"Hempen" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the country looks as prosperous as it is beautiful, and one would not think that acute poverty could exist in the steep-roofed village of Nojiri, which nestles at the foot of the hill; but two hempen ropes dangling from a cryptomeria just below tell the sad tale of an elderly man who hanged himself two days ago, because he was too poor to provide for a large family; and the house-mistress and Ito tell me that when a man who has a young family gets too old or ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... spear-head, of woe to such as has a wish for it; I have fled as a fierce hull bitterly fighting, I have fled as a bristly boar seen in a ravine, I have fled as a white grain of pure wheat, On the skirt of a hempen sheet entangled, That seemed of the size of a mare's foal, That is filling like a ship on the waters; Into a dark leathern bag I was thrown, And on a boundless sea I was sent adrift; Which was to me an omen ...
— The Mabinogion • Lady Charlotte Guest
... revealing the mark of the priest, and fell upon his shoulders. He was habited in a long, closely-fitting robe of some coarse material, which had once been black, but was now faded and tarnished by time and exposure, and a hempen rope to keep it in place was girded about his loins. Such, as we have described him, was the famous Father Le Vieux, one of the most active and devoted among the ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... of a tree are strong hempen bands which cover the open space down the centre of the tree, and are nailed, at one end, to the pommel, and at the other end to the cantle. They are tightly stretched, in order to give the rider a comfortable seat, and to keep her weight ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes
... be forged into an "eight-foot" mirror, appoints two Kami to procure from Mount Kagu a "five-hundred branched" sakaki tree (cleyera Japonica), from whose branches the mirror together with a "five-hundred beaded" string of curved jewels and blue and white streamers of hempen cloth and paper-mulberry cloth are suspended, and causes divination to be performed with the ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... right, Joe, there will not," answered I; and, dashing forward to the windlass bitts, I proceeded to throw off turn after turn of the stiff hempen cable that held the felucca to her anchor, until the last turn was gone and the flakes went writhing and twisting out through the hawse-hole; then, as the end disappeared with a splash I dashed aft and rammed the tiller hard over to port—noticing, ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... day of festival In the capital of Valladolid That their eyes met at a crossing And their two souls rushed together. By the greed of a bought duenna And the interchange of love-notes And the help of a hempen ladder They arranged a meeting ...
— A Legend of Old Persia and Other Poems • A. B. S. Tennyson
... fer killin' folks comes kind o' low fer murder (Wy I've worked out to slarterin' some for Deacon Cephas Billins, An' in the hardest times there wuz I ollers tetched ten shillins), There's sutthin' gits into my throat thet makes it hard to swaller, It comes so nateral to think about a hempen collar; It's glory—but, in spite o' all my tryin to git callous, I feel a kind o' in a cart, aridin' to the gallus. But when it comes to BEIN' killed—I tell ye I felt streaked The fust time ever I found ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... and melt some of the fat in that way. If we could not make fine candles, we might dip some wick in the grease, and thus have a kind of taper that would serve almost as well. I knew we had wick—I remembered the long hempen string which Ossaroo has got, and I knew that that would serve admirably for the purpose. All that would be easy enough—at least it appeared so—all except the stuff ...
— The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains • Mayne Reid
... "Artilleria al frente!" and a couple of mules, with one wretched little piece, moving forward; and of the intimidating clatter made by three shrunk cavaliers in cuirasses a world too wide for them, and alpargatas, trotting up a village street. The alpargata is the mountain-shoe of canvas, with a hempen sole, worn by the Basque peasants. The association of surcoats of mail and rope slippers is incongruous; but what does that reck? ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... now almost entirely obviated by the admirable invention of iron cables, when the water is not too deep. The links of the chain merely acquire a polish by their friction against the coral reefs and other sharp ledges, by which the best hempen cables of past times would be ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... earth's surface. Professor Langley has been following these experiments with great interest, and has furnished Mr. Eddy with a special quality of silk cord which, it is believed, will give better results in meteorological observation than the ordinary hempen twine or rope. The great difficulty that Mr. Eddy finds in the way of making his kites reach great altitudes, is the pull on the cord, which increases greatly as the kites rise higher. It is probable that a tandem ...
