"Figurehead" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... forward tensely, her hands shut in excitement and emotion; and she relaxed with a happy laugh as the Nautilus, with her yards exactly square and rigging taut, her sides and figurehead and ports bright with newly laid on paint, ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... building of the Persian, we had taken great pride in the modelling and finish of the old style of cutwater and figurehead, with bowsprit and jib-boom; but in urging the advantages of greater length of hull, we were met by the fact of its being simply impossible in certain docks to swing vessels of any greater length than those already constructed. Not to be beaten, we proposed to do away with all these overhanging encumbrances, ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... chance and the agreement of men have picked out as symbols and convenient indications of some particular group or temperament of opinions. To the latter it is that Sir Thomas More belongs. An age and a type of mind have found in him and his Utopia a figurehead and a token; and pleasant and honourable as his personality and household present themselves to the modern reader, it is doubtful if they would by this time have retained any peculiar distinction among the many other contemporaries of whom we have chance glimpses ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... length, low amidships and curving upwards to high peaks at stem and stern, both of which converged to sharp edges. It resembled an enormous canoe rather than aught else to which we can compare it. On the stem was a carved and gilt dragon, the figurehead of the ship, which glittered in the bright rays of the sun. Along the bulwarks of the ship, fore and aft, hung rows of large painted wooden shields, which gave an Argus-eyed aspect to the craft. Between them was a double row of thole-pins for the great oars, ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... throne of the Incas to rule in accordance with the dictates of Spain. The young prince, Manco, a son of the great Inca Huayna Capac, named for the first Inca, Manco Ccapac, the founder of the dynasty, was selected as the most acceptable figurehead. He was a young man of ability and spirit. His induction into office in 1534 with appropriate ceremonies, the barbaric splendor of which only made the farce the more pitiful, did little to gratify his natural ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham
... time the Indians arrived with the head of the alligator, which they and Sambo proposed to preserve, in order, the latter said, to make a figurehead for ...
— The Wanderers - Adventures in the Wilds of Trinidad and Orinoco • W.H.G. Kingston
... of Westphalia by its practical recognition of state neutrality in religious matters put an end to the constitution of the Holy Roman Empire, and reduced the Emperor to the position of a mere figurehead, depending for strength entirely on his own hereditary states. Instead of preventing disunion it made national unity almost impossible, and exposed Germany to attack from any hostile neighbour who might wish to strengthen himself by encouraging strife amongst ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance to the French • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... He knows it, she knows it, and a few other people know it. He's the figurehead behind which she works. She's a rich woman, she loves the game—her father was the greatest diplomat of his time, you know—and she married Cortlandt so she could play it. Any other man would have served as well, though I've heard that ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... your sofa by them. A clerk over there: it would be a sort of companion. You've plenty of capital to start with, and wouldn't have to lose your head at the first wrong deal. Of course you'd want someone the other end, a figurehead and mouthpiece, and someone to show you the lines, start you off; I'd be pleased to do it. We could make a partnership concern of it, if ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... life mostly fighting beyond the limit. Say, she's born to troubles and worries all the time. And she mostly gets through all the time. Why? Grit! She doesn't just care a darn. She's going to get through—and she does. Say, let's get along down and leave that wall-eyed old figurehead keeping guard. ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... Milton with delight; and the common people followed Bunyan and Baxter with their tremendous appeal to righteousness and liberty. Second, the king, with all his pretensions to divine right, remained only a figurehead; and the Anglo-Saxon people, when they tire of one figurehead, have always the will and the power to throw it overboard and choose a better one. The country was divided into two political parties: the Whigs, who sought to limit the royal power in the ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... cargo. She was painted grey, with a broad white riband and painted ports, her top-sides being black. She carried a very handsome, well-executed carving of a woman, with long, streaming hair and fluttering drapery, under her bowsprit, by way of figurehead; and Ned noted with deep satisfaction, that instead of the double topsail-yards now so common in large ships, she was fitted with single revolving ...
— The Missing Merchantman • Harry Collingwood
... Ivory," cried the boy. "Patty made them up herself. First we had the 'Landing of the Pilgrims,' and Waitstill made believe be the figurehead of the Mayflower. She stood on a great ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... no more serious demands upon our loyalty than this he will be well served," he answered. "There is no one more fit to command than you, sir. The present admirable disposition of our forces is yours, not mine; so far I have been no more than a figurehead. Your plan of entrenchments has been a revelation to ...
