"Straw" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... any communication with their retreating troops and mingling so little with their captors, Richmond people got only most startling and unreliable rumors from the army. Clinging, with the tenacity of the drowning, to the least straw of hope, they would not yet give up utterly that army they had looked on so long as invincible—that cause, which was more than life to them! Though they knew the country around was filled with deserters and stragglers; though the Federals had brigades lying round Richmond ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... projecting wooden teeth on the other fitted into these, so that, as they both slowly turned together, the apples were crushed, A huge box of coarse slats, notched and locked together at the corners, held a vast pile of the crushed apples while clean rye straw was added to strain the flowing juice and keep the cheese from spreading too much; then the ponderous screw and streams of delicious cider. Sucking cider through a long rye straw inserted in the bung-hole of a barrel was just the best of fun, and cider taken that way "awful" good while ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... throw a stone down their very deep clefts, a sound is heard from them; or if he throw it into one of the mountain lakes, which beyond doubt are bottomless, a storm will immediately arise, just as when you thrust a straw into the ear or nose of a ticklish animal, it shakes its head, or runs shudderingly away. What so like breathing, especially of those fish who draw water into their mouths and spout it out again through their gills, as that wonderful ...
— Kepler • Walter W. Bryant
... but held their tongues about them, or no longer remembered their existence, unless reminded by something outside themselves. They had no proper lodgings, but slept in Carrier Koller's forsaken barn, which was close to the harbor. They never undressed, but slept in the straw, and washed in a bucket of water that was seldom changed; their usual diet consisted of stale bread, and eggs, which they grilled over a ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... a straw. If she couldn't shelve him, a day in the country, in the open air, would be less dangerous than one in London. And perhaps in the end she might shelve him. At any rate, she could temporize. "I've ...
— The Letter of the Contract • Basil King
... scattered village. Infantry and artillerists smashed the doors and windows; no mercy was shown to anyone, and the houses were set alight. An attempt to storm the church-tower failed because the occupants fired from above. Bundles of straw were brought, paraffin poured on them, and the tower set on fire. Above the roar of the flames we could distinctly hear the shrieks of the ...
— What Germany Thinks - The War as Germans see it • Thomas F. A. Smith
... and dangers of his position; the king who had often struggled with hunger and care, daily privation and mortal danger, and who one day, wearied out by sleeping night after night on the cold ground, commissioned his adjutant to provide a bundle of straw for the comfort of his royal person. The king had for a long time spared Saxony. He was sorry for this beautiful, afflicted land. But Saxony was finally to be treated as an enemy's country, as she would not appreciate Frederick's noble ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach
... side-ladder to the deck, where we were received by a lanky cadaverous-looking individual arrayed in a by no means spotless suit of white nankin topped by a very dilapidated broad-brimmed Panama straw-hat. ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... comes from the field, with the seed taken off, may be grown even here for $10 per tun, but he will concede its cost for the present to be $15 per tun, delivered, as it is necessary that liberal inducements shall be given for its extensive cultivation. Six tuns of the straw or flax in the bundle will yield one tun of dressed and clean fiber, the cost of dressing which by his methods, so as to make it Flax Cotton, is $35 per tun. (Our superior Western machinery ought considerably to reduce this.) ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... Christian; the statue of Mars still in its streets, but with its central temple built for Baptism in the name of Christ. It was a race living by agriculture; gentle, thoughtful, and exquisitely fine in handiwork. The straw bonnet of Tuscany—the Leghorn—is pure Etruscan art, young ladies:—only plaited gold of God's harvest, instead of the plaited gold of ...
— Mornings in Florence • John Ruskin
... who was pressed into service by the soldiers, came clad in a fashionable summer suit, straw hat and ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... o'Shanter" as peculiarly suited for a play and school-hat, is therefore right and proper. For a more showy style, lingerie hats are justified. But the most beautiful and appropriate form of the "best hat" for a little girl is one of uniform material, straw, cloth or felt, with simple crown, and wide, and more or less soft brim, ornamented by a ribbon alone. The addition of a single flower may be permitted, though this is like the admission of the camel's nose into the tent,—it may lead to the entrance of the hump—the monstrosity of the modern ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller
... day of sale arrived. N——, in the depth of his distress had early sent for me to consult whether even at the eleventh hour something could not be done to avert the calamity. A sinking man catches at a straw. It wanted less than three hours of the time of sale when I entered the grounds of Fernlands. The gate was half off its hinges, the posts plastered with advertisements of the sale; and people, as always happens in such cases, were already pouring towards ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, Number 490, Saturday, May 21, 1831 • Various
... that, for the purposes of this theory of the new nation, it is necessary to maintain that the colonial forces were more useful or more heroic than the gunners at Colenso or the Fighting Fifth. And of this contention there is not, and never has been, one stick or straw of evidence. ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... steps towards the gate, through which had entered some gentleman unknown to him in a grey coat and a wide straw hat. Bowing politely to him (he always saluted all new faces in the town of O——-; from acquaintances he always turned aside in the street—that was the rule he had laid down for himself), Lemm passed by and disappeared behind the fence. The stranger looked after him in ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... a window where he could hear them talking. He took off his white straw hat, and rubbed his eyes with a red silk handkerchief; the tears were almost in them, too. He had wild thoughts of trying to buy gloves at Nahant. He listened to hear if his child was merry again. She was laughing loudly, and pointing ...
— Pirate Gold • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... quietly around, the still water shone quietly before them, and quietly too they talked together. Lisa was standing on a small raft; Lavretsky sat on the inclined trunk of a willow; Lisa wore a white gown, tied round the waist with a broad ribbon, also white; her straw hat was hanging on one hand, and in the other with some effort she held up the crooked rod. Lavretsky gazed at her pure, somewhat severe profile, at her hair drawn back behind her ears, at her soft cheeks, which glowed like a little child's, and thought, "Oh, how sweet ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... rabble, a ragged fellow of mechanical aspect, in a tattered black doublet and an old straw hat, ascended the pulpit. Opening a sacred volume which he found there, he began to deliver an extemporaneous and coarse caricature of a monkish sermon. Some of the bystanders applauded, some cried shame, some shouted "long live the beggars!" some threw sticks and rubbish ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... is lost in the dark; The manger is lost in the straw; The Christ cries faintly ... hark!... Through bands that swaddle and strangle— But the Pope in the chair of awe Looks down the ...
