"Lacing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... than the milliner's, as where he asserts that the plaits of a rose-colored dress are "the lips of my unappeased desires," or describes March as a barber, powdering the wigs of the blossoming almond trees, and a valet, lacing up the rosebuds in their corsets of green velvet. Whatever he touches he leaves artificial, "enameled," yet charming. The verses added in the present edition are more pensive, even sombre. A life given to art wholly, without patriotism or religion or philosophy, does not prepare the greenest ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... have headaches it comes from tight-lacing, and not walking enough, and carrying all manner of nasty smells about with them. I know what headaches mean. How is a woman not to have a headache, when she carries a thing on the back of her poll as big as a gardener's wheel-barrow? ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... your treachery is spurring me, till I'm hard set to think you're the one I'm after lacing in my heart-strings half-an-hour gone by. (To Mahon.) Take him on from this, for I think bad the world should see me raging for a Munster liar, and ...
— The Playboy of the Western World • J. M. Synge
... subsided and a picture, clearer than most photographs, could be seen in the center. A wondrously slender, yellow-haired young girl clad in Grecian robes of pale blue sat in deep despond upon a plain wooden couch, with a black haired servant kneeling before her, apparently lacing sandals on ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... strip of deer hide eight inches long by one and a half wide, shave it, double the hair side in, and attach it to the seamy side of the quiver by perforating the leather and inserting a lacing of buckskin thongs. Leave the loop of this strap projecting two inches above the top of the quiver. In the bottom of your quiver drop a round piece of felt or carpet to prevent the arrow points coming ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... fortieth time that afternoon, it seemed to Ethel Brown Morton and her cousin, Ethel Blue, they untangled the hopelessly mixed garlands of the maypole and started the weavers once more to lacing and ...
— Ethel Morton at Rose House • Mabell S. C. Smith
... faced swiftly away, and at the same moment the Indian at the window staggered backward, dropping his rifle and cursing horribly in the only English he knew, as he clutched frantically at his shoulder. Chloe turned. MacNair was lacing his boots. He raised himself weakly to his feet, swaying uncertainly, with his hand pressed against his chest, and laughed harshly into the pain-twisted ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... the time of the French Revolution a reaction set in against tight lacing, and for a time there was a return to the early classical Greek costume. This style of dress prevailed, with various modifications, until about 1810, when corsets and tight lacing again returned with threefold fury. Buchan, a prominent writer of this period, says that it was by no means ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... has bar or star, No rich lacing adorns a sleeve; Further on our officers are, Let them your report receive. Higher up, on the hill up there, Overlooking this shady glen. There are their quarters—don't stop here, We are only some of ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... the man who is going to use the bag. For it is no easy matter to crawl into a sleeping-bag which is only just wide enough to allow one to get in, and if the way of the hair is against one it is doubly difficult. I had them all made as one-man bags, with lacing round the neck; this did not, of course, meet with the approval of all, as will be seen later. The upper part of this thick sleeping-bag was made of thinner reindeer-skin, so that we might be able to tie it closely round the neck; the thick skin will not draw so well and fit ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... in a very rich white silk petticoat, exceedingly full and short, to shew her neat pink slipper and pretty ancle, her pink corps de robe and straps, with white silk lacing down the stomacher, puffed shirt sleeves, with heavy lace robbins ending at the elbow, and fastened at the shoulders with at least eight or nine bows of narrow pink ribbon, a lawn handkerchief trimmed with broad lace, put on ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... upon St. Paul's churchyard, lying a pool of pale blue shadow in the rising dusk. From the City Room (inserting studs) one sees the river sheeted with light. From the office of the Literary Editor (lacing up one's shoes) one may study the wild pinnacle of Woolworth, faintly superfused with a brightness of gold and pink. From the office of one of our dramatic critics the view is negligible (being but a hardy brick wall), but the critic, debonair creature, ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... but with her tight-lacing must feel very uncomfortable and unwell, and wall sensible people must feel that she is very silly, and with her absurd boots her feet must pain her almost as much as the Chinese woman's shown above [right] pained her when ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... baffled Mrs. Simcoe, and perplexed her only the more. But it did not repel her nor beget distrust. A porcupine hides his flesh in bristling quills; but a magnolia, when its time has not yet come, folds its heart in and in with over-lacing tissues of creamy richness and fragrance. The flower is not sullen, it is ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... To dinner alone with my wife, who, poor wretch! sat undressed all day till ten at night, altering and lacing of a noble petticoat; while I by her making the boy read to me the Life of Julius Caesar, and Des Cartes' ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... edges of the jacket are brought as nearly together as possible along the centre of the man's back. Then a rope, on the principle of a shoe-lace, is run through the eyelets, and on the principle of a shoe-lacing the man is laced in the canvas. Only he is laced more severely than any person ever laces his shoe. They call it "cinching" in prison lingo. On occasion, when the guards are cruel and vindictive, or when the command has come down from above, in order to insure the ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... which cover all their hair, excepting just a small triangular piece over the forehead, pomatumed, or rather plaistered and powdered, without any hats: neither do they wear any stays, but only corsets (waistcoats or jumps.) Tight lacing is not known here, nor yet high and narrow heeled shoes. Because many of the ladies ci-devant of quality have emigrated or ran away, and that those which remain in Paris, keep within doors, I saw no face that was painted, excepting on the stage. Most of the men wear coats ...
