"Mat" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of Helena's dress as she left her room reached us in the silence. I remained at the open door of the dining-room, and Maria approached and stood near me. We were both frightened. Euneece stepped forward, and stood on the mat at the foot of the stairs, waiting. Her back was toward me; I could only see that she was as still as a statue. The rustling of the dress came nearer. Oh, heavens! what was going to happen? My teeth chattered in my head; I held by Maria's shoulder. Drops of perspiration ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins
... the door. A square envelope lay upon the mat—a curious envelope, pale amethyst in colour. Picking it up, I found it to bear my ...
— The Quest of the Sacred Slipper • Sax Rohmer
... fashioned than by barking them, and lopping off their branches. Each mast has only two shrouds made of twisted rattan, which are often both shifted to the weather-side; and the halyard, when the yard is up, serves instead of a third shroud. The sails are made of mat, strengthened every thee feet by an horizontal rib of bamboo; they run upon the mast with hoops, and when they are lowered down, they fold upon the deck. These merchantmen carry no cannon; and it appears, from this whole description, that they ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... wiping the mud off his boots on the great mat in the front hall, Bude came out of the lounge hall with a pile of dishes ...
— The Yellow Streak • Williams, Valentine
... three miles back, cantering in front of a tricycle. There was nothing to be done but to go leisurely home, waiting every now and then to see if the dog was coming, while growing always more and more uneasy at his non-appearance. At last the home was reached—and on the front-door mat ...
— 'Murphy' - A Message to Dog Lovers • Major Gambier-Parry
... not, but he has, during the afternoon, sent the long-boat off with the truest hands aboard. I heard the men talking, as they passed backwards and forwards, that Bill o' Dartmouth, Sailing Jack, Mat Collins, and the Fire-fly rovers, as we used to call them—those boys who had been aboard with you in foreign parts—had gone ashore by your orders; and I know there are five or six—those Martinicos and Sagrinios, and the devil's own O's, that are 'fore and aft in all things with Jeromio. There's ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... gnarled, old oaks, whose dry leaves still clung to the twisted branches and rustled in the crisp air. A fat, sleek, black Tabby lay asleep on the warm porch-rail; a gaunt, ungainly greyhound lay sunning himself on the door mat, and from inside somewhere came the sound of a canary's riotous song. The whole place breathed of home, and with a deep sigh of content, Peace lifted her great, brown eyes to the President's face and whispered, "It seems ...
— The Lilac Lady • Ruth Alberta Brown
... Cellarman of the cellars of Pebbleson Nephew. The Joey Ladle in question. A slow and ponderous man, of the drayman order of human architecture, dressed in a corrugated suit and bibbed apron, apparently a composite of door-mat and rhinoceros-hide. ...
— No Thoroughfare • Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins
... was made of branches of trees stuck together with mud, and his clothing consisted of a grass mat tied around his middle. But his relationship to the chief and the sorcerer gave him a certain dignity, and he was much addicted to solitary thought. Perhaps it was natural that these thoughts frequently turned upon his ...
— American Fairy Tales • L. Frank Baum
... that welcome stuff," he burst forth, in husky, alcoholic accents; "that goes on the door-mat!" It was plain that he was very angry. "If that racket means welcome, I don't want it. Take that clothes-line off of me." Carara loosened the noose, and his captive rolled up the steps mopping his face with ...
— Going Some • Rex Beach
... murdered her." Eric crossed the hall to his bedroom. The front door was still open, and on the mat lay Barbara's scarf. He was glad of an excuse to postpone undressing and spent five minutes lovingly packing it in tissue paper for his secretary to carry round. It would be savagery not to write a ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna
... too much advice from your boisterous friend, dear Sir Julien," he asserted. "Mark my words, he will try to keep you here, cooling your heels upon the mat. He will prevent you from raising your hand to knock upon the door of destiny. These men who write are like that. They do not ...
— The Mischief Maker • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... in an inn, because, she said, misfortunes and ill-luck had brought her to that position. The hard, narrow, wretched, rickety bed of Don Quixote stood first in the middle of this star-lit stable, and close beside it Sancho made his, which merely consisted of a rush mat and a blanket that looked as if it was of threadbare canvas rather than of wool. Next to these two beds was that of the carrier, made up, as has been said, of the pack-saddles and all the trappings of the ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... for each team. Two are lined up in front of the starting line and two opposite on the distance line. One of the players on the starting line is given a lighted candle. A mat is placed half way between the starting and the distance lines. At the signal to start the player holding the candle advances to the mat, executes a forward roll on the mat, holding the candle in his hand. Should ...