— The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume IV • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... dark-grey above, the young of both sexes being of a deep chocolate colour. The male of the northern Phoca groenlandica is tawny grey, with a curious saddle-shaped dark mark on the back; the female is much smaller, and has a very different appearance, being "dull white or yellowish straw-colour, with a tawny hue on the back"; the young at first are pure white, and can "hardly be distinguished among the icy hummocks and snow, their colour thus acting as a protection." (23. Dr. Murie on the Otaria, ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... Straw and all other kinds of vegetable matter undergo the putrid fermentation more rapidly when mixed with animal matter. Much heat is evolved during this process, and a variety of volatile products are disengaged, as carbonic acid and hydrogen gas, the latter of which is frequently either sulphurated ...
— Conversations on Chemistry, V. 1-2 • Jane Marcet
... death. This was a specimen of the sort of commands which they were always giving with the view of implicating as many as possible in their crimes; and then I showed, not in word only but in deed, that, if I may be allowed to use such an expression, I cared not a straw for death, and that my great and only care was lest I should do an unrighteous or unholy thing. For the strong arm of that oppressive power did not frighten me into doing wrong; and when we came out of the rotunda the other four went to Salamis and fetched Leon, ...
— Apology - Also known as "The Death of Socrates" • Plato
... across the armpit, and down the arm to the elbow. Here it divides into two branches, one to supply the right, and the other the left, side of the forearm and hand. These branches have by this time got down to about the size of a wheat straw; the one supplying the right side is the artery which we feel throbbing in the wrist, and which we use in counting the pulse. From it run off smaller branches to supply the thumb and fingers. These branches break up again into still smaller branches, ...
— A Handbook of Health • Woods Hutchinson
... entertained us had lost her husband in the war, and having to see to the ordering of matters out of doors in this busy season of harvest, it was no marvel that she did neglect those within. I made a comfortable supper of baked pumpkin and milk, and for lodgings I had a straw bed on the floor, in the dark loft, which was piled wellnigh full with corn- ears, pumpkins, and beans, besides a great deal of old household trumpery, wool, and flax, and the skins of animals. Although tired of my journey, it was some little time before I could get asleep; and it so fell out, that ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... like a small cellar that has somehow risen above the ground and then has been thatched with old straw and whitewashed. Inside, it is a shadowy place, stacked up high with sailing and fishing gear, flotsam, jetsam, balks of wood and all the odds and ends that he picks up on his prowlings along the coast. With ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... chills, careless of heat, indifferent to the character of dinners, able to do well on hard, dry bread, capable of sleeping in the open under a rick, or some slight structure of a hurdle, propped on a few sticks and roughly thatched with straw, and to sleep sound as an oak, and wake strong as an oak in the morning-gods, what a glorious life! I envied them; they fancied I looked askance at their rags and jags. I envied them, and considered their health and hue ideal. I envied them that unwearied step, that firm ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies
... brilliant September sun throwing golden reflections and luminous shadows on their slender forms. Marguerite, tall and queen-like in her rich gown, and costly jewels, wearing with glorious pride the invisible crown of happy wifehood: Juliette, slim and girlish, dressed all in white, with a soft, straw hat on her fair curls, and bearing on an otherwise young and child-like face, the hard imprint of the terrible sufferings she had undergone, of the deathly moral battle her tender soul had ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... westward in his long day's career, and casting welcome shadows from the tall firs and horse-chestnuts that shaded the lawn. A long rank of haymakers—men and women—proceeded with their rakes, the white shirt-sleeves, straw bonnets, and ruddy faces, radiant in the bath of sunshine, while in the shady end of the field were idler haymakers among the fragrant piles, Charles half lying on the grass, with his back against a tall haycock; Mrs. Edmonstone sitting on another, book in ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... sure it is reliable?" was Kate's almost feverish question. It seemed that she must hold on to something or the last straw that bound her to the teachings ...
— The Right Knock - A Story • Helen Van-Anderson
... only hat that would hold any quantity of water, and she lent it gladly; but the brim was limp with age and hard wear, and a broad-brimmed straw hat at its best is not an ideal vessel from which to throw water over a flying foe. The larger share of it Dan received in his own shoes amidst the derisive laughter of his two intended victims on the engine; and so completely mortified was he that Dumble, for a wonder, ...
— Kitty Trenire • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... him up again at an unexpected sound. Once a robin called just outside the window, a bold bright note; it might have been the vagabond robin from Raven's orchard who sang about nests but seemed never to break off singing long enough to find a straw for one. She caught up the child from the couch and stood breathless, listening. It seemed as if the robin knew, and somehow, like Martin, felt ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... the fond husbands get left astern-like in their sampan, as it might be by accident? An' wasn't it a week later that the poor little ladies was put ashore on the other side of the island, with nothin' before 'em but to walk home acrost the mountains on their weeny-teeny little straw sandals which wouldn't hang together a mile? Don't I know? 'Tis the beast he is, this Wolf Larsen—the great big beast mentioned iv in Revelation; an' no good end will he ever come to. But I've said nothin' to ye, mind ye. I've whispered never a word; for old fat Louis'll live the ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... "Robinson Crusoe," remember how he made his umbrella and covered it with skins, and that is probably the most curious umbrella you can anywhere read about. Then there have been umbrellas covered with large feathers that would shed rain like a "duck's back," and umbrellas with coverings of oil-cloth, of straw, of paper, of woollen stuffs, until now, nearly all umbrellas are covered either with silk, gingham, or alpaca. And this brings us to the manufacture of umbrellas in Philadelphia, where there are more made than in ...
— Illustrated Science for Boys and Girls • Anonymous
... at such an hour?' said he. 'Go home, you impudent baggage, and do not disturb honest people out of their sleep.' He banged the window to; and so I was left alone to shift for myself as I might. There was no shed, no cow-house, where I could find a bed; so I got under a cart, on some straw; it was no very warm berth. I could not sleep for the cold: and the hours passed so slowly, that it seemed as if I had been there a week instead of a night; but still it was not so bad as the first night when I left home, and when ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... promptly, "None your business," and went up the steps before the young man, with a lop-eared, liver-colored mongrel at his heels. He pulled off his ragged straw hat and flung it on the floor of the porch. "Dinner ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... power to receive and impart." This is, of course, said of the best; it is not to be said of the scribblers and the poetasters in their thousands; it is not to be said of the innumerable warblers whose feeble songs "grate on their scrannel pipes of wretched straw"; it is not true even of a canorous rhetorician, such as Swinburne, or a dreamy teller of tales like William Morris; but it is beyond question true of a Shakespeare or a Goethe. These were men of three-storied brain and also of ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... retorted Nellie; "I'd like to have Aunt Kelsey hear you say that. Why, he's the very best match in Rochester. All the girls are dying for him, but he don't care a straw for one of them. He's out of health now, and is coming here this summer with Aunt Kelsey, and then you'll see how perfectly refined he is. By the way, Maude, if I had as much money at my command as you have I'd fix up ...