— A Trip to Paris in July and August 1792 • Richard Twiss
... vegetation stole over the loveliness of Persephone and devoured one by one the divine offspring of Zeus; about the feet of the bound sun king in Pheroe and over the calm serene mockery of Hermes' smile the grey nets of the spiders' webs had been woven to and fro, across and across, with the lacing of a million threads, as Fate weaves round the limbs and covers the eyes of mortals as they stumble blindly from their birthplace to their grave. All things, the damp and the dust, the frost and the scorch, the newts and the rats, the fret of the flooded waters, and the stealing sure inroad ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... This was no more than Helen had expected, and she did not let the fact trouble her unduly. Working methodically she erected the little tent in such a position that it covered the injured man's bed; and then prepared a meal of such things as their resources afforded, lacing the coffee she had made with ...
— A Mating in the Wilds • Ottwell Binns
... blessed reason's intellectual sway, These barriers are bound to disappear, And leave the path to progress free and clear. The dogmatism of fashion too is crime, When injuring the human form sublime, By its stern mandates, which attract the weak, Causing them nature's holiest laws to break, By lacing tightly, to a model form, Which fashion sternly says should then be worn; This tightening in the vital organs so, Prevents the circulation's healthy flow, And thus the lungs and pliant ribs and heart, Incapable of ...
— Home Lyrics • Hannah. S. Battersby
... on us the road grew increasingly lonely. Woods of oak-trees were about us, their trunks mossy, their branches lacing; on our left was a narrow river thick with rushes and smooth green stones. So rutty was the earth that our wheels sank into it and our engine labored. There was a charming sylvan look about the scenery; we seemed to be alone in the universe: I could ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... modesty is responsible for much of the tight lacing during pregnancy. This is injurious to both the mother and the child, and is one of the reasons for various uncomfortable sensations. It helps to bring on the morning sickness. It is nature's intention that the young should be free and comfortable previous to birth, and for this reason a double ...
— Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker
... Giddenem, the governor of the slaved, and that personage appeared, his rank being displayed in the richness of his dress. His tunic, which was slit up the sides, was of fine purple; his ears were weighted with heavy rings; and the strips of cloth enfolding his legs were joined together with a lacing of gold which extended from his ankles to his hips, like a serpent winding about a tree. In his fingers, which were laden with rings, he held a necklace of jet beads, so as to recognise the men who were subject to ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... in his pockets, remained where he was. Under his continued inspection, the fingers of Bangs grew clumsy. He fumbled with the knot, and, having unfastened it, prolonged to the utmost the process of lacing his shoes. He knew what must come as soon as he settled back in his chair. It had been coming for days. He was in for an unpleasant ten minutes. But the situation was one he had deliberately created as the only possible way of bringing about a serious talk with ...
— The Girl in the Mirror • Elizabeth Garver Jordan
... Corks. They could hear the leather-thonged polo-quirt lacing the little fellow's well-rounded barrel. Then The Rabbit's shrill neigh came across ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... flaccid-looking, were brought out, and by tying a stone and a line to them they were both very soon thoroughly soaked. He then took them out, and brought them into the house. First he took one, and undoing the lacing which confined one side, he drew out a flaccid bladder. "This is the sort of football we use here," he said, holding it up to Selby. "It cannot be easily rendered unserviceable by thorn, nail, or spike ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston
... I didn't bless her manipulation of these things was when I rose at 6.30 a.m., by which time they had been frozen stiff and shrunk to boot. The ones lacing the flap leading out of the tent were as hard to undo as if they had been made of iron. On these occasions "Tuppence," who had hardly realized the seriousness of war, would wake up and want me instantly to go out, half dressed as I was, and throw stones for his benefit! ...
— Fanny Goes to War • Pat Beauchamp
... lacing up a pair of high field boots; they were massive things with heavy, clumped soles, iron tips and heels. Now ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... taking him on myself? Jack is due for a good lacing. He's strong enough, but he hasn't the science, ...
— The Boy Allies Under Two Flags • Ensign Robert L. Drake
... He, too, held his hat in hand, an incredibly stained and battered felt atrocity. His seamed face was nut brown under constant exposure to the sun. His garments were faded nondescripts, and on his feet were thick-soled, high-lacing boots. He gave an impression of dry dinginess, like rawhide, and his eyes were mean and shifty. He might have been fifty or he might have been ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter
... "Young whelp—he needs a lacing," McMurtrey muttered to Grief. "Come on, let us quit, you chaps. I want to keep an eye on him. If he goes too far I'll throw him out on the beach, company instructions ...
— A Son Of The Sun • Jack London
... year of spinsterhood. It seems rather an awkward way of getting at the future, but if not more blind than other processes of love divination, would at least require the guarantee of the absence of tight-lacing among ...