— The Traitors • E. Phillips (Edward Phillips) Oppenheim
... Frayling held herself stiffly, refusing to be embraced, and presenting a surface for the operation as unyielding as the figurehead of a ship. ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... to be no Irish party or parties as such—there was to be only the English party governing Ireland in the interests of England. It was the beginning of a government which led to the appointment of such a man as Primate Boulter, who simply ruled Ireland behind the Lord Lieutenant (who was but a figurehead) for and on behalf of the King of England's advisers. Irish institutions, Irish ideas, Irish traditions, the Irish Church, Irish schools, Irish language and literature, Irish trade, manufactures, commerce, agriculture—all were to be subordinated to England's needs and England's demands. At ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... warning them of danger, but that now they never speak, and he supposes that their silence is due to the fact that his people have intermarried with other tribes. The Long Patas frequently carve a crocodile's head as the figurehead for a war-canoe. ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... place in history with the ill-starred prime ministership of Mackenzie. The average Liberal felt that the government, which would get its driving force and executive power from someone else—identity not yet revealed—would have in Laurier a most attractive and genial figurehead. These illusions long persisted, though there was little excuse for them on election night and still less a month later when the ...
— Laurier: A Study in Canadian Politics • J. W. Dafoe
... galley from her carven steering-wheel To her figurehead of silver and her beak of hammered steel; The leg-bar chafed the ankle, and we gasped for cooler air, But no galley on the water ...
— Kipling Stories and Poems Every Child Should Know, Book II • Rudyard Kipling
... This new figurehead of the democracy had a comparatively easy part assigned him. Had it been necessary for him to persuade, he would probably have failed, for he lacked the gifts of the orator and the suppleness of the intriguer; ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... military service, and promised to make every effort toward his exemption. When all efforts proved unavailing, the general took him into his own regiment, and "the Union sympathizer never wore a Confederate uniform, and only once shouldered a Confederate musket, when on a great panic day he stood, a figurehead guard at the door of a government department. At last, in 1864, when even General Winder could not longer protect him from active service at the front, Van Lew deserted again, and served with the Federal Army until after the ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... I'd know that the house was clean, the meals as good and as nourishing as could be; I'd know that guests would be well cared for and that bills would be paid. Isn't a woman, the mistress of a house, supposed to do more than that? I don't want to be a mere figurehead." ...
— The Treasure • Kathleen Norris
... indicated by the closing of the Great Council, the revolution of Tiepolo, the trials of Marino Faliero, Lorenzo Celsi, and the Foscari. The third period covers what remains of the Republic, from 1457 down to 1797. During this period the Doge was little other than the figurehead of the Republic; the point of least weight and greatest splendour; the brilliant apex to the pyramid of the ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... disturbances, they will select a man of the type of Li Wang of Korea, who betrayed his country to Japan, and make him Emperor of China. Whether this man will be the deposed emperor or a member of the Imperial family or the leader of the rebel party, remains to be seen. In any event he will be a figurehead in whose hand will not be vested political, financial and military power, which will be controlled by foreigners. All the valuable mines, various kinds of industries and our abundant natural resources ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... puffer, probably inspired by Field himself, "George M. Pullman has ever been deemed the dominant factor in that vast and profitable enterprise." This belief was declared an error, and the writer went on: "Field is, and for years has been, in almost absolute control. Pullman was little more than a figurehead. Such men as Robert T. Lincoln, the president of the company, and Norman B. Ream are but representatives of Marshall Field, whose name has never been identified with the property he so largely owns and controls." That fulsome writer, ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... my servants. I can trust none of them where she is concerned. I am alone in my own house. My blindness makes me her tool, her plaything. As for my salon, as you call it, it has become hers. I am a mere courtesy-figurehead—her chaperon, in fact. I provide the house, the footmen, the champagne; the guests are hers. And she has done this by constant intrigue and deception—by ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... tournure, conformation, image, effigy, statue, bust, figurehead, likeness; numeral, digit, number; type, emblem, symbol; caryatid; atlantes, telamones; figurine; ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... true to the teachings of their forefathers, sailed for the New World with the image of St. Nicholas for a figurehead on their vessel. They named the first church they built for the much-loved St. Nicholas and made him patron saint of the new city on Manhattan Island. Thanks, many many thanks, to these sturdy old Dutchmen with unpronounceable names who preserved to posterity so many delightful customs of Christmas ...
— Yule-Tide in Many Lands • Mary P. Pringle and Clara A. Urann
... good deal of an exhibit, in his way. His togs were cut to fit his spars, and he carried 'em well—no wrinkles at the peak or sag along the boom. His figurehead was more'n average regular, and his hair was combed real nice—the part in the middle of it looked like it had been laid out with a plumb-line. Also, he had on white shoes and glory hallelujah stockings. Altogether, ...