— Cousin Maude • Mary J. Holmes
... wavy brown hair and large dark-blue eyes with curling lashes; but she was too thin and faded and narrow-chested for any prettiness now. Her calico gown was unstarched, though scrupulously clean: she wore a thin blue-and-white summer shawl, and her old straw bonnet was trimmed with a narrow blue ribbon pieced in two places. Her voice was slightly monotonous, but low-keyed: as she spoke her hands clasped and unclasped each other. The veins stood out and the knuckles were enlarged, but they ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... a wretched being sat upon the straw, and the hail dashed bitterly against her unshrinking, but time-worn and storm-beaten features. Her grey hairs waved loose and wildly in the wind. Her hands were clasped together upon her breast; and, as she sat, she ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... said his master, taking up his straw hat. "If anyone calls, say I could not wait any longer. Ah, there's the front-door bell. ...
— The Ashiel mystery - A Detective Story • Mrs. Charles Bryce
... be) is not favorable to granaries, where wheat is to be kept for any time. The best, and indeed the only good granary, is the rick-yard of the farmer, where the corn is preserved in its own straw, sweet, clean, wholesome, free from vermin and from insects, and comparatively at a trifle of expense. This, and the barn, enjoying many of the same advantages, have been the sole granaries of England from the foundation of its agriculture ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... said Varin, resuming his seat, and looking under his hand to steady his gaze. "Better brooms were never made in Besancon. The country is swept as clean as a ball-room. Your Excellency and the Marquise might lead the dance over it, and not a straw lie in ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... found the right path to the fire, as I said Your dragoons have uncovered my quarters, and the cold blasts of wind whistle through them and freeze the water in my room. I prefer to sit by the fire and warm myself." He was about to seat himself on the straw near the fire, when a harsh ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... Encouraged by this success, it smashed the box open and escaped into my cabin, tearing up things generally, and finally threatening my life in the dark. I had hoped to bring the creature home alive, but this did not prove feasible. Next the goat devoured my straw hat, and so when I arrived in port I had nothing to wear ashore on my head. This last unkind stroke decided his fate. On the 27th of April the Spray arrived at Ascension, which is garrisoned by a man-of-war crew, and the boatswain of the island came on board. As he stepped ...
— Sailing Alone Around The World • Joshua Slocum
... 69. To the test tube in the preceding experiment, add two teaspoonfuls of dilute hydrochloric acid, and keep at 100 degrees F. for two hours. The pepsin in the presence of the acid digests the casein, gradually dissolving it, forming a straw-colored fluid containing peptones. The peptonized milk has a peculiar odor and ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
... on the landing. She is a stout lady, and does not wish to dwarf the apartment by comparison. The arrangement here does not allow of your ignoring the bed. It is the life and soul of the room, and it declines to efface itself. Its only possible rival is the washstand, straw-coloured; with staring white basin and jug, together with other appurtenances. It glares defiantly from its corner. "I know I'm small," it seems to say; "but I'm very useful; and I won't be ignored." The remaining ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... bewildered, even stunned. There was a conspiracy against him, but how could he prove it? The ground seemed crumbling from under him—not even a straw to grasp. Then the old fighting blood that carried him along in Beauregard's van tugged at the valves of his heart, revived his spirit, ran through his veins. He ...
— A Gentleman from Mississippi • Thomas A. Wise
... knew, and knew not how I knew, that the thing which I had said was true. With that knowledge came a happiness so deep and strong that it swept aside like straw the torment of those cords, and the deeper hurt that I lay at his feet. I suppose my face altered, and mirrored that blessed glow about my heart, for into his own came a white fury, changing its beauty into something inhuman ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... a stable a wisp of straw. Fear not the wasp drunk with his crazy flight! Through some chink always, see, the moted light! Propped on your hand, you dozed—But ...
— Poems of Paul Verlaine • Paul Verlaine
... that all art, all learning, everything which men value, were as straw compared with God's commandments, and that it would be well to destroy all our temples, and statues, and all that we have which is beautiful, if we could thereby establish the kingdom of God within us, and so ...
— Catharine Furze • Mark Rutherford
... strain and relax the Muscles of their Faces in making Distinction between a Spinster in a coloured Scarf and an Handmaid in a Straw-Hat, the Worriers use the same Roughness to both, and prevail upon the Easiness of the Passengers, to ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... had in the daytime was sitting on the damp straw in our clay vault, scraping the mud off one's saturated boots and clothes. The event to which one looked forward with the greatest interest was the arrival of ...
— Bullets & Billets • Bruce Bairnsfather
... was the fashion fifty years ago, and may again be the fashion in less than fifty years hence, for aught we can tell. Over this frock is worn a gay spencer, trimmed with lace and ornamented with an unexceptionable frill, while the damsel's auburn curls are surmounted with a hat of straw fluttering with broad, true blue ribbons, which fasten it in a true love-knot, under ...
— The Wedding Guest • T.S. Arthur
... so slavish before them—is only because again one looks at the ideal,—looks through that magical Claude Lorraine glass which makes even the commonest landscape picturesque. We forget the dirty days of straw-strewn floors, and see the leather hangings stamped with gold; we forget the fearful feet of sandal shoon, but see the dust of a Triumph rising in clouds of glory. We look at that past, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... instant increase of traffic for New England. In the other Eastern States factories grew in number and new processes were introduced. Thus, the first varnish made in America was produced at New York. Damask table linen was manufactured at Pittsburg. The first straw paper was turned out at Meadville, Pennsylvania. The planing mill was introduced. The Franklin Institute at Philadelphia awarded to Stephen Boyden of Newark the premium for his malleable castings. Arts and literature likewise flourished. Among ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... streets with warming sunshine and a hint of the coming miracle of the yearly resurrection. The shops were filled with the crisp, fresh-tinted goods of the nearing season, and here and there among the smartly dressed women was a modish straw hat brightening the winter furs and velvets. Patricia's cup was full and running over. She had no need for speech with Elinor, but she kept giving her hands quick little squeezes in her muff, while now and again they exchanged ...