— Storyology - Essays in Folk-Lore, Sea-Lore, and Plant-Lore • Benjamin Taylor
... squirrels who liked to rip open the sacks covering the blossoms which were being treated. Deer mice, too, I found, have a habit of climbing the stems of hazel bushes and gnawing at the nuts long before they are mature enough to use for seed. Later I learned to protect hybrid nuts by lacing flat pieces of window screening over each branch, thus making a mouse-proof enclosure. Even after gathering the nuts I discovered that precautions were necessary to prevent rodents from reaching them. The best way I found to do this is to plant nuts in cages of galvanized hardware ...
— Growing Nuts in the North • Carl Weschcke
... for bodice-lacing or for looking-glass grimacing; Down my hair went as I hurried, tumbling half-way to my heels; God forbid your ever knowing, when there's blood around her flowing, How the lonely, helpless daughter of ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... there was such a lacing of stays, and tying of sandals, and dressing of hair, as never can take place with a proper degree of bustle out of a boarding-school. The smaller girls managed to be in everybody's way, and were pushed about accordingly; and the elder ones dressed, and tied, and flattered, and envied, ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... by tight-lacing into a notable specimen of the peg-top figure, bulgy at the bust and shoulders, and tapering off at the waist. She had also squeezed her feet into boots that were much too small for them, and fluffed her hair out till her head ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... developed nowhere else, can, nevertheless, rank the glorious privilege of dining with the smallest of the diurnal personal worries which necessity imposes on mankind—with buttoning your waistcoat, for example, or lacing your stays! Trust no such monster as this with your tender secrets, your loves and hatreds, your hopes and fears. His heart is uncorrected by his stomach, and the social ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... lacing laboriously, whilst Tom lay on his face kicking and plunging about. Dot looked at ...
— Troublesome Comforts - A Story for Children • Geraldine Glasgow
... Nina muttered, lacing high white buckskin shoes, with some shortening of breath. "Granny ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris
... though there was comparatively little to be done, the ship having been kept as far as could be in fighting order all night, yet there was "clearing of decks, lacing of nettings, making of bulwarks, fitting of waist-cloths, arming of tops, tallowing of pikes, slinging of yards, doubling of sheets and tacks," enough to satisfy even the pedantical soul of Richard Hawkins himself. ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... time Mazarin was foiled in his expectation: he read nothing upon the face of Athos, not even the respect he was accustomed to see on all faces. Athos was dressed in black, with a simple lacing of silver. He wore the Holy Ghost, the Garter, and the Golden Fleece, three orders of such importance, that a king alone, or else a player, could ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... took it out, it was so small that it did not look like a dress at all, but it was very pretty. And he ordered her then to dip it in the water bucket. When it was wet, he was able to put it on, and when the lacing thong at the bottom touched the wound, it ...
— Eskimo Folktales • Unknown
... know I'm an absurd person in spite of my looks. I've proved it to them by my actions. I've begun at once before they could have time to judge by my appearance. I've told them instantly that I'm a Christian Scientist, and a believer in the value of tight-lacing and in ghosts, an anti-vaccinator, a Fabian, a member of 'The Masculine Club,' a 'spirit,' a friend of Mahatmas, an intimate of the 'Rational Dress' set—you know, who wear things like half inflated balloons in Piccadilly—a vegetarian, a follower of Mrs. Besant, a drinker of hop bitters and Zozophine, ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... she wears, if she wears any at all, should be of the modern kind: not one that presses the womb and the other abdominal organs down, but one that supports the abdominal walls, and rather raises the abdominal organs up. The lacing or buttoning must be from below up, and not from above down. That it should not in any way interfere with the freedom of respiration goes without saying. Constipation if any, to be treated, must be treated intelligently, by mild measures (see Constipation, in the chapter on pregnancy), and care ...
— Woman - Her Sex and Love Life • William J. Robinson
... iver wrote an' a dale more that the gallery shouted,' said the man of war, carefully lacing his boots. 'Did I not tell you av Silver's Theatre in Dublin, whin I was younger than I am now an' a patron av the drama? Ould Silver wud never pay actor-man or woman their just dues, an' by consequince his comp'nies was collapsible at the last minut. Thin the bhoys wud ...
— Soldier Stories • Rudyard Kipling
... fifty little private rooms, some containing sofas—and at least a dozen women to attend to the comfort of visitors. They are regular Finnish bathing-women, wearing the ordinary uniform of their calling, viz. a thick blue serge skirt, red flannel outside stays, opening at the lacing in front and showing the white cotton chemise that is de rigueur, cut low at the neck and with quite short sleeves, a very pretty simple dress that allows great freedom to the arms when massaging, one of the important items of ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... productions are painted poems, they belong to a sort of poetry which tells itself without an articulated story. The master is pre-eminent for the resolution, the ease and quickness, with which he reproduces instantaneous motion—the lacing-on of armour, with the head bent back so stately—the fainting lady—the embrace, rapid as the kiss, caught with death itself from dying [150] lips—some momentary conjunction of mirrors and polished armour and still water, by which all the sides of a solid image are exhibited at ...