— School, Church, and Home Games • George O. Draper
... 45 degrees, M'bo sighted the gleam of fires through the tree stems away to the left, and we bore down on it, listening to its drum. Viewed through the bars of the tree stems the scene was very picturesque. The village was just a collection of palm mat-built huts, very low and squalid. In its tiny street, an affair of some sixty feet long and twenty wide, were a succession of small fires. The villagers themselves, however, were the striking features in the ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... the curtains were not drawn. There was, therefore, a rug, an obstruction of some sort against the bottom of the door. But earlier in the evening Wogan's foot had slipped upon the polished boards; there had been no mat or skin at all. It had been pushed there since. Wogan could not doubt for what reason. It was to conceal the light of a lamp or candle within the room. Someone, in a word, was prying in Wogan's room, and Wogan began to consider ...
— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason
... came about that in a room of five white cots and three barred windows, with the aid of a practical nurse and a tiny gas stove on a tin mat, Lilly prepared her daughter ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... Joseph Blackburn, Russia Mat Dealer, John Davis, Painter, John Williams, Cheesemonger, Bryan Mills, Packer, Michael Williams, ...
— A Sketch of the Life of the late Henry Cooper - Barrister-at-Law, of the Norfolk Circuit; as also, of his Father • William Cooper
... she; "thy daddy put his hand on my head like a son when he came back from his banishment in Spain, and I keened over thy mother dear when she died. The hair of Peggy Bheg's head is thy door-mat, and her son's blood is thy ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... it, then?' I asked. You see, Mr. Holmes, I am a very stay-at-home man, and as my business came to me instead of my having to go to it, I was often weeks on end without putting my foot over the door-mat. In that way I didn't know much of what was going on outside, and I was always glad of ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... back again. For particular ones, it found a new development in one of the most remarkable of all novels, twenty years younger than Otranto, and a few years older than the new outburst of the "Gothic" supernatural in the works of Anne Radcliffe and Mat Lewis. ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... old ass! The first you know,' I says, 'they'll have your skin off an' layin' on the front piaz' for a door-mat.' ...
— Keeping up with Lizzie • Irving Bacheller
... word, so far as the first clause of the injunction was concerned. He went to bed in his room on the opposite side of the hallway. In passing through the hall he perceived Nero lying asleep on the mat in front of his master's bedroom, which was the small room in the rear of the large apartment ...
— The Gerrard Street Mystery and Other Weird Tales • John Charles Dent
... War across us; and we, happy we, have no fighting;—never till this of Courland was there the least ill-nature from Russia! We are become latterly the peaceable stepping-stone of Russia into Europe and out of it;—what may be called the door-mat of Russia, useful to her feet, when she is about paying visits or receiving them! That is not a glorious fact, if it be a safe and "lucky" one; nor do the Polish Notabilities at all phrase it in that manner. But a fact it is; which has shown itself complete in the late Czarina's and ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... Marianne, who had lighted her fire, came from the kitchen with a broom in her hand. She opened the door, shook the mat, and began to sweep the steps. A sharp tinkle, tinkle met her ear from the back gate. It was the milkman ringing for some one to come and take in the milk. Marianne set her broom against the side of the door, and hurried back ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... passed and repassed along that same route, under circumstances the most diverse, painful and joyful. The student has finished his course, the breaker of stones remains what he was. He has taken a few more precautions against the seasons' storms: a rush-mat protects his back, and his felt hat is drawn further down to shield his face. But the forest is always sending back the echo of his valiant hammer. How many sudden tempests have broken over his bent back, how much adverse fate has fallen on his head, on his ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner
... hath frequent allusions to the facts and fables of antiquity." Granted:—and, as Mat. Prior says, to save the effusion of more Christian ink, I will endeavour to shew how ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... the impact of the blow. It was true, the blow landed each time; but each time it was robbed of its power by that touch on the biceps. In the ninth round, three times inside a minute, King's right hooked its twisted arch to the jaw; and three times Sandel's body, heavy as it was, was levelled to the mat. Each time he took the nine seconds allowed him and rose to his feet, shaken and jarred, but still strong. He had lost much of his speed, and he wasted less effort. He was fighting grimly; but he continued to draw ...