— McClure's Magazine, March, 1896, Vol. VI., No. 4. • Various
... brought him to the Watergate{B} Hard bound with hempen span, As though they held a lion there, And not a fenceless man. They set him high upon a cart— The hangman rode below— They drew his hands behind his back, And bared his lordly brow. Then, as a hound is slipp'd from leash, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... That made the strongest building rock. And more than once 'gone up' in smoke Till scarce a building sheltered folk. The citizens can point to spots Where people fashioned hangman's knots With nimble fingers, to supply Some hardened rogues a hempen tie, Whom Vigilantes and their friends Saw fit ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various
... the car was made of very strong hempen cord, and the two valves were the object of the most minute and careful attention, as the rudder of a ship ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne
... ropewalks. Captain Jonathan Haraden, the most famous Salem privateersman of the Revolution, made the rigging for the mainmast in his loft. The sails were cut from duck woven for the purpose in the mill on Broad Street and the ironwork was forged by Salem shipsmiths. When the huge hempen cables were ready to be conveyed to the frigate, the workmen hoisted them upon their shoulders and in procession marched to the music of fife and drum. In 1799, six months after the oak timbers had been standing trees, the Essex ...
— The Fight for a Free Sea: A Chronicle of the War of 1812 - The Chronicles of America Series, Volume 17 • Ralph D. Paine
... The term is different in different corporations. Where it is long, a part of it may generally be redeemed by paying a small fine. In most towns, too, a very small fine is sufficient to purchase the freedom of any corporation. The weavers of linen and hempen cloth, the principal manufactures of the country, as well as all other artificers subservient to them, wheel-makers, reel-makers, etc. may exercise their trades in any town-corporate without paying any fine. In all towns-corporate, all persons ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... meets Horns a fellow-labourer in the same hempen walk of life. Crib offers to buy a little Spanish of Horns. "My dear Crib," says Horns, "it is impossible; I can't sell; for I have just received by a private hand from Cadiz, news that must send the stock down to nothing. I am a Christian, my dear Crib," says ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... smocks hempen wear; Of Holland not an ell in, No, not a rag, whate'er your brag, Is ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... with wonder! What prodigy was this? what subtle devil Hath raz'd out the inscription? the wax Turn'd into dust, Made nothing! do you deal with witches, rascal? There's a statute for you which will bring Your neck in a hempen circle; ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 4, April 1810 • Various
... harbour of this here sea-port is no judge of an anchorage, or he would drop a kedge mayhap hereaway, in a line with the southern end of that there small matter of an island, and hauling his ship up to it, fasten her to the spot with good hempen cables and iron mud-hooks. Now, look you here, S'ip, at the reason of the matter," he continued, in a manner which shewed that the little skirmish that had just passed was like one of those sudden squalls of which they had both seen so many, and which were usually so soon ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... for a breastwork, and, when rolled before the men as they advanced, formed a moving rampart which was proof against shot, and only to be overcome by a sortie in force, which the enemy did not dare to make. On came the hempen breastworks, while Price's artillery continued an effective fire. In the afternoon of the 20th the enemy hung out a white flag, upon which General Price ordered a cessation of firing, and sent to ascertain the object of the signal. The Federal ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... he obtain the bowstring? Whence a cord to match the weapon? Sinews from the elk of Hiisi, And the hempen cord of Lempo. Thus at length the bow was finished. And the stock was quite completed, 40 And the bow was fair to gaze on, And its value matched its beauty. At its back a horse was standing, On the stock a foal was running, On the curve a sleeping woman, At ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous
... on the morrow he would lay the matter before Lord Middleton, and thus not only endeavour to make amends for his present guilty silence, but rid himself also of the companionship of this ruffianly Sir Crispin, to whom no doubt a hempen justice would ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... Nathless then also time it is to strip Acorns from oaks, and berries from the bay, Olives, and bleeding myrtles, then to set Snares for the crane, and meshes for the stag, And hunt the long-eared hares, then pierce the doe With whirl of hempen-thonged Balearic sling, While snow lies deep, and streams are drifting ice. What need to tell of autumn's storms and stars, And wherefore men must watch, when now the day Grows shorter, and more soft the summer's heat? When Spring the rain-bringer comes ...
— The Georgics • Virgil
... head, he felt for—as it was getting very dark—one end of the thin rope, and then, mounting a stool, he passed the strong hempen twist over the beam, which just allowed room for it to pass, knotted the end, made a slip noose, drew it tight, and then, feeling for the other end of the coil, he began to run it out through the open dormer, listening with wild exultation to the ...
— The New Forest Spy • George Manville Fenn
... of hempen fields, where I Once played with insects floating by, And joyed alike in sun and rain, Unconscious of approaching pain. I dwell upon my later lot, Where, swung in some secluded spot Between two tried and trusted trees, All summer long I wooed the breeze. With song of bee and call of bird ...