— The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater
... before the Dublin Nat. Hist. Soc. quoted in 'Cottage Gardener' 1856 page 161.) states that a first-rate silver-spangled Hamburgh hen gradually lost the most characteristic qualities of the breed, for the black lacing to her feathers disappeared, and her legs changed from leaden-blue to white: but what makes the case remarkable is, that this tendency ran in the blood for her sister changed in a similar but less strongly marked manner; and chickens produced from this latter hen were at ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... and seldom, if ever, condescends to delineate a lady in crinoline. His beau-ideal of female beauty is comprised in an hour-glass waist, a skirt that fits close to the form, a sandalled shoe, and very long ringlets; whereas tight lacing, narrow skirts, sandalled shoes, and ringlets have been banished from the English modes any time these fifteen years. Those among George's critics, too, who are sticklers for exactitude in the "abstract and brief chronicle of the time" complain that his ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... We came to the lacing of the stays, with their exaggerated length. "Aber!" exclaimed Frau Nirlanger, not daring to laugh because of the strange snugness. "Ach!" and again, "Aber ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... the engine room. One of the engineer's helpers, a boy who looked hardly older than Bob, stood beside a swiftly moving belt, pouring something on it out of a tin can. His sleeve was dangling, and every time the belt lacing whirled past, it flipped the sleeve like a clutching finger trying to jerk his ...
— Sure Pop and the Safety Scouts • Roy Rutherford Bailey
... me. She is pretty, and would be plump if the art of the corsetiere had not abolished plumpness. Her hat conveys a greeting from the Rue Lafayette, her little high-heeled boots show faultless ankles and the latest way of lacing up superfluous fat above them. A hole and two uneven stones maliciously intercept the progress of that little foot. Mamma stumbles, and is promptly and chivalrously replaced in an upright position by the son. "Mon Dieu!" she ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... of haughtiness that comes of great topics, 'The plain smock has come in again, with silk lacing, giving that charming ...
— Echoes of the War • J. M. Barrie
... to risk that and find the chapter; and then Daisy read perseveringly all through the rest of her dressing, till it was finished. All the while June was fastening her frock, and tying her sash, and lacing her boots, Daisy stood or sat with the Bible in her hands and her eyes ...
— Melbourne House, Volume 1 • Susan Warner
... have changed. This is not casuistry. 'T is a concept not to be found in Panaetius or Cicero or the Jesuit Fathers. It means that we are not to wear our boyhood's waistcoats, but to be measured for manhood's. Tight-lacing is bad for the spiritual circulation. 'Get rid of the Hebrew old clo', cried that curious Carlyle, the chief dealer in them. Amen, say I: but do not let us therefore go naked. And since we have stumbled upon 'Sartor Resartus,' permit me a comparison in keeping. ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... position of the pee-wit to keep it in the shade, sweep out my bungalow, and perform all sorts of menial offices. Every noble loafer about my person seems anxious to have Osman continually employed in contributing to my comfort; Mohammed Ahzim Khan even deprecates the independence displayed in lacing up my own shoes. "Osman," he says, "let Osman ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... head over the lacing of her habit and made no answer. The old woman looked at her ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... drive cannot be had, a belt must be used, either from a main shaft, or a countershaft. The belt must be of liberal size, and must be of the "endless" variety—with a scarfed joint. Leather belt lacing, or even the better grades of wire lacing, unless very carefully used, will prove unsatisfactory. The dynamo feels every variation in speed, and this is reflected in the lights. There is nothing quite so annoying as flickering lights. Usually this ...
— Electricity for the farm - Light, heat and power by inexpensive methods from the water - wheel or farm engine • Frederick Irving Anderson
... sternly, while she stooped to unlace George's boots. There was no compassion in her heart, and it seemed to her, while she struggled with the wet lacing, that the fumes of whiskey spread contagion and disease over the room. She was not only hard and bitter—she felt that she loathed him ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... watched the wood, and held it very strictly. Now Arthur feared lest the Saxons should steal from their coverts by night, and escape from his hand. He commanded, therefore, his meinie to cut down the trees on the skirts of the forest. These trunks he placed one upon another, lacing the branches fast together, and enclosing his foe. Then he sat down on the further side of his barrier, so that none might issue forth, nor enter in. Those within the wood were altogether dismayed, ...
— Arthurian Chronicles: Roman de Brut • Wace
... toilet used to consist of dragging on trousers, guernsey and boots, and lacing up the last-named aboard his boat, if at all, it is now a function delightful to witness as he stumps backwards and forwards between the kitchen looking-glass and the scullery-sink. What a washing and spluttering! what a boot-blacking and hair ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... the hips and shoulders invariably out of proportion in width.... In deforming the waist almost all the vital organs are affected by the pressure, and the ribs are pushed out of their proper place." "Tight-lacing is ugly, because it distorts the natural lines of the figure, and gives an appearance of uncertainty and unsafeness.... Men seldom take to wife a girl who has too small a waist, whether natural or artificial." "In architecture, a pillar or support of any kind is called debased ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... intuition peculiar to priests, the most sagacious of men; and although he did not know that this girl of twenty-three was thinking of overturning Bonaparte as she lay there twisting with slender fingers the frogged lacing of her riding-habit, he was well aware that she was agitated by ...