— When God Laughs and Other Stories • Jack London
... other legumes is very important as a part of the rotation of crops in plow agriculture. Similarly I expect great value can be obtained in our pastured and fertilized nut orchards if we so treat the soil with lime, phosphorous, and whatever else is needed, to give a good mat of white clover and other legumes which are undoubtedly a good nitrogen supply for trees ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association, Report of the Proceedings at the Seventh Annual Meeting • Various
... long gangway itself. It was made of thin resilient steel, and the handrails were of soft white rope, almost like silk, and finished off with fancy knots; and at the beginning of the gangway, on the dirty quay, lay a beautiful mat bearing the name of the goddess, while at the end, on the pale, smooth deck, was another similar mat. The obvious costliness of that gangway and those superlative mats made Audrey feel poor, in spite of her ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... most likely his name would have represented the double achievement of being a famous racer, and the sire of famous racers too. He was bought for 1,600l., the purchase being effected on the recommendation of Mat Dawson, the trainer, and the horse was then a two-year-old. That he could go at a terrific pace is proved by an observation made one day by Fred Archer to the trainer. St. Simon was at exercise when Archer's spur touched him, unintentionally by the jockey. He bounded into a gallop—a ...
— The Portland Peerage Romance • Charles J. Archard
... Kali to stop a pestilence, making vow to offer to Bhairava, her son, a yearly human sacrifice. Higher up, approaching the plateau where were the ruins of a thousand gorgeous shrines, both sides of the pathway were lined by mendicants who sat cross-legged, in front of them a little mat for the receipt of alms—cowries, pice, silver; the mendicants muttering incessantly "Jae, ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... lunch every day in the Wall Street Delmonico's. Yes," she went on with increasing animation, "and only yesterday he went down to Police Headquarters, just for a little excitement, 'cause Jim does sure hate a dull life. Say, he told me they've got a mat at the door with 'Welcome' on it—in letters three feet high. Now, what—do—you—think—of that!" Aggie teetered joyously, the while she inhaled a shockingly large mouthful of smoke. "And, oh, yes!" she continued happily, ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... our offer of a chair, she would sit on the floor. I spoke of going to see her in return, but she said that her house was not good enough to receive me, and begged me not to come. Just before I left Waialua she brought a mat she had woven out of the long leaves of the pandanus or screw pine, a square of tappa, or native cloth, as large as a sheet, made from the bark of a tree, and the tappa-pounder she had made it with (a square mallet with different patterns ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... men threw the pillows from one to the other, as if they were playing ball. They hung up a crucifix, which I thought was unnecessary, and brought in a candlestick. I wondered if they were going to put a warming-pan in the bed. A mat was laid down with great precision. Then Nilsson came in, dressed in a flounced petticoat trimmed with lace, a "matinee," and black slippers, and got into ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... waited on her. If she knew Chippewa or French she would not use them. She cooked savory messes. At night she slept on the mat of skins at the door; during the day she was outside mostly. The door was bolted and locked beside, but both bolt and lock were outside. The window with its small panes of ...
— A Little Girl in Old Detroit • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... haggard after his sleepless night, Desmond had scarcely spirit enough to look with curiosity on his fellow prisoners when the shed was faintly lit by the morning sun. But he saw that the eight men, all natives, were lying on crude charpoys {mat beds} along the wall, each man chained to a staple like his own. One of the men was awake; and, catching Desmond's lusterless eyes fixed upon him, he sat up and returned ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... door of his prison creaked on its ponderous hinges, and he started up from the mat on which he had slept without covering of any kind. His visitor was the Mahdi's runner, who, after closing the door, came and sat down beside him, cross legged a ...
— Blue Lights - Hot Work in the Soudan • R.M. Ballantyne
... activities Female activities Male industries in detail Boat building Mining Plaiting and other activities Female industries in detail Weaving and its accessory processes Pottery Tailoring and mat making ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... sent him cooked meat, he put his mat straight, and tasted it first; when he sent him raw flesh, he had it cooked, and offered it to the spirits; when he sent him a live beast, he ...
— The Sayings Of Confucius • Confucius
... the subject of discussion, and once, during the year before I met him, five of his relatives came to Myers and compelled him to return with them for a time to his home at the Big Cypress Swamp. But to my illustration of Seminole frankness: In the autumn of 1880, Mat-te-lo, a prominent Seminole, was at Myers and happened to meet Captain Hendry. While they stood together "Billy" passed. Hardly had the young fellow disappeared when Mat-te-lo said to Captain Hendry, "Bum-by. Indian kill Billy." But an answer came. In this case the answer of ...