— Custer, and Other Poems. • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... they treated these worthy persons with such a choking hempen salad. They told us they had only borrowed, alias stolen, the tools of the mass and hid them under the handle of the parish. This is a very allegorical way of speaking, ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... truly Castilian pride. The wearing of a sword being restricted to nobles, it was not unusual to see such zasciankowicze, or peasant nobles, following the plough bare-footed, wearing an old rusty sword hanging at their side by hempen cords."—Naganowski. In this volume hamlet has been arbitrarily chosen as a translation for the name of ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... studied and photographed during nearly every total eclipse for thirty years. Thus we have learned much about how it looks and what its shape is. It has a fibrous, woolly structure, a little like the loose end of a much-worn hempen rope. A certain resemblance has been seen between the form of these seeming fibres and that of the lines in which iron filings arrange themselves when sprinkled on paper over a magnet. It has hence been inferred that the sun has magnetic properties, a conclusion which, in a general way, ...
— Side-lights on Astronomy and Kindred Fields of Popular Science • Simon Newcomb
... is now a notable innovation, which marked the advent of a new age. Instead of the prevailing hempen cables with which these cruisers had been supplied and had been in use for centuries among our ships, these cutters were ordered to be furnished with chain cables "in order that the vessels may have the less occasion for going to a King's Port to refit or make purchases." If ...
— King's Cutters and Smugglers 1700-1855 • E. Keble Chatterton
... The carpet—its hempen ground carried them to the north, from whence the material came, the inhabitants of the frozen world, their manners and their customs, the climate and their cities, their productions and their sources of wealth. Its woollen surface, with its various dyes—each dye containing an episode ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... presumption is that she was collecting leaves for the silkworms. Again in 519, a century later, there was a dispute on the Ts'u-Wu frontier (North An Hwei province), about the possession of certain mulberry trees. Cotton (Gossypium) was unknown in China, and the poorer classes wore garments of hempen materials; the cotton tree (Bombyx) was known in the south, but then (as now) the catkins could not be woven into cloth. It was never the custom of officers in China to wear swords, until in 409 B.C. Ts'in introduced the practice; ...
— Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker
... many of the pious old women said pathetically about her, after her death. Her broad, healthy, red face had a look of blank idiocy and the fixed stare in her eyes was unpleasant, in spite of their meek expression. She wandered about, summer and winter alike, barefooted, wearing nothing but a hempen smock. Her coarse, almost black hair curled like lamb's wool, and formed a sort of huge cap on her head. It was always crusted with mud, and had leaves, bits of stick, and shavings clinging to it, as she always slept on the ground and in the dirt. Her father, a homeless, ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... in the morning Major Harvey, with a launchful of his soldiers, paid a surprise visit to the Ruffling Harry, with the result that they picked up nothing more solid than a hempen cable floating at the moorings. It had been slipped by the brig, whose owner had scented danger. She had already passed the Palisades, and was beating out against the north-east trades on a course for the ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... of the stone jug I was born, [1] Of a hempen widow the kid forlorn, [2] Fake away! [3] And my father, as I've heard say, Was a merchant of capers gay, [4 ] Who cut his last fling with great applause. Nix my doll, pals, fake away! [5] To the time of hearty choke with caper sauce. [6] Fake away! The knucks in quod did my schoolmen ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer
... the Mark there still prevails on certain occasions the custom of kindling a need-fire, it happens particularly when a farmer has sick pigs. Two posts of dry wood are planted in the earth amid solemn silence before the sun rises, and round these posts hempen ropes are pulled to and fro till the wood kindles; whereupon the fire is fed with dry leaves and twigs and the sick beasts are driven through it In some places the fire is produced by the friction of an ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... cleane my rapier, because I would not bee suspected. Uppon this was I laide in prison, should haue been hanged, was brought to the ladder, had made a ballet for my farewell in a readines called Wiltons wantonnes, and yet for all that scap'd dancing in a hempen circle. He that hath gone through manie perils and returned safe from them, makes but a merriment to dilate them. I had the knot vnder my eare, there was faire playe, the hangman had one halter, and another about my necke, which was fastned to the gallowes, the riding deuice ...
— The Vnfortunate Traveller, or The Life Of Jack Wilton - With An Essay On The Life And Writings Of Thomas Nash By Edmund Gosse • Thomas Nash
... ounce balls were hastily wrapped in the canvas, and lashed up with the hempen twine. The bag was then rammed down upon the powder, and the ...