— An Historical Mystery • Honore de Balzac
... and though there was comparatively little to be done, the ship having been kept as far as could be in fighting order all night, yet there was "clearing the decks, lacing the nettings, making of bulwarks, fitting of waist-cloths, arming of tops, tallowing of pikes, slinging of yards, doubling of sheets and tacks," enough to satisfy even the pedantical ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... nodding and voicing a friendly, "Boa dia." Women, too, watched them from windows and doors, and children slyly peeped around corners until something more important—such as a cat, a goat, or a gorgeous butterfly—came their way. Tim went inside and slicked up a bit by buttoning and lacing his clothes and combing his rebellious hair. At length a long boat put out from the farther shore and came surging across the ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel
... So tightly was Swanelil lacing her vest, That forth spouted milk, from each lily-white breast; That saw the Queen-mother, and thus she begun: "What maketh the milk from thy bosom to run?" "O this is not milk, my dear mother, I vow; It is but the mead I was drinking just now." "Ha! out on thee minion! these ...
— Romantic Ballads - translated from the Danish; and Miscellaneous Pieces • George Borrow
... monkey with this, lacing it with half a cup of catsup, making a sort of pink baboon out of what should be ...
— The Complete Book of Cheese • Robert Carlton Brown
... be the same batteries as in the last game, Hendrix and Chase for Harmony, Donohue and Mullane for Chester. If for any reason either of these star pitchers should be so unfortunate as to get a "lacing," then possibly one of the substitutes might be introduced so as to save the day; but there was a slim chance of any such ...
— Jack Winters' Baseball Team - Or, The Rivals of the Diamond • Mark Overton
... his indoor shoes into the area. In the next street, beyond pursuit, he sat down on a doorstep and, put on his boots, lacing them with difficulty, for he was half blind with tears and anger. He could not make up his mind how to kill Edith. Nothing seemed quite bad enough. He thought of boiling her in oil or rolling her down hill in a cask full of spikes, after the manner of some fairy story that Christine had ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... Otto, and flew dancing with him through the crowd. The heat, the noise, and, above all, the exaggerated lacing, affected Wilhelm; he felt unwell. Otto led him to a bench and would have unfastened his dress, but all the young ladies, true to their part, sprang forward, pushed Otto aside, surrounded their sick companion and concealed her, whilst they ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen
... was also a round opening on one side, only large enough, however, to admit the arm; but this aperture was partially closed from within. In front, a deep-dyed rug of osiers, covering the entrance way, was intricately laced to the standing part of the tent. As I divided this lacing with my cutlass, there arose an outburst of voices from the Islanders. And they covered their faces, as the interior ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... gone, which so sickened Mrs. Morel. As she heard him sousing heartily in cold water, heard the eager scratch of the steel comb on the side of the bowl, as he wetted his hair, she closed her eyes in disgust. As he bent over, lacing his boots, there was a certain vulgar gusto in his movement that divided him from the reserved, watchful rest of the family. He always ran away from the battle with himself. Even in his own heart's privacy, he excused himself, saying, ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... young lady begins to round into proportions like the women in Titian's and Giorgione's pictures, she is distressed above measure, and begins to make secret inquiries into reducing diet, and to cling desperately to the strongest corset-lacing as her only hope. It would require one to be better educated than most of our girls are, to be willing to look like the Sistine Madonna ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... helmets, hauberks, coat-armures; **trappings Lordes in parements* on their coursers, *ornamental garb ; Knightes of retinue, and eke squiers, Nailing the spears, and helmes buckeling, Gniding* of shieldes, with lainers** lacing; *polishing There as need is, they were nothing idle: **lanyards The foamy steeds upon the golden bridle Gnawing, and fast the armourers also With file and hammer pricking to and fro; Yeomen on foot, and knaves* many one ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... Rather the metallic tips of lacings or straps. Agugeta is a leather lacing or strap. The contemporary Latin translator ...
— The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 • Various
... should know the truth about it, because he said he had never lied to you. He was always sure that if he were shot it would be in the back while he was lacing his boots, or at some other unromantic moment. And in that case he said he could lie to Anonyma and your cousin vicariously through the War Office, which would write to them about Glory, and Duty, and Thanks Due. But he wanted me to write ...