— Miss Pat at School • Pemberton Ginther
... "Sometimes," He continued, "I feel guilty, as though it were cowardly not to have lived where I was put. But—have you ever seen a straw, caught on a snag, try to stop a river? To your sentimentalist that straw looks heroic; to anybody that knows the difference between bathos and pathos it simply looks silly. The river of life is bigger than that of any nation. We can't stop it, but we can swell it by going with it. Did you ever ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain
... ragged jacket, which never seemed to get sewed up. Books he had in plenty, but his parents naturally did not treat him to strings of flashing stones to wear over his shabby velvet coat, or twine round his battered straw hat. His money affairs, like the table of Weir of Hermiston, were likely all his life "just mismanaged." By the time he settled in Samoa, his literary earnings were thousands a year; and by then his quiet-living, hard-working ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • E. Blantyre Simpson
... scarf loosely tied below the rolling collar. No coat this warm weather, but a little bouquet in the breast of the shirt. A tasselled sash round the waist; spotless white breeches, and well-blacked long boots. A Panama straw hat with broad brim and much puggeree. An expression of affected innocence in the eyes, and a good deal of fun about the mouth. Such is the figure we now look upon ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... twice through holes pierced in the boards, the loose ends of the cords being then wet with paste and hammered down flat to the surface of the boards. The best tar-boards should be used, which are made of old rope; no board made of straw is fit to be used on any book. Straw boards are an abomination—a cheap expedient which costs dearly in the end. The binder should use heavy boards on the larger and thicker volumes, but thin ones on all ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... straw hat, and holding Benny's hand with a desperate clutch, trotted along beside him, giving frequent glances at his heroic face to keep up her courage. Her heart beat hard as they took their way across to the island. The island is really no island at all, but a lonely, lovely portion of Still Harbor, ...
— The Little Gold Miners of the Sierras and Other Stories • Various
... cell were bare and white washed. A narrow grated window, placed so high that one could not reach it, lighted this sinister little room. The mad inmate, seated on a straw chair, looked at us with a fixed, vacant and haunted expression. He was very thin, with hollow cheeks and hair almost white, which one guessed might have turned gray in a few months. His clothes appeared to be too large for his shrunken limbs, his sunken chest and empty paunch. One felt that ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... little straw and a few twigs over the hole and the trench—and the sooner they come, ...
— The Boy Scouts on the Trail • George Durston
... he does not care a straw. Every man must die; horses likewise, and dogs, and donkeys, when they come to the end of their troubles; but dogs and donkeys and chaps in blouses can't die gloriously; as Dard may, if he has any luck at all: so, from this hour, if ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... was alluding to the scene of the "short straw" (or lot-drawing) on board the American brig, when it was decided between Augustus Barnard, Arthur Pym, Dirk Peters, and Parker, the sailor, that one of the four should be sacrificed—as food for the three others. I remembered the obstinate resistance of Arthur Pym, and how it was impossible ...
— An Antarctic Mystery • Jules Verne
... reflected he, "has an unseemly habit of overcoming and leading captive legitimate princes; thus prejudicing Divine right in the eyes of the vulgar. The skin of his predecessor Valerian, curried and stuffed with straw, hangs to this hour in the temple at Ctesiphon, a pleasing spectacle to the immortal gods. How would my own skin appear in the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus? This must not be. I will send an embassy to him, and impress him ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... around. The little flickering light showed a rickety table, an old stove red with rust, and a dark object in a far corner. It showed, also, a lantern on the floor. Gilbert lit it, and going to the corner, bent over the sick man. John McIntyre lay stretched on a low straw bed, covered with a ragged quilt and a heap of nondescript clothing. His breath was coming in choking gasps, and he gazed up at his visitor with staring, but unseeing, eyes. The doctor felt his burning forehead and his leaping ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... blue cloth and white stockings,—the ugliest dress I ever saw. The women go bareheaded, and seem fond of scarlet and other bright colors, but are homely and clumsy in form. The piazza is dingy in its general aspect, and very dirty, being strewn with straw, vegetable-tops, and the rubbish of a week's marketing; but there is more life in it than one sees elsewhere ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... kept on a shelf near the door. The place was very dark and pleasantly warm by contrast with the bitter frost outside, and he could smell the peppermint in the prairie hay. Familiar sounds reached him—the soft rattle of a shaking rope, the crackle of crushed straw—but they were rather more numerous than usual, and while he listened one or two of the ...
— Ranching for Sylvia • Harold Bindloss
... and over to the mount he goes in the beginning of a dark winter evening, where he fell to work, and before morning had digged a pit twenty-two feet deep and as broad, and covered the same over with long sticks and straw; then strewed a little mould upon it, so that it ...
— Children's Rhymes, Children's Games, Children's Songs, Children's Stories - A Book for Bairns and Big Folk • Robert Ford
... Tete d'Etoupes, William Fier-a-bras, William the Great, and William the Troubadour; the latter—now pious, now profane—was at one time fighting foremost in the christian ranks against the Paynim; at another, "playing on pipes of straw and versing love" to fair ladies, to whom he had no right to make himself captivating. He is said to have repudiated his wife, Phillippa, or Mahaud, and espoused Malberge, the wife of the Viscount de Chatelleraud, in ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... eagerness again. "Vervain! I might have known. Diane, give me some hope that all this mystery shall some day be brushed aside. I am innocent of any evil; I have committed no crime. Will you give me some hope, the barest straw?" ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... one summer's day a covered van hung over at the back with baskets, such as the children well remembered. A good-humoured looking man was walking by the horse, a handsome woman was sitting by the door plaiting straw. ...
— "Us" - An Old Fashioned Story • Mary Louisa S. Molesworth
... sixty-three thousand and eighty-four pounds, six shillings and ten-pence; and furthermore, they granted three hundred and eighty-six thousand nine hundred and fifteen pounds, thirteen shillings and two-pence, to defray the charges of forage, bread-waggons, train of artillery, provisions, wood, straw, and all other extraordinary expenses, contingencies, and losses whatsoever, incurred, or to be incurred, on account of his majesty's army, consisting of thirty-eight thousand men, actually employed against the common enemy, in concert with the king of Prussia, from November ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them. And the cow and the bear shall feed; their young ones shall lie down together: and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. And the sucking child shall play on the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the cockatrice' den. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain: for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of ...
— The Gospel Day • Charles Ebert Orr
... already estimated the amount of hay in my stack! said Brandur. You have already divided this miserable haycock among yourselves, divided it down to the very last straw. And you have weighed it almost to a gram. Then why speak to me about it? Why not take it just as it is and scatter it to the four winds? Why not?— The voice of the old ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... here! And not the lightest leaf, but trembling teems With golden visions, and romantic dreams! Down by yon hazel copse, at evening, blaz'd The Gipsy's faggot—there we stood and gaz'd; Gaz'd on her sun-burnt face with silent awe, Her tatter'd mantle, and her hood of straw; Her moving lips, her caldron brimming o'er; The drowsy brood that on her back she bore, Imps, in the barn with mousing owlet bred, From rifled roost at nightly revel fed; Whose dark eyes flash'd thro' locks of blackest shade, ...
— Poems • Samuel Rogers
... roughly bridged in many places stood the town of Rica. It consisted of a great number of large huts roofed with palm leaves and constructed apparently of whitewashed clay, or rather, as we discovered afterwards, of lake mud mixed with chopped straw or grass. ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard
... was taking form in Spencer's mind, and together they threshed out the straw and garnered the grain. She was getting to be a necessity to Spencer—and he saw no reason why the beautiful friendship should not continue just this way for years and years. Both were literary grubbers and lived in boarding-houses of ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... Winter soldiering, so that a fellow could go home as soon as cold weather began, sit around a comfortable stove in a country store; and tell camp stories until the Spring was far enough advanced to let him go back to the front wearing a straw hat and a ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... put a fool's cap and bells on Robert's head. It was like a terrible dream; he could not believe it true, he could not understand what had happened to him. And when he woke next morning, he believed it was a dream, and that he was king again. But as he turned his head, he felt the coarse straw under his cheek instead of the soft pillow, and he saw that he was in the stable, with the shivering ape by his side. Robert of Sicily was a jester, and no one knew him for ...
— Stories to Tell to Children • Sara Cone Bryant
... eighty-eight dwellings, selected at hazard. They were destitute of furniture save old boxes for tables or stalls, or even large stones for chairs; the beds are composed of straw and shavings. The food was oatmeal and water for breakfast, flour and water, with a little skimmed milk for dinner, oatmeal and water again for a second supply.' He actually saw children in the markets grubbing for the rubbish of roots. And yet, ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... to complain if their impatient generalisations are marshalled, however disingenuously, against them. But the judicious folk of every school who are now trying to take their bearings may wonder if much is to be gained by putting up and knocking down such flimsy figures of straw. Mr. HAROLD COX contributes a rather too solemn preface, which labels this otherwise irresponsible novel as a serious tract. I rather think that the engaging spectacle of the biographer of WILKES and the editor of The Edinburgh (the author of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 21, 1919. • Various
... and passed out of it. Ascending a winding bit of road he found himself once more in the open country, and presently came to a field where part of the fence had been broken through by the cattle. Just behind the damaged palings there was a covered shed, open in front, with a few bundles of straw packed within it. This place suggested itself as a fairly comfortable shelter for an hour's rest, and becoming conscious of the intense aching of his limbs, he took possession of it, setting the small "Charlie" down to gambol on the grass at pleasure. He was ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... masts was occupied by enormous open hatchways through which came the lowing of oxen, and through these, peering down into the hold, I saw the backs of cattle and horses moving in its gloom, and the bodies of men stretched in the straw at ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... paintest to the eye The straw-thatched roof with elm trees high, But thou hast wisdom to descry What lurks below— The springing tear, the ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry
... were heard outside; and then, without waiting to knock, a sergeant of the King's guard forced open the door, and, followed by a handful of soldiers, entered the wretched room and took the merchant and his son prisoners. They spent the night on the straw in the royal dungeons, and in the morning were led before ...
— The Firelight Fairy Book • Henry Beston
... butt of his whip. Within, at the end of a shady garden, I could see the porch of a planter's house; beyond were rows of cocoa palms, and glimpses of yellowing cane. Presently a negro, wearing only a pair of canvas trousers and a great straw hat, came hobbling to open the gate,—followed by a multitude, an astonishing multitude, of chippering chickens. Under the shadow of that huge straw hat I could not see the negro's face; but I noticed that his limbs and ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn
... as he proceeds, to exaggerations somewhat hyperbolical; but undoubtedly Virgil would have been too hasty, if he had condemned him to straw for one sounding line. Dryden wanted an instance, and the first that occurred was imprest into ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... how, unless you give me your doublet and stuff me out with straw. I beseech you, good Sir John, let me have five hundred ...
— King Henry IV, Second Part • William Shakespeare [Chiswick edition]
... are truly the raw materials which are untouched by human labor; therefore, they are of no value, and I do not think of protecting them. But a first labor converts these substances into hay, straw, etc., a second into wool, a third into thread, a fourth into cloth, a fifth into clothing—who will dare to say that every step in this work is not labor, from the first stroke of the plough, which begins, to the last stroke of the needle, which terminates ...
— What Is Free Trade? - An Adaptation of Frederic Bastiat's "Sophismes Econimiques" - Designed for the American Reader • Frederic Bastiat
... if you please; it may be of service to young persons who are crossed in love, and in want of straw-bonnets at 3s. 6d. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, September 25, 1841 • Various
... Minister put it all in one word: "Let the neutrals cease their everlasting chatter about the destruction of Rheims Cathedral. All the paintings, statues and cathedrals in the world are not so much as one straw to the Germans over against the gaining of our goal and ...
— The Blot on the Kaiser's 'Scutcheon • Newell Dwight Hillis
... his enemies, jumping into darkness for safety. There had followed a period of total unconsciousness, set in the midst of a continuous dream as it were, for he seemed to realize at once without any break that he had fallen upon a bed of straw and could safely lie there to rest his tired limbs. There was no recollection of Legrand's asylum, or of the night escape over the roofs, but presently there came a conviction that he ought to be with Jeanne. It seemed to him that he tried to get out of the straw but was unable to do ...
— The Light That Lures • Percy Brebner
... things as trunks and cupboards. I brought one from North Carolina with me—old-fashioned chest. Bed was homemade and nailed to the side of the wall. Some of them had railings on both sides when they were trying to make it look nice. Mattress was made out of straw or shucks. You could hear it rattling like a hog getting in his bed at night. I have slept on 'em many a time. Those with floors and those without were made alike. A box or anything was used for a table. If his master would give ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Arkansas Narratives Part 3 • Works Projects Administration
... youth was running towards them, loose-jointed and long-limbed, with a boyish, lumbering haste, clumping fearlessly with his great yellow clogs through pool and mire. He wore brown corduroys, a dingy shirt, and a red handkerchief tied loosely round his neck. A tattered old straw hat was tilted back upon his shock of coarse, matted, brown hair. His sleeves were turned up to the elbows, and his arms and face were both tanned and roughened until his skin looked like the bark of some young sapling. As he looked up at the ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... thrust into a vile position. He ought to have refused to draw. He did not agree to draw. Nevertheless, he had drawn. And Hugh knew that, if it had to be done again, he should again have been compelled to draw by the iron will before which his was as straw. He could not have met the scorn of those terrible half-closed eyes ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... pale, boyish-looking fellow, with an abstracted, musing look in his large dark eyes. Mrs. Grant noticed with amusement that he wore a white straw hat in spite of the season. His eyes were directed to her face with ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... door open, and his clothes strewed about the floor. A monk who occupied the opposite rooms, hearing him return, came to him and said that the commissary and the two proctors had been there looking for Garret. Bills and swords had been thrust through the bed-straw, and every corner of the room searched for him. Finding nothing, they had left orders that Dalaber, as soon as he returned, should appear before the prior ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... humility; it was now the visage of a madman. All fleshly passion stored through thirty years of cloister life blazed forth, consuming reason and intelligence; with a sweep of his mighty arms he cleared a space about him, hurling his enemies aside as if they were made of straw. He raised his voice above the din, cursing God and men and Moors. As they closed in upon him he snatched from the hands of a lusty slave a massive wrought-iron brazier, and whirling it high above his head, he sent its glowing ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... with them: they could not understand each other: they lived in separate worlds. They had an ironical and rather contemptuous pity for the poor devil of an artist who claimed to be a world to himself, and was swept along like a straw by the river of life. He was humiliated by being examined, and prodded, and handled by these men. He was ashamed of his sick ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... Bricks and dank straw his bed and chairs; He has no carpet on the stairs, But, like the wild beasts to their lairs, ...
— Revised Edition of Poems • William Wright
... vapours began to do their work; she swayed to and fro muttering, then sank back against the hut, upon the straw of which her head rested. Now the Bee's face was turned upwards towards the light, and it was ghastly to behold, for it had become blue in colour, and the open eyes were sunken like the eyes of one dead, whilst above her forehead the ...
— Black Heart and White Heart • H. Rider Haggard
... July a mob assembled, who forced all that went by to put a handful of straw in their hats, upon which the Duc d'Orleans and the Prince de Conde went to the Hotel de Ville and convinced the assembly of the necessity they were under of defending themselves against Mazarin. Upon a trumpeter arriving from his Majesty with orders ...
— The Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz, Complete • Jean Francois Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz
... England, seen straw placed over the joints of pipes, but it seems an inconvenient and insecure practice. Long straw cannot be well placed in such narrow openings, and it is likely to sustain the earth enough, so that when thrown ...
— Farm drainage • Henry Flagg French
... and her face looked fresh and cool under a large hat of Leghorn straw, with its black-velvet strings hanging loose upon her shoulders. Her short skirt showed her dainty ankles. She walked with a brisk step, using a tall, iron-shod stick, while her disengaged hand crumpled some flowers which ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc
... that the job would be a permanency if he proved himself a zealous, efficient Missing Link, and as he understood that even when on show Mahdi was expected to do little more than curl up on the straw in his cage and growl, he gratefully accepted. The contract ...
— The Missing Link • Edward Dyson
... receive the filibusters. The goal was in sight. The dreadful voyage was done. Joy and excitement thrilled the ship's company. Cuban patriots appeared in uniforms with Cuban flags pinned in the brims of their straw sombreros. From the hold came boxes of small-arm ammunition of Mausers, rifles, machetes, and saddles. To protect the landing a box of shells was placed in readiness beside ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... more striking. The original form of the reed instruments was of the double-reed variety. The oldest known mention of them dates from 650 A.D., when the name applied is calamus (reed); later the names shalmei (chalumeau, "straw," from German halm) and shawm were used. These instruments were played by means of a bell-shaped mouthpiece, the double reed being fixed inside the tube. It was not until toward the end of the sixteenth ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... held in her lap. Mrs. Drane, in a rustic chair near by, was sewing, and Miriam, who had come laden with blossoms from the orchard, had stopped in the pleasant shade. Mike, absolutely picturesque in a broad new straw hat, was out in the sunshine raking some grass he had cut, and Seraphina, who remained in the household as general assistant, could be seen through the ...
— The Girl at Cobhurst • Frank Richard Stockton
... size and shape, were made from thick layers of heavy straw-paper, made stiff and firm under high pressure. The farm in manufacturing them, was able to utilize large quantities of surplus straw from the grain fields, which could not be used as forage. In the corners ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... expecting a grievous operation on the following day. As for marriage, he had no great respect for it, except as a mode of enabling men and women to live together comfortably. As for the "outraged laws of his country," of which Mr. Grey spoke much, he did not care a straw for such outrages—nor, indeed, for the expressed opinion of mankind as to his conduct. He was very soon about to leave the world, and meant to do the best he could for his son Augustus. The other son was past all hope. He was hardly angry with his eldest son, who had undoubtedly ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... clean-shaved cheeks, a heavy grey moustache and eyes without any expression whatever, clad always in a spotless sleeping suit much be-frogged in front, which left his lean neck wholly uncovered, and with his bare feet in a pair of straw slippers, he wandered silently amongst the houses in daylight, almost as dumb as an animal and apparently much more homeless. I don't know what he did with himself at night. He must have had a place, a hut, a palm-leaf ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... had brought with them being also exhausted, they were soon reduced to biscuit and water; and they were not even able to make it into a warm mess by heating the water, as they had no vessels; moreover, when their hard day's work was at an end, they had but a handful of straw on which to lie. These privations, added to their hard and laborious life, brought on an endemic fever, which incapacitated for work many soldiers and labourers, numbers of whom had to be dismissed. ...
— Massacres Of The South (1551-1815) - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... open, forming a kind of verandah, in which tables and benches are placed. The bedrooms join on each side, and here the passenger may sleep as comfortably as he can, on a wooden platform covered by a thin straw mat. The venda stands in a courtyard, where the horses are fed. On first arriving, it was our custom to unsaddle the horses and give them their Indian corn; then, with a low bow, to ask the senhor to do us the favour to give us something to eat. "Anything you ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... Magee!" And surely, right before them stood the beggar-girl! her face paler, thinner, and sadder than before, while she wore a still more wretched garb than the one Bessie had been compelled to take from her. Her head was covered, but scarcely protected, by a large, dilapidated straw bonnet, through the rents of which peeped rebellious curls of her soft brown hair. A faded band of ribbon, half detached from the crown, fluttered like a tattered pennon ...
— Stories of Many Lands • Grace Greenwood
... Dunning, looking at his black straw hat which lay on the table before him, as if the remark were addressed to it—"very odd if, having swallowed the cow, I should now be compelled ...
— The Red Eric • R.M. Ballantyne
... the others? He arranged them all so that the butts of one end rested on the roof of the palace; the butts at the other end were across those he had bound pretty level in the tree. Then more and more were laid across, and a couple of thin straw mattresses on them; and though it took a tremendously long time, through Measles fumbling in the dark, it was surprising what a firm bridge that made as ...