— The Seminole Indians of Florida • Clay MacCauley
... cabin; a door opened to frame a picture of a tall man. He was stooped; the years, or solitude, perhaps, had borne heavily upon him; his face was a mat of gray beard that was a continuation of the unkempt hair above. The rifle ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various
... the reply as the lower half of the door swung softly toward its mate. Every boy, before entering, rubbed long and faithfully upon the rough mat, and each made his best bow to the old lady and gentleman at the window. Ben was half inclined to think that these personages were automata like the moving figures in the garden at Broek; for they both nodded their heads slowly, in precisely the same ...
— Hans Brinker - or The Silver Skates • Mary Mapes Dodge
... have a little pet Who is as black as (jet) She sits upon a mat And watches for a (rat.) Her coat is smooth as silk, She likes to drink sweet (milk) She grows so fast and fat That soon she'll be a (cat) Can't you guess? Now what a pity 'Tis the dearest little ...
— How to Teach Phonics • Lida M. Williams
... No little girl at all!" She peeped in through the window, Mamma sat in a dream: About the quiet, sun-steeped house All things asleep did seem. She stept across the threshold; So lightly had she crept, The dog upon the mat lay still, And still the kitty slept. Patient beside her mother's knee To try her wondrous spell Waiting she stood, till all at once, Waking, mamma cried "Nell! Where have you been? Why do you gaze At me with such strange eyes?" "But can you see me, mother dear?" ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, September 1878, No. 11 • Various
... in the search, Katherine looked carefully in the hall, but in vain, when her young assistant gave a cry of joy; she had almost trodden on them as they lay between a mangy mat and the foot of ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... where we were. Next day we came to anchor at Quitangone, a place on the main-land of Africa, two or three leagues north of Mozambique, which is supplied from hence with fresh water. We here took a pangaia, in which was a Portuguese boy, being a vessel like a barge, with one mat-sail of cocoa-nut leaves. The hull of this barge is pinned with wooden pins, and sewed with cord made of the bark of trees. In this pangaia we found a kind of corn called millio, or millet, a considerable number of hens, and ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr
... the social tricks she admired. I knew as much about music as a cow, and considered tennis a bore. And yet I wanted her. I wanted that eighteen-year-old girl as I've never wanted anything since. I made myself a door-mat for her feet, I took her impudence and said nothing, I waited for her and made no complaint when she forgot to keep an appointment. My mother saw it and did her best to help me (though it wasn't much), for she wanted me to get married. This would have been a good match, for it so happened that ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... haubergeon, un glacon, [Footnote: Glacon ou glachon, sorte d'armure defensive. Les Suisses estoient assez communement habillez de jacques, de pans, de haubergerie, de glachons et de chapeaux de fer a la facon d'Allemagne. (Mat. ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, Volume 10 - Asia, Part III • Richard Hakluyt
... merchandise of Mongolia; thousands of donkeys, carrying bags of flour from the more luxuriant southern plains; cartloads of tobacco and paper from the large cities in the south of the province, and caravans of travellers; whole families packed into large carts moving to some new home; mat-covered litters swung between two mules and heavily curtained, in which the wives of an official are transported to their new abode; pedestrians, clad in sky-blue cotton, "yamen runners" yelling as they ride at furious speed to clear the way before them, and bearers of burdens combine to form ...
— The Fulfilment of a Dream of Pastor Hsi's - The Story of the Work in Hwochow • A. Mildred Cable
... a strong gale, with constant hard rain; we suffered much from the cold and wet, being obliged to remain on deck with no covering but an old mat, which was frequently taken from us in the night by the Ladrones who were on watch. During the night the Portuguese who were left in the brig murdered the Ladrones that were on board of her, cut the cables, and fortunately escaped through the darkness of the night. I have since been informed ...