— This Is the End • Stella Benson
... Lace a Quarter Turn Belt so as to Have an Equal Strain on Both Edges of the Belt.—Begin on the outside of the belt at the middle, pass one end of the lacing through one end of the belt and bring it out through the corresponding hole of the other end of the belt, laying it diagonally off to the left. Now pass the other end of the lacing through the hole last used, and carry it over the first strand of the lacing on the inside of the belt, passing ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... concluded, thoughtfully lacing his long white fingers, "that, avoiding the hazards of cab and railway carriage, we motor to Chiltern: the night being fine and the road, I am told, exceptionally good. Miss Dorothy, what ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... thick neck, a round body, and a mild, intelligent face, and led him to Sheila who mounted from her sack. Thatcher carefully adjusted the stirrups, a primitive process that involved the wearisome lacing and unlacing of leather thongs. Sheila bade him a bright and adventurous "Good-bye." thanked the unknown owner of the horse, and started. The pony showed some unwillingness to leave his companions, fretted and tossed his head, and made a ...
— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt
... strait lacing, squeezing for a shape, till you mould my boy's head like a sugar-loaf, and instead of a man-child, make me father to a crooked billet. Lastly, to the dominion of the tea-table I submit; but with proviso, that you exceed not in your province, but restrain yourself to native and simple tea-table ...
— The Way of the World • William Congreve
... rather skinny and angular. She wore her lilac-colored frock; her waist being pinched in to a degree which made you think of a fit of the colic when you looked at her—and gave you a dim vision of a coroner's inquest on a case of death by tight lacing! A long red sash, tied in a most elaborate bow, gave a very brilliant air to her dress generally. She had a thin gold chain round her neck, and wore long white gloves; her left hand holding her pocket-handkerchief, which she had so suffused with bergamot that it scented the whole ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... according to the late Canon Raven, was the Roman station Gariannonum of the Notitia Imperii. Its walls are built of flint-rubble concrete, and there are lacing courses of tiles. There is no wall on the west, and Canon Raven used to contend that one existed there but has been destroyed. But this conjecture seems improbable. That side was probably defended by the sea, which has considerably ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield
... This was fastened with a little lacing under the hanging sleeve, and was the usual favour asked for and worn by ...
— Bayard: The Good Knight Without Fear And Without Reproach • Christopher Hare
... up, and where and how by the grace of God to fasten them, that M. Etienne, with roars of laughter, came unsteadily to my aid. He insisted on stuffing the whole of my jerkin under my blouse to give my figure the proper curves, and to make me a waist he drew the lacing-cords till I was like to suffocate. His mirth had by this time got me to laughing so that every time he pulled me in, a fit of merriment would jerk the laces from his fingers before he could tie them. This happened once and again, and the more it happened ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... got nervous diseases and all sorts of things wrong with them from over-much tea and tight lacing," replied Errington, "and the few who are tolerably healthy are too bouncing by half, going in for hunting and such-like amusements till they grow blowsy and fat, and coarse as tom-boys or grooms. They can never hit the juste milieu. Well!" and he rose from ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... polite society strong colognes and other perfumes are used. Show me a woman who girts her waist with corsets or any tight clothing, and I will warrant you that the smell from her body will be sickening in the extreme. The special reason for this is, that the lacing comes immediately where the transverse colon crosses her body. Now, if the sigmoid-flexure becomes loaded, because of its folding upon itself, how much more will the transverse colon become clogged if unnaturally folded ...
— The Royal Road to Health • Chas. A. Tyrrell
... the floor, lacing up her own stout boots, and an instant later she followed her brother, pursued by a wail of dismay from the adjoining chamber. Through the chill morning light she hurried, asking many questions, but receiving no coherent reply from the ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... errors in clothing are those which affect the chest and body. Tight lacing still plays too important a part in dress. It interferes with the free and healthy movements of the body, and effects a pressure which is alike injurious to the organs of respiration, circulation, and digestion. ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... know how they managed, there being but one man among them. He informed me, however, that his wives, the two native women, assisted him to work the boat, which had been well prepared for the rough weather they have to encounter in Bass Strait by a canvas half-deck, which, lacing in the centre, could be rolled up on the gunwale ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes
... recognized the hat, edged with white feathers, the full-bottomed wig, and the peculiar lacing of the white velvet coat, and on the stranger turning he immediately knew his friend ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... Lacing, What Dressing, What Moulding, What Scolding, What Painting, What Fainting, What Loving, What Shoving, What Cooing, What Wooing, What Crosses, What Tosses, What Actions, What Fractions, ...
— The Merry-Thought: or the Glass-Window and Bog-House Miscellany - Parts 2, 3 and 4 • Hurlo Thrumbo (pseudonym)
... rather than miss the pleasure of seeing the dear Rogue in the dock. When my father once stood on the lecturer's rostrum, and delivered his excellent discourse, called "Medical Hints to Maids and Mothers on Tight Lacing and Teething," the benches were left empty by the ungrateful women of England, who were not in the slightest degree anxious to feast their eyes on the sight of a learned adviser and respectable man. If these facts led to one inevitable conclusion, ...