— Cape Cod Stories - The Old Home House • Joseph C. Lincoln
... what he is with blue water under his keel. I had a long talk with Uncle last night and got my orders; I won't forget 'em nor all I owe him. As for you, I'll name my first ship as I say, and have your bust for the figurehead, see if I don't,' and Emil gave his aunt a hearty kiss to seal the vow, which proceeding much amused Nat, playing softly in the porch ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... stick, Georgie," said Dan, suddenly, his cheeks white. "Head her up the wind. Steady. Sight the figurehead on Pearson's loft. Here's too much ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... It means to be jammed back in a mold that will turn me out to the family pattern. It means a willingness to give up thinking for myself and accept YOUR thoughts and shape my life by them. It means being a figurehead as long as you live and a replica of yourself when you are gone. That's it, ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... the Chief had. To the boy in the Fourth and Fifth forms any headmaster must appear not so much a living person as the emblem of authority, the final dispenser of justice, the hard, analytical sifter of evidence, "coldly sublime, intolerably just." Gordon had always before looked on the Chief as a figurehead, who at times would unbend most surprisingly and become a man; on the cricket field, for example, when in a master's match he had fielded cleanly a terrific cut at point, and played a sporting innings; at House suppers, and, most surprisingly ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... straight as an arrow—no leeway—I made all sail to sheer alongside of her, and, when under quarter, examined her close. Never saw such a fine swell in the counter, and all so trim—no ropes towing overboard. Well, Mr Simple, I said to myself, 'D—n it, if her figurehead and bows be finished off by the same builder, she's perfect.' So I shot ahead, and yawed a little—caught a peep at her through her veil, and saw two black eyes—as bright as beads, and as large as damsons. I saw quite enough, and not wishing to frighten her, I dropped astern. Shortly afterwards ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... divided into two almost equal sections, one upholding the claims of John Dillon and the other faithful to the flag of T.M. Healy. Meanwhile Justin McCarthy, a man of excellent intention but of feeble grasp, occupied the chair of the Party, but did nothing to direct its policy. He was a decent figurehead, but not much else. William O'Brien lent all the support of his powerful personality to Mr Dillon in the hope that, by establishing his leadership and keeping the door open for reconciliation with the Parnellite minority, he could restore the ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... asked The Patriot in no uncertain terms. Receiving vague and pained replies, they even went to the length of holding a meeting and sending a committee to wait upon the desperate Haring, passing over the advertising manager who was a mere figurehead in ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... such a decorative presence and so ably represented the high morality and respectability of the establishment, had at first seemed a severe one. But it so happened that Herminie, a tall, slim, languid creature that she was, gorged with novel-reading, also proved in her way a distinguished figurehead for the office. She was already thirty and was still unmarried, feeling indeed nothing but loathing for all the mothers laden with whining children by whom she was surrounded. Moreover, M. Broquette, her father, though now more than five-and-seventy, secretly remained the all-powerful, ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... amongst the younger members of the tribe, was insisting that she should be elected its head. The older men and women, believing wisely that it was better to have an experienced ruler than a pretty figurehead, stood by Mother Cockleshell, therefore the camp was divided into two parties. Tongues were used freely, and occasionally fists came into play, while the gypsies gathered round the tent of the old woman and ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume
... going ashore he might have a scuffle with the Italian police like a common pickpocket. But no, the yacht was lying quietly at anchor, her crew were scrubbing the deck and repainting the red mermaid that formed her figurehead as if some personage of importance were expected on board. Paul had no curiosity to ascertain who that personage might be; he simply rode across the marble city and returned by the railway which runs from Genoa to Marseille, ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... was loading up a waggon in the yard with a cargo o' beer casks. Looking closer it seemed to me that the man's nose, like the beak of a goshawk, and his glinting eyes with the lids only half-reefed, were known to me, but when I overheard him swearing to himself in good High Dutch, then his figurehead came back to me in a moment. I put out into the yard, and touched him on the shoulder. Zounds, lad! you should have seen him spring back and spit at me like a wildcat with every hair of his head in a bristle. ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... famous cities succeeded in retaining its republican form. Milan became a duchy. Florence fell under the sway of the Medici. In Venice a few rich families seized all authority, and while the fame and territory of the republic were extended, its dogeship became a mere figurehead. All real power was lodged in the dread and secret council of three.[11] Genoa was defeated and crushed in a great naval contest with her rival, Venice.[12] Everywhere tyrannies stood out triumphant. The first modern ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... boy. He assured me that I could hope for nothing better to begin with, and the voyage would be long enough for me to try my sea legs, and, as he believed, to cure me of my fancy for a sea life. I was to visit the skipper at the Angel tavern that evening, and if he liked my figurehead, as Woodrow put it, the matter could be ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... up the words almost before they had fallen from the lips of the other. "Yes, I am the King. I am the miserable, gilded figurehead out on the prow, which serves no end and no purpose. I am the ornamental symbol of a system which the world is discarding! I am a medieval lay figure upon which to hang these ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... sailed, lovers all three, among the Western Isles, and whatever ship it was that carried us, her figurehead was always the Princess Sheila. Along the ruffled blue waters of the sounds and lochs that wind among the roots of unpronounceable mountains, and past the dark hills of Skye, and through the unnumbered ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... work. This Secretary was called Wonder—John Fennil Wonder. The Viceroy possessed no name—nothing but a string of counties and two-thirds of the alphabet after them. He said, in confidence, that he was the electro-plated figurehead of a golden administration, and he watched in a dreamy, amused way Wonder's attempts to draw matters which were entirely outside his province into his own hands. "When we are all cherubims together," said His Excellency ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... Horacista government, and there was no sympathy between him and his council. The Horacistas distrusted him and forced him to dismiss his friends from the cabinet and to make distasteful appointments. Seeing that he was being reduced to a figurehead, Morales secretly tried to form a party for himself or make arrangements with the Jimenistas who for months had been conspiring and threatening to rise. The friction became more severe until Morales, fearing that both his office and his life were ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich
... insisted on stopping. Nothing would satisfy her but the Mariner must cross the bridge, knock at the door of a little red house, and buy a box-tree baby elephant, which she thought would be enchanting in a pot, as a kind of figurehead on ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... place of women; all this nonsense of vows of fidelity and exaltation of sentiment in the home cramps a man's ambitions. It is perfectly natural that he should take a wife if his position calls for it, because the society in which we move has made a figurehead of that kind necessary. But that a woman should expect a man to be faithful to her, be she wife or mistress, ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... then patiently persisted. It took her two hours to examine thus, in detail, one half the island. But at last she discovered something. She saw at the eastern side of the reef a wooden figure of a woman, and, making her way to it, found the figurehead and a piece of the bow of the ship, with a sail on it, and a yard on that. This fragment was wedged into an angle of the reef, and the seaward edge of it shattered in a way that struck terror to Helen, for it showed her how omnipotent the sea had ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... to place the power about to be conferred on them by the people in the hands of those who will serve its antipathies and prejudices. Thus introduced into the municipal council, they constitute its majority and appoint a mayor who is their figurehead or creature, now the bold leader and again the docile instrument of their spite, their favors, and their headlong action, of their blunders and presumption, and of their meddlesome disposition and encroachments.—In ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... third year Captain Nummy Tangye, of the Touch-me-not, relinquished his command. Captain Tangye's baptismal name was Matthias, and Bideford, in Devon, his native town. But the Touch-me-not, which he had commanded for thirty-five years, happened to carry for figurehead a wooden Highlander holding a thistle close to his chest, and against his thigh a scroll with the motto, Noli Me Tangere, and this being, in popular belief, an effigy of the captain taken in the prime of life, Mr. Tangye cheerfully accepted the fiction with its implication of ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... was a figurehead. The brains behind the formation of the Business Advisory Council were in the head of Sidney J. Weinberg, Senior Partner of the New York investment house of Goldman, Sachs & Co.—and also on the boards of directors of about thirty ...
— The Invisible Government • Dan Smoot
... the ends not being connected, but the bow is closed by a raised end-board fancifully carved and painted in front of which a crest-like wooden ornament fits into a groove running along the beak. This figurehead, called tabura, is elaborately cut into various devices, painted red and white, and decorated with white egg-shells and feathers of the cassowary and bird of paradise. The bow and stern also are more or less profusely ornamented ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray
... peering across the blaze, "And who be you? Stand and give a show o' your figurehead!" Obediently I stood with hands outspread to the flame, warming my shivering body at its ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... the already perplexing chronology of Japan. In administrative methods there was a difference. The Northern Court adhered to the camera system: that is to say, the actual occupant of the throne was a mere figurehead, the practical functions of Government being discharged by the cloistered sovereign. In the Southern Court the Emperor himself, nominally at all events, directed the business of administration. Further, the office of shogun ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... fix.' Then I fancied I saw a gilt figure-head and three masts, belonging to a ship just about to start; so I darted on board, but speedily jumped on shore again, when I found that two of the masts belonged to another vessel, and the figurehead to a third! At last I caught sight of what I made sure was it,—a fine large vessel just casting off her moorings. The tafferel was green. Three masts,—yes, that must be it,—and the gilt figure-head of ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... necessity. But now it is to be transformed into a 'sacred right.' Nebraska brings it forth, places it on the high road to extension and perpetuity, and with a pat on its back says to it: 'Go, and God speed you.' Henceforth it is to be the chief jewel of the nation, the very figurehead of the ship of state. Little by little, but steadily as man's march to the grave, we have been giving the old for the new faith. Nearly eighty years ago we began by declaring that all men are created equal; but now from that beginning we have run down to that other declaration, 'that for some ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... the literary figurehead of his generation, and the elaborate pomp of his funeral attested his great popularity. His body lay in state for several days and then with a great procession was borne, on the 13th of May, to the Poet's Corner in Westminster Abbey. The last years of his life had been spent ...
— Palamon and Arcite • John Dryden
... this doth reveal Most aptly how sweet concert for the time Doth work our purpose on this pliant soul. So long as he from contact with his kind We can prevent by flattery and guile; He, like to wax within the moulder's hand, May form a figurehead of brave design, But statue-like it were an empty house. 1st Gentleman: I have a thought, sweet Quezox, and must voice It in thine ear. Soon, from that distant land Where our oppressors dwell, others will hie Them to our shores; and they may be of mould More stern, and thus impediments ...
— 'A Comedy of Errors' in Seven Acts • Spokeshave (AKA Old Fogy)
... while on the right one sees the ordinary workman with his sledge-hammer, bringing to mind the rougher side of industry. In the left corner a woman with her spindle - a lamb standing near - recalls the making of textiles. Commerce occupies the right corner, holding the prow of a vessel with its figurehead. ...
— Palaces and Courts of the Exposition • Juliet James
... completely enclosing the single seat. It had evidently been used since the rainy weather started. It was not altogether free from damage, one of the fenders was bent, the bumper in front almost touched the ground on one side, an ornamental figurehead had been broken off the radiator cap, and the face of the radiator was dented. This car was equipped with a searchlight fastened on one end of the windshield, and as Gilbert Tyson handled this it lighted, sending a penetrating shaft ...
— Tom Slade's Double Dare • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... Had the battered figurehead of the Goddess of Liberty, which lay deeply embedded in the sand on the beach, suddenly appeared at the door demanding admittance, the occupants of the cabin could not have been more speechlessly and hopelessly astonished than at the ...
— Mrs. Skaggs's Husbands and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... Why didn't you remind me of it afore? Set there like—like a wooden figurehead and let me run my ...
— Thankful's Inheritance • Joseph C. Lincoln
... a boat was rowing swiftly from the shore of the island towards a craft carrying Nell Gwynn beneath the curious, antique figurehead. There were two men in her, and they were talking gloatingly ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... For Fritz, there was a fishing-net and a ten-bladed knife; for Arthur a turning lathe with foot-power, and in addition a tall toy ship with a golden-haired nymph as figurehead. ...
— The Indian Lily and Other Stories • Hermann Sudermann
... apparatus, is probably much more than made up for by the reaction of this acquiescence upon the future. As the typical instance of a convenient convention that I am inclined to think is now reacting very badly upon our future, the Crown of the British Empire, considered as the symbolical figurehead of a system of hereditary privilege and rule, serves extremely well. One may deal with this typical instance with no special application to the easy, kindly, amiable personality this crown adorns at the present time. It is a question that may be dealt with in general terms. What, ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... lips curled as she turned to face him and she seemed to spit the words at him in sudden, unexpected resentment. "I love the meaningless sound of my official figurehead title! It's so much better than being regarded as a living person with feelings that can ...
— —And Devious the Line of Duty • Tom Godwin
... superstitious valet, who, more or less persecuted by the noble employers with whom he had been in service at various times, sought to avenge himself, not on them, but on their king, as the figurehead of all that was rotten in the social hierarchy. Louis, heretofore known as the "Bien Aime," had become suddenly unpopular because of the disastrous war against England and Germany, and his ...
— Royal Palaces and Parks of France • Milburg Francisco Mansfield
... sir, to keep your counsel till it is asked, sir," said Day, trembling with fury. "I have too many princes and baronets here for my taste." He stamped round the room in agitation. "My men!" he cried. "Good Lord, what have I had to do with them? I wish I'd never seen the figurehead of the yacht. Good Lord! my men! I would sooner run an excursion steamer ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson
... row of supermarionettes. There is a myth among socialists to which all are expected to subscribe, that initiative springs anonymously out of the mass of the people,—that there are no "leaders," that the conspicuous figures are no more influential than the figurehead on the prow of ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... are great carvers and painters. The outsides of the houses, wherever there is a plank, are covered with rude yet characteristic figures. The high-peaked prows of their boats are ornamented with masses of open filagree work, cut out of solid blocks of wood, and often of very tasteful design, As a figurehead, or pinnacle, there is often a human figure, with a head of cassowary feathers to imitate the Papuan "mop." The floats of their fishing-lines, the wooden beaters used in tempering the clay for their pottery, their ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... why some one who is simply a figurehead goes on taking all the credit for tricks turned by a smart fellow who is working for him. Now, if you lived in the dear old land of ready money, where the accident of birth doesn't give any man the right to sit on somebody else's neck, you'd be a big gun. You'd have money and a ...
— The Slim Princess • George Ade
... recently deplored the want of vitality in the old religions of the country, and, regarding their reformation as hopeless, openly advocated the adoption of Christianity. To be independent of the foreigner it must, he said, be made a state church, with one of the princes for a figurehead, ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin
... shibboleth. title, heading, docket. address card, visiting card; carte de visite [Fr.]. insignia; banner, banneret^, bannerol^; bandrol^; flag, colors, streamer, standard, eagle, labarum^, oriflamb^, oriflamme; figurehead; ensign; pennon, pennant, pendant; burgee^, blue Peter, jack, ancient, gonfalon, union jack; banderole, old glory [U.S.], quarantine flag; vexillum^; yellow-flag, yellow jack; tricolor, stars and stripes; bunting. heraldry, crest; coat ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... in sight, and riding proudly at anchor, the beautiful curves of her swan-like prows made cannon proof with plates of shining steel,—and below, in lieu of figurehead to promise victory, those letters of dread omen, C.D.X.,—with thirty oars-men from the arsenal of Venice, to ensure her speed, each ready at his oar-lock to wield his oar, with a band of marksmen trained ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... of Meredith's not only hurt me, but almost destroyed my hope, though it did not alter my purpose. I wanted a figurehead for my petition, and the figurehead I had chosen I could not get. I began to wonder and doubt. I next approached a very different man, the late Professor Churton Collins, a great friend of mine, who, in ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... these advisers and their lords were in their thinking, they did not dare to trample openly on the old tradition. The emperor might in practice be a completely powerless figurehead, but he belonged nevertheless, according to tradition, to a family of divine origin, which had obtained its office not merely by the exercise of force but through a "divine mandate". Accordingly, if one of the feudal lords thought of putting forward a claim to ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard
... everything was really done by these Pandits while Rajendrahal fraudulently appropriated all the credit. Even to-day we very often find the tools arrogating to themselves the lion's share of the achievement, imagining the wielder to be a mere ornamental figurehead. If the poor pen had a mind it would as certainly have bemoaned the unfairness of its getting all the stain and the writer ...
— My Reminiscences • Rabindranath Tagore
... it, lad. The only embargo that I lay upon you is—haul off, and mind you don't let your figurehead go by the board. Meanwhile, here comes the boat. Now, Nigel, none o' your courtin' till everything is settled and the wind fair—dead aft my lad, and blowin' stiff. You and the hermit are goin' off ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... was plunging along athwart our course as if she meant to give us the go-by, the sea foaming up at her bows in a big wave that curled up in front of her forefoot and broke over her figurehead as she dipped, sending the surf high in the air in a sheet of foam over ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson
... between the eyes by an astonishing shape that arises from the patch of lawn in front of the cottage, and completely dominates the scene. Imagine yourself face to face with the last thing you would expect to see in a modest front dooryard,—the figurehead of a ship, heroic in size, gorgeous in colour, majestic in pose! A female personage it appears to be from the drapery, which is the only key the artist furnishes as to sex, and a queenly female withal, for she wears a crown at least a foot high, and brandishes a forbidding ...
— Penelope's Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... lad you were, and smart, too," answered Silver, shaking hands so heartily that all the barrel shook, "and a finer figurehead for a gentleman of fortune I never clapped my ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... foundation, in truth, for Frank's suggestion. The old schooner whose name they now discerned in faded gilt as "Molly M," seemed like a ghost of other days. Her outthrust bow, her up-cocked stern and the figurehead of a simpering woman that might have been mermaid originally but was now so worn as to make it almost impossible to tell the original intent, was, indeed, suggestive of galleons of ancient days. This figurehead jutted out ...