— Great Pirate Stories • Various
... little while, to help him to carry some geranium pots into the hall. Jem, always active and obliging, readily stayed from play, and was carrying in a heavy flower pot, when his mistress crossed the hall. "What a terrible litter!" said she, "you are making here—why don't you wipe your shoes upon the mat?" Jem turned to look for the mat, but he saw none. "Oh," said the lady recollecting herself, "I can't blame you, for there ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... wrote: "Je lis avec emotion vos vers superbes; c'est un reflet de gloire que vous m'envoyez." Mr Matthew Arnold's compliment was very like Mr Arnold's humour: "Your father has been our most popular poet for over forty years, and I am of opinion that he fully deserves his reputation": such was "Mat's sublime waggery." Tennyson heaped coals of fire on the other poet, bidding him, as he liked to be bidden, to write more poetry, not "prose things." Tennyson lived much in the society of Browning and George Eliot, and made the acquaintance ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang
... the mat outside, "I say," said Harry, with a great gulp something like a sob, "I say, ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn
... he at first experienced. He had become nervously incapable of those proper niceties of sword-play which, without any indecent hacking or maiming, should have stretched Angelo, neatly slain, on the mat of green, before he had a chance. Even now the sight of the man was distressing to an honourable duellist. Angelo was scored with blood-marks. Feeling that he dared not offer another chance to a fellow so desperately close-dealing, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... door to find Mr. Creighton and Mr. Holmes huddled on the mat. They came in with an eagerness which was only surpassed by Satan, wet and displaying cold anger towards his mistress, whom he passed with a disdainful flirt of his tail as he headed for that ...
— Ralestone Luck • Andre Norton
... no answer, she was sitting cross-legged on a mat, making marks on the ground with ...
— Carmen • Prosper Merimee
... A mat was placed by the side of the kitchen fire; much pains were taken to coax the shy stranger; (Dick, who loved and understood dogs, devoting himself to the task of making himself agreeable to this gentle and beautiful creature;) and she seemed so ...
— The Widow's Dog • Mary Russell Mitford
... crooned so long in the umbrella tree built a nest there and cooed on to his mate. The clear, rainless winter gave place to spring and the giant cactus burst into flower. It rained, short and hard, and the desert floor took on suddenly a fine mat of green; and still he did not come. He was like the rain, this wild man of the desert; swift and fierce, then gone and forgotten. Once she saw his Mexican, the old, bearded Juan, with his string of shaggy burros at the store; but he brought her no word and went off the next day with more powder ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge
... made Nettie say it over till she could pronounce the words. "Now you like it," she said; "that is a French dish. Do you think Mrs. Mat'ieson ...
— The Carpenter's Daughter • Anna Bartlett Warner
... trainers there were John Scott, Mat Dawson, Fred Archer. There were also James Weatherby, Judge ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... these happenings, had just finished exercising his men on the smooth green in front of the Castle of Crichton, and had dismissed them, when a gaberlunzie or privileged beggar, a long lank rascal with a mat of tangled hair, and clad in a cast-off leathern suit which erstwhile some knight had worn under his mail, leaped suddenly from the shelter of a hedge. Instinctively Sholto laid his hand ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... Mr. Dorrit in his affliction by saying: "We are quiet here; we don't get badgered here; there's no knocker here, sir, to be hammered at by creditors, and bring a man's heart into his mouth. Nobody comes here to ask if a man's at home, and to say he'll stand on the door-mat till he is. Nobody writes threatening letters about money to this place. It's freedom, sir, it's freedom!" One smiles as one reads; and it adds a pathos, I think, to the smile, to find that these are records of actual experience. ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... you cry? The Dog has bit my leg. Why did he do so? I had my bat and I hit him as he lay on the mat, so he ran at me and bit my leg. Ah, you may not use the bat if you hit the Dog. It is a hot day, and the Dog may go mad. One day a Dog bit a boy in the arm, and the boy had his arm cut off, for the Dog was mad. And did the boy die? Yes, he did die in a day or two. It is not fit ...
— We and the World, Part I - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... in other nations, quiet debating unsuspected of their masters; and they were growing in numbers and in an almost sinister determination every year. Of course there were plenty of hausfraus cowed to the door mat, and, like the proletariat, needing a war to wake them up; but there were several hundred ...