— A Rogue's Life • Wilkie Collins
... light, over strange fastenings (all of Johnnie's fingers had turned into thumbs). The Father had done his part particularly well, and the suit fitted nicely. So did the leggings, so soon as Johnnie, discovering that he had them on upside down, inverted them. The buttoning and the belting, the lacing and the knotting, at an end, he put on the hat. But was undecided as to whether or not he should wear it at a slant of forty-five degrees, as One-Eye wore his, or straight, as was Mr. Perkins's custom. Finally he chose the latter fashion, took a long breath, like a swimmer coming up out of ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... no more. He finished lacing his boots in silence. What he had been so much afraid of had happened: he and the twins had got under ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim
... days at Malmaison, when one day one of her ladies, whom she had caused to be sent for, found, on entering the room, to her great astonishment, Cardinal Fesch discharging the duty of a lady's maid by lacing up his sister, who had on only her underclothing ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... Weak points in the flower-fence facing, Was forced to put up a blind And be safe in my corset-lacing. ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning
... sou'wester is, when needed, a very useful head-gear. A pair of cloth-lined india-rubber gloves will be found desirable in early spring, when it is quite possible that the temperature may be low enough for snow. A pair of stout lacing boots, made with uppers reaching well up the leg, will be found best, as they protect the feet from getting damp when going into or leaving a boat, even though one should need to step into the water; and if your waterproof coat is long, as it should be, the necessity ...
— Scotch Loch-Fishing • AKA Black Palmer, William Senior
... while the working gowns of the ladies were discarded for others of silk, made, in the parlance of the time, "sack fashion, or without waist, and termed "an elegant negligee,"— this word being applied to any frock without lacing strings. ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... nothing of such cosmopolitan miscellanies as wrinkled apples, dusty nuts, cracked slate pencils and fly-blown mock jewellery. The moral good which you derive, in the first pane of a window, from the contemplation of memoirs of murdered missionaries and serious tracts against intemperance and tight-lacing, you lose in the second, before such worldly temptations as gingerbread, shirt-studs, and fascinating white hats for Sunday wear, at two and ninepence apiece. Let no man rashly say he has seen all that British enterprise can do for the extension of British commerce, until ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... her imperial ermine to be anything rarer than rabbit-skin. My own earliest ermine was humbler still, being constructed of the very democratic white canton flannel turned wrong side out, while the ermine's characteristic little black tails were formed by short bits of round shoe-lacing. The only advantage I can honestly claim for this domestic ermine is its freedom from the moths, who dearly love imported garments of soft fine cloth and rare lining. I have had and have seen others have, in the ...
— Stage Confidences • Clara Morris
... title Skion Middel, the first line reading, "The maiden was lacing so tightly her vest,") in The Monthly Magazine, November 1823, p. 308. Apart from the opening line, the text of the two versions (with the exception of a few trifling ...
— A Bibliography of the writings in Prose and Verse of George Henry Borrow • Thomas J. Wise
... frequenting corrupt society been acquired through a similar motive, or through the mere desire to enjoy the charm of a forbidden pleasure or to stand well with some dissipated companions! How large a proportion of lifelong female debility is due to an early habit of tight lacing, springing only from the silliest vanity! How many lives have been sacrificed through the careless recklessness which refused to take the trouble of changing wet clothes! How many have been shattered and shortened by excess in things ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... sterilized milk. They wanted his photograph for literary supplements, his autograph for charity bazaars, his name on committees, literary, educational, and social; above all, they wanted his opinion on everything: on Christianity, Buddhism, tight lacing, the drug-habit, democratic government, female suffrage and love. Perhaps the chief benefit of this demand was his incidentally learning from it how few opinions he really had: the only one that remained with him was a rooted horror of all forms of correspondence. He had been unutterably ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... Miss Burney had to rise and dress herself early, that she might be ready to answer the royal bell, which rang at half after seven. Till about eight she attended in the Queen's dressing-room, and had the honour of lacing her august mistress's stays, and of putting on the hoop, gown, and neckhandkerchief. The morning was chiefly spent in rummaging drawers and laying fine clothes in their proper places. Then the Queen was to be powdered and dressed ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... effect. Viola had doubtless, as she had said, struggled to keep her slim shape, but she had kept it, and, what was more, kept it without evidence of struggle. If she was in the least hampered by tight lacing and length of undergarment, she gave no evidence of it as she curled herself up in a big chair and (Jane wondered how she could bring herself to do it) crossed her legs, revealing one delicate foot and ankle, ...
— The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... which nature had rendered them the momentary depositaries. Stays or corsets may be used, in a proper manner, during the first five or six months of pregnancy, but after that they should either be laid aside, or worn very loosely. Any attempt at concealing pregnancy, by tight lacing and the application of a stronger busk, cannot be too severely condemned. By this false delicacy the mother is subjected to great suffering, and the child placed in jeopardy. The shape of the stays should be moulded to that of the changing figure, and great care should ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... and out so often. However, we managed to get a bath and some clean clothes, which made everybody feel better. We had no regular billets at Dranoutre but rigged up little shelter tents, somewhat similar to those used in the U. S. Army, by lacing two or more rubber sheets together. Our cooking was done by gun crews, somewhat on the order of a lot of Boy Scouts, in that no two crews had the same ideas or used the same methods. My squad dug out a nice little ...
— The Emma Gees • Herbert Wes McBride
... is laced upon the frame, taking the lacing cotton through the double edge formed by the increased and decreased stitches. If the four corners of the netting are tied at each corner of the frame before beginning the lacing, that operation is greatly facilitated. The netting should be laced as tightly ...
— Beeton's Book of Needlework • Isabella Beeton
... amidst unfriendly or uninteresting companions. The history of an ordinary day was this. Miss Burney had to rise and dress herself early, that she might be ready to answer the royal bell, which rang at half after seven. Till about eight she attended in the Queen's dressing-room, and had the honor of lacing her august mistress's stays, and of putting on the hoop, gown, and neck-handkerchief. The morning was chiefly spent in rummaging drawers and laying fine clothes in their proper places. Then the Queen was to be powdered and ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... world is lying, in a manner, under the curse of God; that we have something else to do than to enjoy fine prospects; and that, though it may be allowable to taste the pleasure now and then, we ought to wait till the other life to enjoy ourselves. Such was the strait-lacing in which the good man was forever trying to compress his genial, buoyant, and grateful nature.—Scott came again and again; and Wordsworth and Southey met to do him honor. The tourist must remember the Swan Inn,—the white house beyond Grasmere, under ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... emotions. The gardeners broke off a good deal of mould about her roots, and they muttered one to another something about her dying of it. But Rosa thought no more of that than a pretty lady does when her physician tells her she will die of tight lacing; not she! She was going to be put into ...
— Bimbi • Louise de la Ramee
... I? Why, don't you think me strong enough? You should see me lacing up my mistress. There's many a ...
— Redemption and Two Other Plays • Leo Tolstoy et al
... are too apt to be struck with Images of Beauty; and that the Passage where the Gentleman is said to span the Waist of Pamela with his Hand, is enough to ruin a Nation of Women by Tight-lacing. ...
— Samuel Richardson's Introduction to Pamela • Samuel Richardson
... Thomas Thorl's yard, meditating on the goodness of Providence, and looking at the sheaves of victual on the field, that I heard his wife, and two three other carlins, with their Bohea in the inside of the hedge, and no doubt but it had a lacing of the conek, {3} for they were all cracking like pen-guns. But I gave them a sign, by a loud host, that Providence sees all, and it skailed the bike; for I heard them, like guilty creatures, whispering, and gathering up their ...
— The Annals of the Parish • John Galt
... physician formerly connected with this Seminary, speaking of customs of modern society which have impaired women's powers of endurance, remarks: "The most pernicious of these customs is certainly improper dress, viz., tight lacing, long and heavy skirts dragging from the hips, and the great weight of clothing upon the lower portion of the back; also, insufficient covering of the lower extremities." The present physician attributes perhaps the greater part of the ill-health from which young ladies suffer, ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett
... umbrellas. Probably this whole 4,000 people do not possess two dozen umbrellas or twice as many overcoats. The women go about home with bare feet a great part of the summer. They never wear corsets or other lacing. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 433, April 19, 1884 • Various
... under new carpets. Suddenly, in the middle of her work, on a stuffy-still July day, she called a wind out of the Northwest, a wind blown under an arch of steel-bellied clouds, a wicked bitter wind with a lacing of hail to it, a wind that came and was gone in less than ten minutes, but blocked the roads with fallen trees, toppled over a barn, and—blew potatoes out of the ground! When that was done, a white cloud shaped like a ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... white and the shadows so slender and blue. All through the lovely Stillwater woods was a fine frosty stillness. It was splendid to skim down those long wonderful avenues of crusted snow, with the mossy grey boles on either hand, and overhead the lacing, leafless boughs, I just drank in the air and the beauty until my very soul was thrilling, and I went on and on and on until I was most delightfully lost. That is, I didn't know just where I was, but the woods weren't so big ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... shuddered to his feet; Lazenby winced and drew back to the wall, putting his hand before his face as though the sounds were striking him; the old Indian covered his head with his arms upon the floor. Wine Face knelt, her face all grey, her fingers lacing and interlacing with pain. Only Pierre sat with masterful stillness, his eyes never moving from the face of the player; his arms folded; his feet firmly wedded to the floor. The sound became strangely distressing. It shocked the flesh and angered the nerves. Upon ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... head-earing to the tack diagonally, making it nearly triangular, and is used to contract it in very blowing weather. (2) A balance reef-band is generally placed in all gaff-sails; the band runs from the throat to the clew, so that it may be reefed either way—by lacing the foot or lower half; or by lacing the gaff drooped to the band: the latter is only done in the worst weather.—This is a point on which seamen may select—but the old plan, as first given, affords more power; (2) is ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... said a little, diminutive urchin, wearing a vizard with a couple of sprouting horns of an elegant scarlet hue, having, moreover, a black serge jerkin drawn close to his body by lacing, garnished with red stockings, and shoes so shaped as to resemble cloven feet—"in very truth, sir, and you are in the right on't. It is my father the Devil, who, being taken in labour, has delayed our present purpose, by increasing ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott |
