Pole isn't at the water's edge but far inland; sharks don't flip over before attacking; giant squid sport ten tentacles not eight; sperm whales don't prey on their whalebone cousins. This notwithstanding, Verne furnishes the most evocative portrayal of the ocean depths before the arrival of Jacques Cousteau ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... a toothed whale, in contradistinction to those that are supplied with the whalebone-like arrangement that characterizes the right whales: consequently its food consists of fish and perhaps squid. To enable it to capture such prey it must be endowed with remarkable powers of speed. The motor is the great horizontal tail, powerful strokes of which force the animal; ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... waistcoat, scarlet and black, the buttons of which were spaded half-guineas; his breeches were of a stuff half velveteen, half corduroy, the cords exceedingly broad. He had leggings of buff cloth, furred at the bottom: and upon his feet were highlows. Under his left arm was a long black whalebone riding-whip, with a red lash, and an immense silver knob. Upon his head was a hat with a high peak, somewhat of the kind which the Spaniards call calane, so much in favour with the bravos of Seville and Madrid. Now ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... top of the whale's head, and rise like steam in the colder air. The children's mother told them that the whale is the largest of all animals, and that it lives on little jellyfish. It swims with its great mouth wide open and catches all the tiny sea creatures in its path. A fringe of whalebone hangs down from the roof of the whale's mouth, and he strains the water out through this and swallows the fish. As the boat went on, the children said, "There she blows," as the sailors do when they see whales spouting in ...
— Stories of California • Ella M. Sexton
... Messrs. Enderby & Sons, arrived at Sydney on October 14th, 1791, and reported that vast numbers of sperm whales were seen after doubling the south-west cape of Van Diemen's Land. Whaling vessels were fitted out in Sydney, and it was found that money could be made by oil and whalebone as well as by rum. Sealing was also pursued in small vessels, which were often lost, and sealers lie buried in all the islands of the southern seas, many of them having a story ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... fakir recovered confidence and jeered new ribaldry, until some one suddenly shot out from behind Cunningham, and before he had recovered from his surprise he saw the fakir sprawling on his back, howling for mercy, while Mahommed Gunga beat the blood out of him with a whalebone riding-whip. ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... conception of the manliness of racing may be modified. From afar off the movement of the jockeys' whip-hands is no more suggestive than the movement of a windmill's sails; but, when one hears the "flack, flack" of the whalebone and sees the wales rise on the dainty skin of the immature horse, one does not feel quite joyous or manly. I have seen a long lean creature reach back with his right leg and keep on jobbing with the spur for nearly four hundred yards of a swift ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... the internal combustion engine. Before it appeared in the realm of mechanics, experimenters were applying in the construction of flying models the knowledge supplied by Cayley in 1796, who made an instrument of whalebone, corks, and feathers, which by the action of two screws of quill feathers, rotating in opposite directions, would rise to the ceiling; and the full revelation of the structure and action of bird wings set forth by Pettigrew ...
— The Age of Invention - A Chronicle of Mechanical Conquest, Book, 37 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Holland Thompson
... room, and I was particularly struck by the ornamental drawings with which the picture was surrounded. They consisted of whip handles, canes, piano keys, mouth-pieces for wind instruments, all sorts of umbrellas, and many more things, of every sort, made of cane and whalebone. The arrangement was so ingenious, the designs so fanciful, and the execution so good, that nothing could be prettier. But what of course was of the most importance, was the face and head that they were meant to ornament. ...
— The Pedler of Dust Sticks • Eliza Lee Follen
... match in goodness—nice leather shoes, good stockings, under-things all trimmed with crochet, real whalebone corsets, and a quite new pair of white kid gloves. She must have saved for a long time to have it ...
— The Solitary Summer • Elizabeth von Arnim
... yes, I put a piece of whalebone in my skirt, and me calico gown looks as big as the great ladies. But then ye says true, I hasn't but two gowns to me back, two shoes, to me feet, and one bonnet to me head, barring the old hood ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... be it observed, was the housekeeper: a woman after Mr. Brocklehurst's own heart, made up of equal parts of whalebone ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... at the Gorgon!" cried the mother, as the battered head of an ancient doll was displayed over his shoulder by Perseus, decorated with two enormous snakes, one made of stamps, and the other a spiral of whalebone shavings ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... feet; the Elephant, though not so tall, is more bulky; the Crocodile reaches a length of over 20 feet, the Python of 60 feet, the extinct Titanosaurus of the American Jurassic beds, the largest land animal yet known to us, 100 feet in length and 30 in height; the Whalebone Whale over 70 feet, Sibbald's Whale is said to have reached 80-90, which is perhaps the limit. Captain Scoresby indeed mentions a Rorqual no less than 120 feet in length, but this is ...
— The Beauties of Nature - and the Wonders of the World We Live In • Sir John Lubbock
... he stumbled over a child, a girl about five, crawling on her hands and knees. He picked her up. She bit and thrashed and tore at him, her bare little body hard as whalebone and slippery with sweat. He could not hold onto her. She kicked herself free of his hands and rushed wildly out of reach, and one of the black hunters pounced in and bore her away, shrieking thinly like a fledgling bird in the ...
— The Stars, My Brothers • Edmond Hamilton
... down, Swinburne," he called out, and before I knew where I was I was locked in a grapple with the man in the purple blazer. He was a wiry fighter, who bent and sprang like a whalebone, but I was heavier and had taken him utterly by surprise. I twitched one of his feet from under him; he swung for a moment on the single foot, and then we fell with a crash amid the litter of newspapers, ...
— The Club of Queer Trades • G. K. Chesterton
... unquestionably due to Cuvier; but his dissections were almost confined to the genus Delphinus, or the common Porpoise of our coasts. I repeated all his dissections, and found them, as they almost always were, scrupulously exact; but when I came to examine Cetacea with whalebone instead of teeth, I was surprised to find how different, in fact, the anatomy of the two great families was. Scarcely in any great natural family do we find Cuvier's favourite theory of anatomical and physiological co-relations so entirely at fault as in the Cetacea. ...
— Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society - Vol. 3 - Zoology • Various
... needs go sometimes to buy whalebone, and other trifles which I must have for my business here. So I just go and come back, and ...
— New National Fourth Reader • Charles J. Barnes and J. Marshall Hawkes
... Downing Street: Are hills, and dales, and valleys half so gay As bright St. James's on a levee day? What fierce ecstatic transports fire my soul, To hear the drivers swear, the coaches roll; The Courtier's compliment, the Ladies' clack, The satins rustle, and the whalebone crack!" ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... short coldness; or at two, three, or four several times, if you desire, that the produced coldness should rather last somewhat longer than be so great. Stirre the powder in the Liquor with a stick or whalebone (or some other thing that will not be injur'd by the fretting Brine, that will be made) to hasten the dissolution of the Salt; upon the quickness of which depends very much the intensity of the Cold, that will ensue upon this Experiment. For the clearing up whereof, ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various
... Waist (practice materials): basting, stitching, pressing, binding, boning (whalebone, featherbone); hooks and eyes; ...
— The Making of a Trade School • Mary Schenck Woolman
... the waist began to be made very full round the hips, by means of large padded rolls, and these were still more enlarged, under the name of vertugadins (corrupted from vertu-gardiens), by a monstrous arrangement of padded whalebone and steel, which subsequently became the ridiculous paniers, which were worn almost down to the commencement of the present century; and the fashion seems likely to come ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... a good-sized affair of lace and silk and whalebone. (None of your "sunshades.") Little ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... about a blue cotton umbrella, though there may have been under it at times and seasons. Skeletons of the species, much faded as to color, much weakened as to whalebone, may still be found here and there in backwoods settlements, where they are known as "umbrells;" there are but few ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 2, April 9, 1870 • Various
... at Worsley [a "happy woman" was the term used by me from my childhood to describe a woman on horseback], and, as sometimes happens, had even too much of my happiness. My friend Lady Francis is made of whalebone and india-rubber in equal proportions, very neatly and elegantly fastened together with the finest steel springs, and is incapable of fatigue from ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... All the large whales of the region referred to are called "balleeners" as their mouths are furnished with the balleen or whalebone of commerce.] ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume XIII, No. 51: November 12, 1892 • Various
... visionary scene. Among those ancestral people there is a young man, dressed in the very fashion of to-day: he wears a dark frock-coat, almost destitute of skirts, gray pantaloons, gaiter boots of patent leather, and has a finely wrought gold chain across his breast, and a little silver-headed whalebone stick in his hand. Were we to meet this figure at noonday, we should greet him as young Jaffrey Pyncheon, the Judge's only surviving child, who has been spending the last two years in foreign travel. If still in life, how comes his shadow hither? If dead, what a misfortune! ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... with a rag-bag in his hand, was picking up a number of small pieces of whalebone, which lay on the street. The deposit was of such a singular nature, that we asked the quaint-looking gatherer how he supposed they came there? "Don't know," he replied, in a squeaking voice; "but I s'pect some unfortunate female was wrecked ...
— Heads and Tales • Various |