— The White Morning • Gertrude Atherton
... some prospective patrons my extraordinary merits, my grasp relaxed at the wrong moment and I came sailing earthward from on high. It seemed to me that, like Milton's Lucifer, "from dawn to eve I fell," M. Huguenin sprinting to intercept my fall; but I landed on a mat and was little the worse for it. I fear the prospective patrons were not persuaded, by my performance, of the expediency of gymnastic training. On the other hand, M. Huguenin managed to dispose to my father ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... preparing paints; making twine and paper bags; in preparing hops and manure and chemical disinfectants; in spinning and weaving silk and ribbons; in making soap, candles and rubber goods; in wadding and mat making; in carpet weaving; portfolio and cardboard making; in making lace and trimmings, and embroidering; making wall-paper, shoes and leather goods; in refining oil and lard and preparing chemicals of all sorts; in making jewelry ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... Magnus nor I had any sound corn, though our wheat, oats and barley were heavy and fine; and we had oceans of hay. The frost killed the grass early, and early in October we had a heavy rain followed by another freeze, and then a long, calm, warm Indian summer. The prairie was covered with a dense mat of dry grass which rustled in the wind but furnished no feed for our stock. It was a splendid fall for plowing, and I began to feel hope return to me as I followed my plow around and around the lands I laid off, and watched the black ribbon of new plowing widen ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick
... attended by an experienced matron. Delivery is usually very easy, and the mother is almost always able on the following day to attend to her usual occupations. The infant is laid upon a small soft mat which the mother has taken care to prepare beforehand, and which is used for ...
— Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John MacGillivray
... those people over at the Crittendens', mother?" I asked, in a stern voice, as I walked in and interrupted mother counting the fifteenth row on a lace mat she ...
— Over Paradise Ridge - A Romance • Maria Thompson Daviess
... (ma se do'ni a) Magyar (mod'yaer) Manchuria (man chu'ri a) Marathon (mar'a thon) Marchand (maer shaen') Maria Theresa (mae ri'ae ter es'ae) Marlborough (maerl'bo ro) Marsala (maer sae'la) Marseillaise (maer sel yaz') Mazzini (mat si'ni) Mesopotamia (mes o po ta'mi ae) Metternich (met'ter nikh) Milioukoff (mil yoo'koff) Mirabeau (mir'a bo) Modena (mo de'na) or (mo'da na) Mohammedan (mo ham'med an) Moltke (molt'ka) Monastir (mo na stir') Montenegrin (mon te ne'grin) Montenegro (mon ...
— The World War and What was Behind It - The Story of the Map of Europe • Louis P. Benezet
... on, and when I reached it I saw that it was a young bird, nearly as big as a robin just out of the nest. Then I dropped all impedimenta, and gave myself unreservedly to the catching of that bird. He fled under the ferns, which were like a thick mat, and I stooped and parted them, he flying ever ahead till he reached the end and came out in sight. Then I pounced upon him, and had ...
— Upon The Tree-Tops • Olive Thorne Miller
... would have been suggestive of something sinister for any one who had seen him thus in the dark, the only person awake in that house where all were sleeping. All of a sudden he stooped down, removed his shoes and placed them softly on the mat beside the bed; then he resumed his thoughtful attitude, ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... you make such alterations in his circumstances as shall prevent identification, while retaining them to a sufficient extent to influence his behaviour. In the framework which most (though not all) skilled workmen draw of their stories before they begin to furnish them with so much even as a door-mat, the real name of each individual to be described should be placed (as a mere aid to memory) by the side of that under which he appears in the drama; and I would strongly recommend the builder to write his real names in cipher; for I have known at least one instance in which the entire list of the ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... the quest of purging and salvation through the beauty of his surroundings, he had made his place perfect inside and out, from the diminutive flagged court in the front (with one brilliant mat of flowers laid down in the middle) to the last lovely border of the grass-garden at the back. I wondered, I have never ceased to wonder, knowing his beginnings, how he did it so well. Of course he gave Viola a free hand, he let her have what she wanted; but when I complimented ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... there was a little window high up under the ceiling, a faint light filtered in through the dark panes. And in that glimmer of light I could see our little errand girl lying on the floor on a mat, both arms behind her tousled head; she was sound asleep, breathing rapidly and the fatal door was just behind her head. I stepped across the mat, across the girl ... who opened that door? ... I ...
— Knock, Knock, Knock and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... of cane, the roof being flat, and about five or six feet above the platform. This roof answered the purpose of an upper deck, affording the crew the means of conveniently walking on it. This extraordinary craft was propelled by two large mat sails, each spread between two bamboo masts, the heels of which were fixed in the same step, the mastheads being spread (athwartships) from twenty to thirty feet asunder, the sail being triangular between ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... tread of a cat, he felt about his room till he found on the table two delicate coils of fine insulated wire, and a couple of tacks. Carefully opening the door, he crept down stairs and through the hall to the door of the library. The door was closed, and kneeling down on the mat he pushed a tack into the door near the jamb and stuck the other in the door post. From one to another he stretched a bit of insulated wire. Then, aided by the glare of the flashes of lightning, that had now grown bright and frequent, he laid the ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... Mrs. Pearce, lingering as was her custom on the door-mat, and shaking her head in ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... I cautiously approached the black shadows of the forest, made impenetrably dark by a network of branches and a mat of leaves which no ray from the half grown moon could pierce. As I was about to enter Smilax arose from the ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... under their chairs which they would have steadily sipped at intervals, puffing at their pipes during the whole sitting. Their wooden shoes ('Klompen'), scrubbed for the occasion to a brilliant white with the help of a good layer of whitening, might have been seen in a row standing on the door-mat, for no well-educated farmer would ever have dreamed of entering a room with shoes on his feet, and he would have taken his 'pruim,' or quid of tobacco, which every farmer chews even when smoking, out of ...