— Left on Labrador - or, The cruise of the Schooner-yacht 'Curlew.' as Recorded by 'Wash.' • Charles Asbury Stephens
... place is that seat of grace For which all worldlings try: But who would stand in hempen band Upon a scaffold high, And through a murderer's collar take His last look ...
— Book of Old Ballads • Selected by Beverly Nichols
... man came up, who heard the boy talking to himself; and, as they we're just passing the place where the gallows stood, the man said, "Do you see? There is the tree where seven fellows have married the hempen maid, and now swing to and fro. Sit yourself down there and wait till midnight, and then you will know what it ...
— Grimm's Fairy Stories • Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm
... careful to ascertain that none would be occupied except by myself. I would sooner have slept on a bundle of hay in the loft than have had an unknown person snoring in the same room with me. One has always some prejudice to overcome. The bed was not soft, and the hempen sheets were as coarse as canvas, but these trifles did not trouble me. I listened to the song of the crickets on the hearth downstairs until drowsiness beckoned sleep and consciousness of the present lost its way in sylvan ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... one by fastening two cross sticks to a silk handkerchief, which would not suffer so much from the rain as paper. To the upright stick was affixed an iron point. The string was, as usual, of hemp, except the lower end, which was silk. Where the hempen string terminated, a key was fastened. With this apparatus, on the appearance of a thundergust approaching, he went out into the commons, accompanied by his son, to whom alone he communicated his intentions, well ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various
... acquaintance of —- Fair. The present one was a fellow about half-a-foot taller than the other. He had a long, haggard, wild face, and was dressed in a kind of jacket, something like that of a soldier, with dirty hempen trousers, and with a foreign-looking peaked hat on his head. He spoke with an accent evidently Irish, and occasionally changed the usual thimble formule, "them that finds wins, and them that can't—och, sure!—they loses;" saying also frequently, "your honour," instead of "my lord." I observed, ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... save her?" said the inexorable Dame Shoolbred. "I dare say she has deserved them both as well as ever thief deserved a hempen collar." ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... colourless water. The men stopped dressing-down without a word. Long Jack and Uncle Salters slipped the windlass brakes into their sockets, and began to heave up the anchor; the windlass jarring as the wet hempen cable strained on the barrel. Manuel and Tom Platt gave a hand at the last. The anchor came up with a sob, and the riding-sail bellied as Troop steadied her at the wheel. "Up ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling
... sailing frigate, of fifty-two guns, with huge spars—one of the most elegant types of the old-fashioned ships, but an old-fashioned ship she was indeed. We even had hempen cables instead of chain ones! The crew, drawn almost exclusively from the lists of registered seamen, was active and bold on the rigging, but somewhat insubordinate. The words of command were given amidst volleys of oaths, and carried out under a hail ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... in a different strain, and did not desist from expressing his opinion, to Heinz, and assuring him that his place was on a battle charger, with his sword in its sheath or in his hand, rather than in a monastery with a rosary hanging from a hempen girdle. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... foot was curled up and seemed paralyzed; the third, in its struggles to escape, had sawn through the flesh of the thigh and so much harmed itself that I thought it humane to put an end to its misery. When I took out my knife to cut their hempen bonds, the heads of the family seemed to divine my friendly intent. Suddenly ceasing their cries and threats. they perched quietly within reach of my hand, and watched me in my work of manumission. This, owing to the fluttering terror of the prisoners, was an affair of ...
— My Garden Acquaintance • James Russell Lowell
... hands from the yellow meal and dusted them on a hempen towel, and was ready to go ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... bird-cage, old boots, a case of medical books, a pair of dilapidated trousers filled up one side of the room. A pot of clove-pinks in the window struggled to drown with spicy fragrance the odor of stale tobacco smoke. There was a hempen carpet, inch deep with mud and dust, on the floor. Seated round an empty fireplace, on cane chairs and in solemn circle, were about forty followers of the Inner Light. McCall perceived Maria near the window, the dusky twilight bringing out with fine effect her delicate, beautiful ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... they also found forty-four witches' spells in her child's pillow, some of which were made like hedgehogs, others round like apples, and others again flat like the palm of the hand; and they were of hempen ...