— The Radio Boys with the Revenue Guards • Gerald Breckenridge
... a strange little craft. The hull was old, but it had been newly repaired, and they had given it a smart little modern figurehead, which contrasted strangely with the smooth sides and the heavy stern. One could see that the rigging had originally belonged to a large vessel, but had been very hastily adapted to the smaller hull, and this still further increased the want of proportion ...
— Norse Tales and Sketches • Alexander Lange Kielland
... the top of the engine-house and watched the Roma dodging among the rocks like a frightened rabbit. Dickie Lang was poised in the bow like a figurehead, one foot resting on the rail. Her hair, jerked from her cap by the fingers of the dawn-wind, streamed out behind her in a shower of dull red gold. Her eyes were shining with the joy ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... fitness but as a number of others held office at that time. The consul did nothing worthy of note save that at this time, too, he acted as advocate in suits, since his colleague Gaius Capito counted as a mere figurehead. Augustus, because he was growing old, wrote a letter commending Germanicus to the senate and the latter to Tiberius: the manuscript was not read by him in person, for he was unable to make himself heard, but by Germanicus, as usual. After that he asked them, making the Celtic ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. 4 • Cassius Dio
... ruler, whatever his nature might be. A child, a lunatic, a monster, a sage,—it was all the same to these unheeding centuries. The people could not follow those they understood or who understood them. They must trust all to the blind chance of heredity. Tyrant or figurehead, the mob, which from its own indifference creates the pomp of royalty, threw up its caps for the king, and blindly died for him in his courage or in his folly with the same unquestioning loyalty. In like manner did the mob fashion lords and princes, each in its own image. Not ...
— The Call of the Twentieth Century • David Starr Jordan
... the train, but after the winter of trial and probation, and difficulties of beginning are over, and the summer of success has come, his position, in regard to the artists, must be more like that of a figurehead. I have, however, great faith in the power of artists to make a figure-head useful as well as ornamental, although I do not know that they have shown a proof of this to-day by making their figure-head deliver a speech, which it is well known figure-heads ...
— Memories of Canada and Scotland - Speeches and Verses • John Douglas Sutherland Campbell
... Boma, and at daybreak we tied up to the iron wharf. As the capital of the government Boma contains the residence and gardens of the governor, who is the personal representative of Leopold, both as a shopkeeper and as a king by divine right. He is a figurehead. The real administrator is M. Vandamme, the Secretaire-General, the ubiquitous, the mysterious, whose name before you leave Southampton is in the air, of whom all men, whether they speak in French or English, speak well. It is from Boma that M. Vandamme sends collectors of rubber, ...
— The Congo and Coasts of Africa • Richard Harding Davis
... feel so very old! I am weary of being a king. I am weary of being weary, and for such there is no remedy. Truly I was not cut from the pattern of kings; no, no. I am handier with a book than with a scepter; I'd liever be a man than a puppet, and a puppet I am—a figurehead on the prow of the ship, but I do not guide it. Who care for me save those who have their ends to gain? None, save the archbishop, who yet dreams of making a king of me. And these are not my people who surround me; when I die, small care. I shall have left in the passing ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... on a whaling cruise, and was gone more than a year. When it was crossing the equator, headed for home, the look- out at the masthead saw a strange object in the water that looked like a woman afloat. The Captain gave orders to lower the boats, and when they did so they found this figurehead. She said it must have come from the prow of some great clipper in the East India trade. They were in the ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... him invisibly with a twinkle or flare from her passionate eyes. She was the daughter of a sea captain by his fifth wife. He had escaped the other four. They had died or been deserted in foreign ports, but this one he could not escape. Tradition had it that he lost the figurehead from his ship on the nuptial voyage, attributed this disaster to his bride, and so left her at Rosario, only to find her, after all sail was set, in the forechains, at the very stem of his ship, half drowned, her arms outstretched, a living figurehead. She ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... heroine is merely a figurehead in The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794). The change of title is significant. The two previous works have been romances, but it is now Mrs. Radcliffe's intention to let herself go further in the direction of wonder and suspense than she had hitherto ventured. She is like Scythrop in Nightmare Abbey, ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... despite the intense calmness of the sea, was pitching and tossing as if in the roughest water. As she drew nearer I was able to make her out better, and from her build—she carried two masts and was square-rigged forward and schooner-rigged aft—as well as from her tawdry gilt figurehead, concluded she was a hermaphrodite brig of, very possibly, Dutch nationality. She had evidently seen a great deal of rough weather, for her foretopmast and part of her starboard bulwarks were gone, and ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell
... pursuit of him, and that on landing he might be seized by the Italian police like a common thief. But the yacht was swinging peacefully at anchor, her sailors cleaning the deck or repainting the red siren of her figurehead, as if they were expecting someone of importance. Paul had not the curiosity to ask who this personage was. He crossed the marble city, and returned by the coast railway from Genoa to Marseilles—that marvellous route where one passes suddenly from the blackness of the tunnels to the dazzling ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... that His Excellency the Marquis of Lorne is Patron of the Quebec Club. His Excellency is not on the list as a mere figurehead; he is a golfer, and plays an excellent game, as shewn in the Reports of medal ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... duke, who had been smuggled out of the Tower eight years before he was produced, and kept in concealment all through the interval, even while the Yorkist leaders had been reduced to setting up a supposititious Earl of Warwick for a figurehead. ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... give to the world an account of the forcible deportation of King Mataafa from Samoa to the Marshall Islands, where he was kept in exile six years. The Germans had shoved him aside to make room for Malieto, an imbecile and a German figurehead. I was there again when Mataafa, at the end of those six years, returned to Samoa, to the ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... propose to linger over the perruque. The Restoration was a time of carnival when, if the men were overdressed, the ladies were underdressed; and the perruque was a part of the masquerade. In such a figurehead you could be as licentious as you chose—and you were; you could only be serious in satire. The perruque accounts for Dryden and his learned pomp, for Rochester and Sedley, and for Congreve, who told Voltaire that he desired to be considered as a gentleman rather ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... car in charge of Komatsu and went in to visit Shiba Temple in Shiba Park. These chapels are mostly the tombs of the Shoguns who for many years were powerful nobles and who really ruled Japan in place of the Emperor, a mere figurehead in those days. The magnificent tombs they built for themselves are now the very pride of Tokyo. Within the great red gates of the main temple, upheld with scarlet columns, wheeled flights of pigeons ...
— The Motor Maids in Fair Japan • Katherine Stokes
... course, knew that he, like so many other presidents of railways, of individual corporations, of banks, of insurance companies, and high political officials in cities, states and the nation, was little more than a figurehead put up and used by the inside financial ring. As he shifted from leg to leg, holding his hat and trying to steady his twitching upper lip, he looked as one of his smallest section-bosses would have looked, if ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... gave the boats a gay appearance which was increased by the round shields which were hung outside the gunwale and which were also painted red, black, or white. At the prow there was usually a beautifully carved and gorgeously painted figurehead. The stem and stern of the ships were high. In the stern there was an upper deck, but in the forepart of the vessel there was nothing but loose planks on which the sailors could step. When a storm was raging or a battle was being fought, the loose planks did not, ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... tried to explain that he had laid a course for his own moorings, and had been keeping a bright look-out, when suddenly he had been brought up all standing, and he thought he must have run bows on into some other craft, for he remembered no more than getting a crack over his figurehead. Morning was treading on the heels of night before Hislop and Wallace had got the damaged man home and had left him safely stowed in bed, and themselves were peacefully snoring, unconscious ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... the umbrella, leaving it in his hand. She bent forward, stooped down. The strong young face, proud and sad, so pure in its maiden strength, glowing with passionate emotion, was laid softly against that bruised and battered figurehead of shipwrecked womanhood; Nellie had kissed the sleeping harlot ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller
... done so. The joke stands for an ultimate truth, and that is a subtle truth. It is one not very easy to state correctly. It can, perhaps, be most correctly stated by saying that, even if the man is the head of the house, he knows he is the figurehead. ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton
... that, sir. I'll show my figurehead there first thing in the mornin'. No fears o' any one getting theer afore me, if ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... mariners and landsmen rose Robin-a-dale's shrill cry: "She's going down, down, down! Oh, the white figurehead looks no more into the sea—it turns its face to the sky! Down, down, ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston
... uniform sagged with the weight of his decorations. He appeared for the army at great functions, his picture was in the shop-windows. Hedworth Westerling, the new vice-chief of staff, was content with this arrangement. His years would not permit him the supreme honor. This was for a figurehead, while he ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... colony with authority to establish local courts subordinate to itself. There was no division of powers in the new frame of government. Legislative, executive, and judicial powers were thrown together in true Bourbon fashion. Apparently it was Colbert's plan to make of the governor a distinguished figurehead, with large military powers but without paramount influence in civil affairs. The bishop was to have no civil jurisdiction, and the intendant was to be the director of details. The Council, according to the edict of 1663, was to be the real pivot of ...
— Crusaders of New France - A Chronicle of the Fleur-de-Lis in the Wilderness - Chronicles of America, Volume 4 • William Bennett Munro |