— Dutch Life in Town and Country • P. M. Hough
... 'upper ten thousand,' he is credited with the invention of 'Japonicadom,' 'come-at-able,' and 'stay-at-home-ativeness.' One or two of his sayings may be worth quoting, such as his request for Washington Irving's blotting-book, because it was the door-mat on which the thoughts of his last book had wiped their sandals before they went in; and his remark that to ask a literary man to write a letter after his day's work was like asking a penny-postman to take a walk in the evening for the ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... herself about the garden, or as her white socks slipped over the mat-laid floor, she was the picture of grace itself. When at twilight, with her own hands, she lighted the gay lanterns that hung in festoons along the eaves of the tea-house above the verandah, her bright eyes sparkling, her red ...
— Japanese Fairy World - Stories from the Wonder-Lore of Japan • William Elliot Griffis
... the chocolate-coloured door of the Chalet, and Madame Wachner, to Sylvia Bailey's surprise and amusement, lifted a corner of the shabby outside mat, and took from under it a key. With it she opened the door. "Walk in," she said familiarly, "and ...
— The Chink in the Armour • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... slowly and afterward stood for a long time under the shower, rubbing himself down with the care of an athlete, thumbing the soreness of the wild ride out of the lean, sinewy muscles, for his was a made strength built up in the gymnasium and used on the wrestling mat, the cinder path, and the football field. Drying himself with a rough towel that whipped the pink into his skin, he looked down over his corded, slender limbs, remembered the thick arms and Herculean torso ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand
... dear prim soul," she thought, as her eye went from Puss, sedately perched on one small mat, to the dog dozing upon another, and neither offering to stir from their ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... hobble over the sun-flecked path through the orchard. A few minutes later Molly flitted after the elder, and Reuben's eyes followed her with the cheerful look with which he had faced seventy years of life. On a rush mat in the sunshine the old hound flicked his long black ear at a fly of which he was dreaming, and from a bower of ivy in the eaves there came the twitter of sparrows. Beyond the orchard, the wind, ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... absolute, that none of his people dared to sell a single cocoa-nut without his leave. Four boats were sent to his town to desire this liberty, which was granted. Captain Newport went ashore with forty men, and found the governor sitting on a mat, under the side of a junk which was then building, and attended by fifty men. He was dressed in a mantle of blue and red calico, wrapped about him to his knees, his legs and feet bare, and his head covered by a close cap of checquer work. Being presented with a gun and sword, he returned four ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... is at last," he gasped triumphantly, whilst we watched him with indifferent eyes. "Japhet, help me to wrap it up in the mat and lift it into the box. No, no, you donkey—face upward—so. Never mind the corners, I'll fill them with ring-money and other trifles," and out of his wide pockets he emptied a golden shower, amongst which he sifted handfuls of dust from the floor and anything else he could find to serve ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard
... him to approach. The quick-scented dogs were soon on the start, and when I saw that they resembled blood hounds,[G] I had serious apprehensions for my safety; but a call from their master, which they obeyed with prompt discipline, put my fears to rest. The man was a negro, mounted on a kind of mat, made of the palm leaf, and generally used for saddles by the plantation slaves on this Island.—When within a few rods of me he dismounted, approached with his drawn sword (machete) and paused in apparent astonishment; I pointing to the sores on me, fearing ...
— Narrative of the shipwreck of the brig Betsey, of Wiscasset, Maine, and murder of five of her crew, by pirates, • Daniel Collins
... the mares whinnied, and they saw Ugh-lomi coming up the wind. They all stopped their eating and watched him. Ugh-lomi was not coming towards them, but strolling obliquely across the open, looking at anything in the world but horses. He had stuck three fern-fronds into the mat of his hair, giving him a remarkable appearance, and he walked very slowly. "What's up now?" said the Master Horse, who ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... country-side, and the sun was brighter and the braes greener and the air sweeter from the day she came. Our lives were common no longer now that we spent them with such a one as she, and the old dull grey house was another place in my eyes since she had set her foot across the door-mat. It was not her face, though that was winsome enough, nor her form, though I never saw the lass that could match her; but it was her spirit, her queer mocking ways, her fresh new fashion of talk, her proud whisk of the dress and toss ...