— Witchcraft and Devil Lore in the Channel Islands • John Linwood Pitts
... the family; but, as he pointed out to his dear old governor, a Carteret mustn't be allowed to starve; so the parson, who loved the handsome lad, put down his hack and sent the prodigal a remittance. He had better have sent him a hempen rope, for necessity might have made a man out of Master Dick; the remittance turned ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... "In tough Welsh parsley, which in our vulgar tongue, is Strong hempen altars."—Beaumont and Fletcher, Elder Brother, Act. 1. ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 18. Saturday, March 2, 1850 • Various
... wool, or occasionally of cotton and wool; kersey, a knit woolen cloth, usually coarse and ribbed, manufactured in England as early as the thirteenth century, was especially for hose; lockram was a sort of a coarse linen or hempen cloth, and penniston, a coarse woolen frieze. Shalloon, a woolen fabric of twill weave was used chiefly for linings; fustian was a cotton and linen cloth, and diaper linen was woven of flax with a raised figure such as in damask, ...
— Domestic Life in Virginia in the Seventeenth Century - Jamestown 350th Anniversary Historical Booklet Number 17 • Annie Lash Jester
... pleased with the tokens of good will offered by the priest and by his earthly friends, the friendly deities are said to hasten to their home and gird themselves for the pursuit. With lance and shield and hempen coat[3] they start off on the raid. They are described as having their hair bound up in small wooden hemispheres, their heads turbaned with the red kerchief, and their necks adorned with a wealth of charms, ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... of the Triple Bough And the ghastly Dreams that tend you, Your growth began with the life of Man And only his death can end you: They may tug in line at your hempen twine, They may flourish with axe and saw, But your taproot drinks of the Sacred Springs In the living ...
— The Song of the Sword - and Other Verses • W. E. Henley
... A hempen cloth, so loosely woven as to leave interstices between the threads, in little squares. It is used for working in patterns upon it with wools, &c.; by painters for a ground work on which they draw their pictures; for tents, sails, and many other purposes. ...
— A Catechism of Familiar Things; Their History, and the Events Which Led to Their Discovery • Benziger Brothers
... few hours of rest, could muster strength to rise to his feet, he was doomed to be seized by some drummer boy, or other wight of the "bummer" tribe, mounted and rode till his strength again failed. Then the dismounted bummer would coolly remove his hempen bridle, shoulder his drum, and seek for another steed. For two or three days past the weather had been excessively hot, and men could be seen lying all along the roadside, as we marched, ...
— Three Years in the Sixth Corps • George T. Stevens
... they can but avoid the touch of an infecting substance they are safe, and that if they cannot, they die. This belief induces them to adopt the contrivance of putting themselves in that state of siege which they call “quarantine.” It is a part of their faith that metals, and hempen rope, and also, I fancy, one or two other substances, will not carry the infection; and they likewise believe that the germ of pestilence, which lies in an infected substance, may be destroyed by submersion ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... hempen cord,' said Villiers, 'just as it used to be made for the old trade, the man told me. Not an inch of jute ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen
... to the wisdom that moves to the grave in the midst of the mighty crowd of human destinies; for the destiny of the sage holds not aloof from that of the wicked and frivolous. All destinies are for ever commingling; and the adventure is rare in whose web the hempen thread blends not with the golden. There are misfortunes more gradual, less frightful of aspect, than those that befell Oedipus and the prince of Elsinore; misfortunes that quail not beneath the gaze of truth or justice or love. Those who speak of the profit of wisdom are never ...
— Wisdom and Destiny • Maurice Maeterlinck
... bow, a bow of yew, Good hempen cord and arrows true, When foes be thick and friends be few, Give me ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... population has swelled to upwards of four thousand. The scattered huts which constituted the town, have been replaced by comfortable dwellings. Churches and convents have sprung up. Manufactures of serge and of hempen cloth have been introduced. A market, a brewery, and a tannery have been opened. The ground has been considerably cleared, and the agricultural resources of the country have been developed; three-fourths of the inhabitants can ...
— The Life of the Venerable Mother Mary of the Incarnation • "A Religious of the Ursuline Community"
... young varlet whose name is Gauttier and bears my banner, with his men at arms, captains, followers, and beasts—all are yours, and will instantly obey your orders under pain of being incommoded with a hempen collar." ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac
... winsome Laird o' Harden," she said, "when ye hae three ill-favoured daughters to marry?" Sir Willie was one of the handsomest men of his time, and when the men brought the rope to hang him he was given the option of marrying Muckle Mou'd Meg or of being hanged with a "hempen halter." It was said that when he first saw Meg he said he preferred to be hanged, but he found she improved on closer acquaintance, and so in three days' time a clergyman said, "Wilt thou take this woman here present to be thy lawful wife?" knowing full well what the answer must ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... the means were infantile. A thunder shower came over, and in an interval between sprinklings he took with him his son, and went by back ways and alleys to a shed in an open field. The two raised the kite as boys did then and do now, and stood within the shelter. There was a hempen string, and on this, next his hand, he had tied a bit of ribbon and an ordinary iron key. A cloud passed over without any indications of anything whatever. But it began to rain, and as the string became wet he noticed that ...
— Steam Steel and Electricity • James W. Steele
... shot or beheaded—though I would like neither the ane nor the ither—it wouldna be a thing in particular to be complained o'; but to be hanged like a dog is so disgracefu' and unchristian-like, that I would rather die ten times in a day, than feel a hempen cravat about my neck ance. And, moreover, I must say that hanging is not treating my dear young maister and kinsman as he ocht to be treated. His birth, his rank, and the memory o' his ancestors and mine, demand mair respect; and therefore, ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... arms, and her finely turned ankles and legs, that were bared below the knee. The very simplicity of her costume helped to mark the Greek severity of her figure. She wore a short skirt of some coarse hempen stuff, covered with a thick apron made of sail-cloth, her feet thrust into black sabots, while the upper part of her body was covered with an unbleached chemise, widely open ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... support of the necessary branches of the establishment. A dispute arose between the commons and the lower house of convocation, relating to the tithes of hemp and flax, ascertained in a clause of a bill for the better improvement of the hempen and flaxen manufactures of the kingdom. The lower house of convocation presented a memorial against this clause as prejudicial to the rights and properties of the clergy. The commons voted the person who brought it in guilty of a breach of privilege, and ordered him ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... slip into the stable and pass all those guards when they are asleep with their eyes wide open and staring straight at you. When you reach the Golden Horse you will see hanging beside him a golden bridle and a common bridle made of hempen rope. Slip the hempen bridle over the Horse's head and lead him quietly out of the stable. But mind you don't touch the golden bridle! This time ...
— The Laughing Prince - Jugoslav Folk and Fairy Tales • Parker Fillmore
... ships, the fisherman's sloop, the king's corvette, and the merchantman, all lay anchored in the basin and harbor, their prows boring into the gale, their crude hulls rising and falling, tossing and plunging, tugging like living things at their hempen cables. The snow fell upon them, changing them into phantoms, all seemingly eager to join in the mad revel of the storm. And the lights at the mastheads, swooping now downward, now upward, now from side to side, dappled ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... with death and mourning. We have just heard of the Governor of Kiangsu going into retirement because of the decease of his mother; and so he will remain, ineligible to any office, for the space of three years. He will not shave his head for one hundred days. For forty-nine nights he will sleep in a hempen garment, with his head resting on a brick and stretched on the hard ground, by the side of the coffin which holds the remains of the parent who gave him birth. He will go down upon his knees and humbly kotow to each friend and relative at their first ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles
... and pack-horses labouring there, with drooping heads, their necks swollen with gangrenes and putrid sores, their nostrils panting with the harsh cough that continually racked them, their chests ulcerated by the ceaseless rubbing of their hempen harness, their hoofs swollen to an enormous size as the result of their long journeys round the mill, their ribs laid bare even to the bone by their endless floggings, and all their hides rough with the scab ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... A hempen string, whipped in the middle with colored silk, to mark the place for your arrow nock to be put, in shooting, will ...
— Illustrated Science for Boys and Girls • Anonymous
... I says to them, "you may holler till you be heard over the face of all the earth, but no one won't take no account of you." And the lies of them which have turned into ropes of hempen shall come up and strangle they. But me and my child shall pass by all fatted up and clothed, and with the last flick, afore the eyelids of they drop, they shall behold we, and, a-clapping of the teeth of them shall they repent them of their sins. ...
— Six Plays • Florence Henrietta Darwin
... uncombed heares Upstaring stiffe, dismayd with uncouth dread; Nor drop of bloud in all his face appeares Nor life in limbe: and to increase his feares In fowle reproch of knighthoods faire degree, 195 About his neck an hempen rope he weares, That with his glistring armes does ill agree; But he of rope or armes ...
— Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Book I • Edmund Spenser
... of which their bodies are introduced by some unknown process. It is fastened together by a multiplex combination of buttons, thrums and skewers; to which frequently is added a girdle of leather, of hempen or even of straw rope, round the loins. To straw rope, indeed, they seem partial, and often wear it by way of sandals. In head-dress they affect a certain freedom: hats with partial brim, without crown, ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... famous for hempen fabrics, and the villages of Locrenan and Daoulas gave their names to lockram (see quotation from ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley
... steady flow of emulsion from the pumps to the delivery pipes, then it passes down a guide plate of the exact width of the plate to be coated. Immediately in front of the guide plate is a fixed silver cylinder, kept out of contact with the plate by the thickness of a piece of fine and very hard hempen cord, which can be renewed from time to time. These cords keep the cylinder from scraping the emulsion off the plate, and they help to distribute it in an even layer. There would be two lines upon each plate where it is touched by the cords, were not the emulsion so fluid as to ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 647, May 26, 1888 • Various
... my own body with a dozen turns of hay-rope, twisting both the ends in under at the bottom of my breast, and winding the hay on the skew a little, that the hempen thong might not slip between, and so cut me in the drawing. I put a good piece of spare rope in the sledd, and the cross-seat with the back to it, which was stuffed with our own wool, as well as two or three fur coats; and then, just as I was starting, ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... I like to fight, but there is plenty of fighting which is legitimate, and what good may all my stolen wealth avail me if I may not enter the haunts of men to spend it? Should I stick my head into London town, it would doubtless stay there, held by a hempen necklace. ...
— The Outlaw of Torn • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... following supports are provided Two small cranes are swung under the keel, on which the latter rests, preventing the settling of the boat's middle, while hanging suspended by the bow and stern. A broad, braided, hempen band, usually worked in a tasteful pattern, is also passed round both gunwales; and secured to the ship's bulwarks, firmly lashes the craft to its place. Being elevated above the ship's rail, the boats are in plain sight from all ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... Green Asylum "several of the pauper women were chained to their bedsteads, naked, and only covered with a hempen rug," and "the accommodation for paupers was infamously bad, and required immediate reform;" while in January of the same year it is reported that "some pauper men were chained upon their straw beds with only ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke
... spear against its flank he threw. They cry to lead the image on to holy house and due, And Pallas' godhead to adore. We break adown our rampart walls and bare the very town: All gird themselves unto the work, set wheels that it may glide Beneath his feet, about his neck the hempen bond is tied To warp it on: up o'er the walls so climbs the fateful thing Fruitful of arms; and boys about and unwed maidens sing The holy songs, and deem it joy hand on the ropes to lay. It enters; through the city's ...
— The AEneids of Virgil - Done into English Verse • Virgil
... sand. She tied it on round her waist and her shirt over it, and wound an old crimson sash round both. Then she took up her little bundle in which were the wooden cup and a broken comb, and some pieces of hempen cloth and a small loaf of maize bread, and went on along the water, wading and hopping in it, as the water-wagtails did, jumping from stone to stone, and sometimes sinking up to her ...
— The Waters of Edera • Louise de la Rame, a.k.a. Ouida
... the same opinion; Clinton sees the importance of this, having had the sense to learn of Amherst how to stop the Seneca demons with a stout hempen rope. Two Sachems he hung, and the whole nation cowed down in terror of him while his ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... kannabis, and Latin cannabis, are both identical with the Sanscrit kanam, as well as with the German hanf, and the English hemp. More directly from cannabis comes canvas, made up of hemp or flax, and canvass, to discuss: i.e., sift a question; metaphorically from the use of hempen sieves or sifters."—BIRDWOOD'S Handbook to the ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... roasting a joint of meat or a fowl was by suspending it in front of the fire by a strong hempen string tied to a peg in the ceiling, while some one—usually an unwilling child—occasionally turned the roast around. Sometimes the sole turnspit was the housewife, who, every time she basted the roast, gave the string a good twist, and thereafter it would untwist, and then twist a ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... so need not be anxious as to the location of the fire escapes before retiring. The Casa Nova is a stone building with stone stairways and floors. In our room there was nothing inflammable but the mosquito nettings and lace draperies over the iron bedsteads. Two candles furnished us with light, hempen rugs covered portions of the black and white marble floor, a gilded crucifix hung on the painted stone wall, and two chairs, a small table, and a ...
— A Trip to the Orient - The Story of a Mediterranean Cruise • Robert Urie Jacob
... typical stores, selling everything from silks to coal oil; its blacksmiths' shops, ringing with the hammer of the busy smith on ploughshare or horseshoe; its implement agencies, with rows of gaudily-painted wagons, mowers, and binders obstructing the thoroughfare, and the hempen smell of new binder twine floating from the hot recess of their iron-covered storehouses; a couple of banks, occupying the best corners, and barber shops and pool-rooms in apparent excess of the needs of the population. All these he might have found in Plainville, but there were ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead
... must occupy himself with the washing and decency of a lot of wild lads, who come in from the fields reeking with excessive health; try the rations, discuss drawers and shirts, calculate the lasting of ankle boots and hempen shoes, and he who never went near the kitchen at home, was most carefully looked after by his mother, and thought that everything was women's work except giving words of command and drawing soldiers up in line, ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... days in Atri sped, What wrongs were righted, need not here be said. Suffice it that, as all things must decay, The hempen rope at length was worn away, Unravelled at the end, and, strand by strand, Loosened and wasted in the ringer's hand, Till one, who noted this in passing by, Mended the rope with braids of briony, So that the ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... [Ranks of long-handled mops made of gaudy feathers—sacred to royalty. They are stuck in the ground around the tomb and left there.] before the tomb. He had the good taste to make one of them substitute black crape for the ordinary hempen rope he was about to tie one of them to the frame-work with. Finally he entered his carriage and drove away, and the populace shortly began to drop into his wake. While he was in view there was but one man who attracted more attention than himself, and that was Harris (the Yankee Prime Minister). ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... St. John's Herb, belongs to the Composite order of plants, and grows on the margins of brooks, having hemp-like leaves, which are bitter of taste and pungent of smell, as if it were an umbelliferous herb. Because of these hempen leaves it was formerly called "Holy Rope," being thus named after the rope with which Jesus was bound. They contain a volatile [20] oil, which acts on the kidneys; likewise some tannin, and a bitter chemical principle, which will cut short the chill of intermittent fever, ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... the thunder rolled, but there was no sign of electricity in the kite. At last, when he was about to give up the experiment, Franklin saw the loose fibres of his hempen string begin to move. ...
— Four Great Americans: Washington, Franklin, Webster, Lincoln - A Book for Young Americans • James Baldwin
... is lost in the fogs of the past: some say that he died of a yellow fever down in New Orleans; it was not at the end of a hempen ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle
... a sudden, something happened. The rope turned and twisted like a snake, a loop of it wound around the Elephant's neck, and a moment later he felt himself being lifted off the barn floor in the hempen coils. Through the air, like the pendulum of a big clock, he swayed, and as the rope pulled tighter and tighter the ...
— The Story of a Stuffed Elephant • Laura Lee Hope
... the time of the cuckoo's appearance, the idea that the bird was the precursor of the Welsh might thus become prevalent. Also, on the quotation given by "PETIT ANDRE" (No. 18. p. 283.) of Welsh parsley, or hempen halters, it may have derived its origin from the severity practised on the Welsh, in the time of their independence, when captured on the English side of the border,—the death of the ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 26. Saturday, April 27, 1850 • Various
... intention with him? At whose bidding was he acting when he assailed his victim with inner storms and almost let him perish in a real storm on the seas? Why did he prick Frederick's flesh with this music? Why did he cast its inseverable hempen cords about his throat and limbs? How was it that after so tremendous an eternal tragedy had been enacted out there on the cosmic solitudes of the ocean, after the waters had unmercifully swallowed so vast a ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... the breach; And, being opposed to thieves visiting attics, Combined with those vile anti-ladder fanatics, And sent a projectile which left the thief where Thieves and traitors should all be, suspended in air, Except that he lacked what was due to his calling, A hempen attachment to keep ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... which honest men may travel in safety! Ah, never have I adjusted a hempen cravat about the throat of any aspirant for such an honor with less pain than I shall officiate at the ...
— Hidden Hand • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... without a shilling. There was only my trade left. I saw these advertisements about harpooners and high wages, so I went to the shipping agents, and they sent me here. That's all I know, and I say again that if I killed Black Peter the law should give me thanks, for I saved them the price of a hempen rope." ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... themselves, must necessarily engage their first care; and are the most material of those that can be racked under the head of manufactures. The former of these are made of the bark of a pine-tree, beat into a hempen state. It is not spun, but, after being properly prepared, is spread upon a stick, which is fastened across to two others that stand upright. It is disposed in such a manner, that the manufacturer, who sits on her hams at this simple machine, knots it ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... not for long," growled the Colonel, finding speech at last. "No, by....." He emphasized the assurance by an unprintable oath. "If I spend the last shilling of my fortune and the last ship of the Jamaica fleet, I'll have that rascal in a hempen necktie before I rest. And I'll not be long about it." He had empurpled in his angry vehemence, and the veins of his forehead stood out like ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... him to the watergate Hard bound, with hempen span. As though they held a lion there, And not a 'fenceless man: They set him high upon a cart, The hangman rode below, They drew his hands behind his back And bared his noble brow. Then as a hound is slipped from leash They cheered the common throng, And blew the note ...
— A Book For The Young • Sarah French |