— Begumbagh - A Tale of the Indian Mutiny • George Manville Fenn
... is haggard and anxious; he walks with a quick, excited step; earnest enough, whoever else is not. For in front of Lord Scoutbush's house the road is laid with straw. There is sickness there, anxiety, bitter tears. Lucia has not found her husband, but she ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... her opened, and Tom Arundel came into the room. He was fresh from the stable, and smelled of straw. ...
— The Imaginary Marriage • Henry St. John Cooper
... cotton was said to be of superior quality and attracted attention. Cotton growers in Porto Rico are adopting the best machinery that is made in the United States. The liquor exhibit also was noticeable. Porto Rico received highest awards in straw hats, needlework, ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... than metal wheels, and far lighter. And it was this lightness and solidity which Robur availed himself of in building his aerial locomotive. Everything—framework, hull, houses, cabins—were made of straw-paper turned hard as metal by compression, and—what was not to be despised in an apparatus flying at great heights—incombustible. The different parts of the engines and the screws were made of gelatinized ...
— Rubur the Conqueror • Jules Verne
... the sun, would have shuddered. Cold as night, cold as death, not a breath of air in her tresses, not a human sound in her ear, no longer a ray of light in her eyes; snapped in twain, crushed with chains, crouching beside a jug and a loaf, on a little straw, in a pool of water, which was formed under her by the sweating of the prison walls; without motion, almost without breath, she had no longer the power to suffer; Phoebus, the sun, midday, the open air, the streets of Paris, the dances with applause, the sweet babblings of love with the ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... the parsonage of St. Philemon in greater numbers than anywhere else. The best places were quickly taken, the hollows in the trees, the holes in the walls, the forks of the apple-trees and the elms, and you could see a brown beak, like the point of a sword, sticking out of a wisp of straw between all the rafters of the roof. One year, when all the places were taken, I suppose, a tomtit, in her embarrassment, spied the slit of the letter-box protected by its little roof, at the right of the parsonage gate. She slipped in, was satisfied with the result of her explorations, ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... rocks rising out of it like a reef out of the sea, and on the said reef, and climbing up as it were to the topmost of it, the white walls of a great castle, the crown whereof was a huge round tower. At the foot of the ridge was a thorp of white houses thatched with straw scattered over a good piece of the plain. The company drew rein on the ridge-top, and the Champions raised a great shout at the sight of their old strong-place; and Roger turned to Ralph and said: "Fair Sir, how deemest thou of the Castle of the ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... enemy's ships. We shall range you five abreast, and when I give the word, the one at the end of the line will steer for the nearest Turk, and, with oars and poles, get alongside. The captain will then light the train of powder in the hold, throw the torch among the straw, and see that, if possible, the men fasten her to the Turk; but if this cannot be done, it is not essential, for in the confusion the enemy will not be able to get out of the way of the fire ship as it drives down against ...
— A Knight of the White Cross • G.A. Henty
... of nature, Who gloze her lively universal law, As if she had not form'd our cheerful feature To be so tickled with the slightest straw! So let them vex their mumbling mouths, and draw The corners downward, like a wat'ry moon, And deal in gusty sighs and rainy flaw— We will not woo foul weather all too soon, Or nurse November on ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... nags (confound them!) We've thought of our native land; We have cussed our English brother, (For he does not understand.) We've cussed the whole of creation, And the cross swings low for the morn, Last straw (and by stern obligation) To the Empire's ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross
... for the payment of the salaries of the instructors, and that there was no provision for securing land, buildings, or apparatus. The task before me did not seem a very encouraging one. It seemed much like making bricks without straw. The coloured people were overjoyed, and were constantly offering their services in any way in which they could be of assistance in getting the ...
— Up From Slavery: An Autobiography • Booker T. Washington
... the full bloom of their beauty; if the King promised him the Prairie, and the Almighty gave him the Order of Paradise with the revenues of Purgatory, not one of all these powers would induce him to transfer a single straw from one saucer of his scales into the other. He is a judge, as Death ...
— The Commission in Lunacy • Honore de Balzac
... a born dancer! Lydia Tchinova must see her. She'll have to train. Poor Hugh!" She chuckled enjoyably. "This will be the last straw! He'll be compelled ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... reflected an instant, and said, "Truly I have no meat; and yet there is a way." So he picked from the ground a blade of dry grass, and bade the youth eat it. He did so, and found himself a moose (or a horse). Then he fed richly on the young grass till he had enough, when the Fox gave him a second straw, and he became a man again. "Friend," said the Fox, "there is an Indian village on the main-land, where there is to be a great feast, a grand dance. Would you like to be there?" "Indeed I would," replied the youth. "Then wait till dark, and I will take you ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland
... rubs a stick of sealing-wax on the sleeve of his jacket, then holds it over dusty shreds or bits of straw to see them fly up and cling to the wax, repeats without knowing it the fundamental experiment of electricity. In rubbing the wax on his coat he has electrified it, and the dry dust or bits of wool are attracted to it by reason of a mysterious ...
— The Story Of Electricity • John Munro
... "Velasquez" was the maiden name of his mother, and was adopted by the young man, is a straw that tells which way the vane of his affections turned. Diego was sixteen and troublesome. He wasn't "bad"—only he had a rollicksome, flamboyant energy that inundated everything, and made his absence often a blessing devoutly to be wished. Herrera had fixed thoughts ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... imbecile youthfulness of spirit. They were only going to stay ten minutes at the Toll House; had they not twenty long miles of road before them on the other side? Stay to dinner? Not they! Put up the horses? Never. Let us attach them to the verandah by a wisp of straw rope, such as would not have held a person's hat on that blustering day. And with all these protestations of hurry, they proved irresponsible like children. Kelmar himself, shrewd old Russian Jew, with a smirk that seemed just to have concluded a bargain ...
— The Silverado Squatters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to draw up portcullis and open gates; the men-at-arms charged forth, the multitude trampled over each other to be first in field, I was swept on and along with them through the gate, and over the drawbridge, like a straw on a wave, and, lo! a little on our left was the banner of Pothon de Xaintrailles, his foremost men dismounting, the rearguard just riding out from the forest. The two bands joined, we from Compiegne, the four hundred of Xaintrailles from the wood, and, like two swollen streams that ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... the place a hundred times worse than you describe it. Can't I rig up a hut with the packing-cases, and sleep, if need be, on straw, like Margery Daw?" ...
— Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands • Mary Seacole
... plain as a nun's, a straw hat, and as many collars, cuffs, and stockings as I can get for the rest of ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... friend, never feare any woman, unlesse thyselfe be made of straw, or some such drie matter, and she of lightning. Audacitie prospers above probability in all Worldly matters. Dost not thou know that Fortune governes them without order, and therefore reason the mother of order is none of her counsaile? why should a man desiring ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. III • Various
... the insolent chairman proved as innocuous as the baying of dogs at the moon. The legislature refused to indorse it and the pro-slavery resolutions attached to it. They were both ignominiously laid upon the table, and what is more to the purpose as a straw to show the drift of popular opinion on the slavery question in Massachusetts, their author failed of a renomination as Senator at the hands of ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... Octavian's scared pleadings. Before he could think of any fresh line of appeal his energies were called out in another direction. Olivia had slid off the roof and fallen with a soft, unctuous splash into a morass of muck and decaying straw. Octavian scrambled hastily over the pigsty wall to her rescue, and at once found himself in a quagmire that engulfed his feet. Olivia, after the first shock of surprise at her sudden drop through the air, had been mildly ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki
... saccharine aids him when the beams of the sun are cold, there is no step to his house that he may alight in comfort; the way is not made clear for him that he may start straight for the flowers, nor are any sown for him. He has no shelter if the storm descends suddenly; he has no dome of twisted straw well thatched and tiled to retreat to. The butcher-bird, with a beak like a crooked iron nail, drives him to the ground, and leaves him pierced with a thorn; but no hail of shot revenges his tortures. The grass stiffens at nightfall (in autumn), and he must creep ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... looking down carelessly on the stooping figure of any man, and seeing nothing but a faded straw hat, and arms and feet and ankles bent together, might easily think him decrepit with age. Some things touch off my temper. But ...
— A Kentucky Cardinal • James Lane Allen
... with straw is used in this game. A circle is drawn upon the ground. The group is divided into two teams. One team takes its place in the center of the circle, the other lines up around the circumference. Those on the outside of the ring endeavor, without stepping over the line, to throw and hit those ...
— School, Church, and Home Games • George O. Draper
... her now. Only one moment, please." The opportunity of leading this handsome savage as it were in chains across the parade, before everybody, her father, her mother, her sister, and HIS—was not to be lost. She darted into the house, and reappeared with the daintiest imaginable straw hat on the side of her head, and demurely took her place at his side. "It's only over there, at Major Bromley's," she said, pointing to one of the vine-clad cottage quarters; "but you are a stranger here, you know, and ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... hours of obligatory labor are passed in the mornings, people need not do anything unless they choose. Their working-dresses are very simple, but in all sorts of gay colors, like those you saw in the Greek play at Harvard, with straw hats for the men, and fillets of ribbon for the girls, and sandals for both. I speak of girls, for most of the married women are at home gardening, or about the household work, but men of every age work in the fields. The ...
— Through the Eye of the Needle - A Romance • W. D. Howells
... and true so far as this, that genius of the highest kind implies an unusual intensity of the modifying power, which detached from the discriminative and reproductive power, might conjure a platted straw into a royal diadem: but it would be at least as true, that great genius is most alien from madness,—yea, divided from it by an impassable mountain,— namely, the activity of thought and vivacity of the accumulative memory, which are no less ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... keys on a chain attached to his belt hurried forward at once, and unlocked a massive door giving access to a small apartment that looked as if it had been hewn out of the solid rock. It was unfurnished save for a straw mattress with a brown blanket for covering, and a rough wooden bench, on which, when the door was flung open, Antony Standish was seated dejectedly with his head ...
— Bandit Love • Juanita Savage
... approvingly, "has evidently not been blind to the importance of a visit to Peaceful Moments. He has dressed himself in his best. He has felt, rightly, that this is no occasion for the flannel suit and the old straw hat. I would not have it otherwise. It is the right spirit. Show the guy in. We will give ...
— The Prince and Betty - (American edition) • P. G. Wodehouse
... sitting behind you, Amy, which will account for your not seeing her. She was sitting in the Penfolds servants' pew, in a plain straw bonnet and quiet clothes like ...
— One of the 28th • G. A. Henty
... said, "you have done me good. If I am ever a missionary worth a straw I shall, under our Saviour, owe ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... they came in sight of the sea-coast, where vessels laden with provisions, sent from Dublin, were awaiting them. So eager were the famished men for food, that "they rushed into the sea as eagerly as they would into their straw." All their money was poured into the hands of the merchants; some of them even fought in the water about a morsel of food, while in their thirst they drank all the wine they could lay hands on. Our guide saw full a thousand men drunk that day ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... man who, before the war, had been a waiter in the St. Regis Hotel in New York and who had been detailed to act as his guide and interpreter during the fighting before Termonde. This man took Thompson into a wine-shop where a detachment of soldiers was quartered, gave him food, and spread straw upon the floor for him to sleep on. Shortly after midnight a forty-two centimetre shell struck the building. Of the soldiers who were sleeping in the same room as Thompson nine were killed and fifteen more who were sleeping upstairs, the ex-waiter ...
— Fighting in Flanders • E. Alexander Powell
... in the sitting-room of her own particular suite, one of three small and rather stuffy rooms, on the second floor. These rooms consisted of an anteroom, covered with a cretonne paper of blue and brown, a carpetless floor, a table, and some common, straw chairs placed against the wall. From the anteroom two doors led into two bedrooms, one on either side. Another door, opposite the entrance, opened ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot
... for Eric in that line, though," said Russell; "he can hold his own pretty well against any one. And after all, he is a most jolly fellow. I don't think even Upton would spoil him; it's chiefly the soft self-indulgent fellows, who are all straw and no iron, who get spoilt by being ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar
... I acknowledge, but it was never meant to starve the soul, though that is jist what it too often does. I know of men who sacrificed everything to the pilin' up of money, even love, without which life ain't worth a straw." ...
— Glen of the High North • H. A. Cody
... had not forgotten his intention of trying to supply us with garments; but as we had so many things to attend to, he had not as yet begun to make them. We had all, however, been supplied with straw-hats; which, working as we were in the sun, were absolute necessities. The Indians had also to make frequent excursions in search of game and fruit to supply the community with food, so that we were never without an abundance of what we considered the necessaries of life. Kallolo had also manufactured ...
— The Wanderers - Adventures in the Wilds of Trinidad and Orinoco • W.H.G. Kingston
... A month before a rhinoceros had charged him and had dropped at his feet. At another time a wounded lioness had leaped into his path and crouched to spring. Then he had not been afraid. Then he had aimed as confidently as though he were firing at a straw target. But now he felt real fear: fear of something he did not comprehend, of a situation he could not master, of an adversary as strong as Fate. By a word something had been snatched from him that he now knew was as dear to him as life, that was life, ...
— The Lost Road • Richard Harding Davis |