— The Great Shadow and Other Napoleonic Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Assyro-Babylonian literature the name Akkadu appears as part of the royal title in connexion with Sumer; viz. non-Semitic: lugal Kengi (ki) Uru (ki) sar mat Sumeri u Akkadi, "king of Sumer and Akkad,'' which appears to have meant simply "king of Babylonia.'' It is not likely, as many scholars have thought, that Akkad was ever used geographically as ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... to Mat Meegan, is it?" he replied—"and do you think, sir," said he, "that I'd send them to that dry-headed dunce, Mr. Frazher, with his black coat upon him, and his Caroline hat, and him wouldn't take a glass of poteen wanst in ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton
... corner of the court-yard and, drawing aside a mat that I had thrown there, showed them what ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard
... woodwork, the plate-glass tops of the toilet-tables, and the thick cream-coloured carpet. A door was open on his right. He walked across, and looked in there too. A tiled bathroom, he saw it was, the clean towels on the highly polished brass rail heated by steam, the cork-mat against the wall, the shower, douche, and spray all complete, even the big cake of delicious-looking soap on its sliding rack across the bath. He looked as a man in a fairy-story might look. It was as if an enchanted palace, with the ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable
... eyes wandered from the clergy to the benches upon which sat the rich and the great, then back to the poor, among whom I was kneeling. Each humble worshipper had spread a bright-bordered handkerchief upon the bare floor as a kneeling mat. I observed the striking effect, then recollecting my shoes, put my hand back and drew up the hem of my dress, that my two green beauties might be seen by the children behind me. No seven-year-old child ever enjoyed finery more than I did ...
— The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate • Eliza Poor Donner Houghton
... a little rat-tat at the door. Oh! how the Mayor jumped! His poor old heart went pit-a-pat at anything like the sound of a rat. But it was only the scraping of shoes on the mat. So the Mayor sat up, and said, ...
— How to Tell Stories to Children - And Some Stories to Tell • Sara Cone Bryant
... only the beginning of a happy time. The girls were deep in blissful preparations the next ten days; the cheerful helpers, Mat and Hugh, held many consultations with Jed and the gardener and Uncle Fred; an array of pavilions, swings, maypoles, rustic seats and tables sprang up in the Towers' grounds, and the kitchen range glowed like a ...
— Peggy-Alone • Mary Agnes Byrne
... Jane to herself. She dropped her disconcerted vision to the door-mat. Then she saw that the man wore knee-breeches and ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... chamber where he slept, and the servants' wing, the rest of the house was all Elsie's. She was always a restless, wandering child from her early years, and would have her little bed moved from one chamber to another,—flitting round as the fancy took her. Sometimes she would drag a mat and a pillow into one of the great empty rooms, and, wrapping herself in a shawl, coil up and go to sleep in a corner. Nothing frightened her; the "haunted" chamber, with the torn hangings that flapped like wings ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... the face of good Miss Talbot, as she opened the door for him at midnight. Hugh took especial pains with his boots and the door-mat, but it was of no use: the austerity of her countenance would not relax in the least. So he took his candle and walked up-stairs to his room, saying only as he went — being unable to think of ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... the building trembled and throbbed, and this throbbing was communicated to the house. As she sat with Aunt Alvirah, and sewed carpet-rags for a braided mat, the distant thunder of the mills and the trembling of the machinery made ...
— Ruth Fielding of the Red Mill • Alice B. Emerson
... them all, and brought them out to the vestibule. The door-mat was taken up, shaken well, and hung over the balustrade outside, and, after sweeping out the vestibule, Margaret knelt on the seat and scrubbed the marble floor, especially in the corners, and ...
— A Little Housekeeping Book for a Little Girl - Margaret's Saturday Mornings • Caroline French Benton
... honest grocery bill in the face. And they WILL come in—as regular as spring hats. And I tell YOU, when a man's got to live on seventy-five a month, a thing that'll take all the strength and energy out of a twenty-dollar bill sorter gets him down on the mat." ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett |
