"Straw" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... his fancy, which was to see his idol enter a tabernacle prepared to receive her on the return from a delightful honeymoon. Meanwhile, he was amassing furniture and bric-a-brac, just as the bird bits of straw; and he implored her not to scold him. In the Rue Neuve-Saint-Augustin, he had ferreted out two Dresden vases, which he bought, resolving to deprive himself for a time of his grapes at forty sous a pound, in ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... blasts that might cover his weak old limbs with drift. There was a sense of dignity and manhood left still; his clothes were worn, but clean and decent; he was no companion of rogues; the snow and frost, the straw of the outhouses, was better than that. He was struggling against age, against nature, against circumstance; the entire weight of society, law, and order pressed upon him to force him to lose his self-respect and liberty. He would rather ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... I, "seem to think themselves exceedingly secure; they attach no importance to the neutral members; it was but the other day, Lord—told me that he did not care a straw for Mr.—, notwithstanding he possessed four votes. ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... she crushed a soft straw hat down over her brown hair one day and set out to find her chums, feeling the need of their sympathy. And how was she to know, poor Billie, that the news the girls would have to tell her would serve only to make her mood ...
— Billie Bradley and Her Inheritance - The Queer Homestead at Cherry Corners • Janet D. Wheeler
... husbandman, after having taken from his field all the straw that is there, rakes it over with a wooden rake and gets as much again. The wise child, after the lemonade jug is empty, takes the lemons from the bottom of it and squeezes them into a still larger brew. So does the sagacious author, after having sold his material to the ...
— Moonbeams From the Larger Lunacy • Stephen Leacock
... Hegel as a person who made his opponents out of straw and rags in order to be able to beat them down the more easily. This characterizes not only Hegel but a large group of individuals whose daily life consists of it. Just as there is nowhere any particularly definite boundary between ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... provided, she had them immediately removed, saying that dainties were inconsistent with poverty. It would indeed have been difficult to detect anything incompatible with poverty in the humble room, where lay expiring the once envied heiress of large possessions. A poor bed, two straw chairs and a wooden table constituted all the furniture; a picture of the Crucifixion, the only ornament. When asked if she regretted life, she answered that the day of her death was more precious to her than all the years of her existence united. The day which proved her last, happened to be ...
— The Life of the Venerable Mother Mary of the Incarnation • "A Religious of the Ursuline Community"
... the captain to hold tight, and prepared himself for the shock. But the man did not live who could face it. An ocean of water smote Chris's back and his clutch on the spokes was loosened as if it were a baby's. Stunned, powerless, like a straw on the face of a torrent, he was swept onward he knew not whither. Missing the corner of the cabin, he was dashed forward along the poop runway a hundred feet or more, striking violently against the foot of the foremast. A second wave, ...
— Dutch Courage and Other Stories • Jack London
... moment one thought stood out from the confusion of Anne's mind and she grasped at it as at the proverbial straw. All Mrs. Morgan's heroines were noted for "rising to the occasion." No matter what their troubles were, they invariably rose to the occasion and showed their superiority over all ills of time, ...
— Anne Of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... for the amusement was that her prettiness—yes, literally, prodigiously, her prettiness—was distinct. Lady Beldonald had been magnificent—had been almost intelligent. Miss What's-her-name continues pretty, continues even young, and doesn't matter a straw! She matters so ideally little that Lady Beldonald is practically safer, I judge, than she has ever been. There hasn't been a symptom of chatter about this person, and I believe her protectress is much surprised that we're ...
— The Beldonald Holbein • Henry James
... a nobler being than his sister, and had reached up to clap Harold on the shoulder, while declaring that these assertions made no difference to him, and that he did not care the value of a straw for what Avice Stympson might say, though Harold had no defence but his own denial of half the stories, and was forced to own that there was truth in some of the others. He was deeply wounded. "Why cannot the women let us ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... head through a trap door and took a long look at the pretty doves billing and cooing in their spacious loft. Some on their nests, some bustling in and out, and some sitting at their doors, while many went flying from the sunny housetop to the straw-strewn farmyard, where six sleek ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... Inspector-General, the chiefs of the Engineer and Ordnance Corps, and Surgeon-General for the two years preceding the 30th of September last; also shewing the amount of money paid to each under the different heads of pay, fuel, straw, quarters, transportation, and all other extra and contingent allowances; which report, together with the statements herewith transmitted, furnishes ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 3) of Volume 2: James Monroe • James D. Richardson
... and half-dirty shawls, and who walk the streets in carriage costume. Brides bearing about orange-flowers longer than the day of their marriage are unmercifully quizzed; as likewise the habit of wearing satins in summer, or straw in winter—sins exclusively British. Young married women are told not to go into public without their husbands or some steady middle-aged matron; they may take a walk with an unmarried friend, although this last must never attempt to fly in the face of propriety ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 462 - Volume 18, New Series, November 6, 1852 • Various
... straw like a drowning swimmer in a whirlpool. "Now? I said not now but when you please, Angelique! You are worth a man's ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... five miles back on the Frostburgh road, whither his family had already gone. The next chance of a billet was at Grantsville, two leagues farther on. Now that sounds too absurdly short a distance to disquiet any traveler; but neither is the fatal straw in the camel's load a ponderous thing, per se. Both Falcon and I had reckoned that our day's work was done when we climbed the last hill, so it was in some discontent that we set our faces once more against the black road, and ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... cheerful freshness in the air that took away all sultriness, the sun tending 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 ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... rose on England of olden time, its faint red light stirred every sleeper from the sack of straw, which formed the only bed of the age. Springing from this rustling couch, where he had lain naked, and throwing off the coarse coverlets, usually of sheepskin, the subject of King Alfred donned ...
— The Ontario Readers - Third Book • Ontario Ministry of Education
... earlier arrivals, but as it was too late for us to cross the river, sympathetic Mrs. Sinclair said that she would find a place for us. Having no bed to offer, she loosened the rag-carpet from one corner of the room, had fresh straw put on the floor, and after supper, tucked us away on it, drawing the carpet over us in place ...
— The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate • Eliza Poor Donner Houghton
... abbey towers half-way across the blue lake-waters, as two men in the garb of husbandmen emerged from the wood. Their feet plunged heavily and their heads hung down, as they strode beside a wain mounted with straw, whistling an air of stupid unconcern; but a close listener might have heard that the lumbering vehicle carried a human voice giving them directions as to the road they were to take, and what sort of behaviour to observe under certain events. The land was solitary. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Richelieu; whom I name, because she is not worth the trouble of being silent upon. He was hopelessly smitten and spent millions upon her and to learn her movements. He knew that the Comte de Roucy shared her favours (it was for her that sagacious Count proposed to put straw before the house in order to guarantee her against the sound of the church bells, of which she complained). M. le Prince reproached her for favouring the Count. She defended herself; but he watched her so closely, that he brought home ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... very wet, and, added to this, in the evening it began to blow as well. Notwithstanding this inclemency, when we arrived at the "fish-cellar," as it was called, we found it crammed with people, the women and children occupying the ground, and sitting there on straw, which had been provided for the occasion, the men and boys were sitting on the cross-beams of the roof. The heat in the place was stifling beyond all description, for besides being densely crowded below and above, the ...
— From Death into Life - or, twenty years of my ministry • William Haslam
... that the farm-buildings could look down a little haughtily on those of the Sperber place—although there was really no reason for it, since the latter was not at all inferior either in extent or in great straw-thatched barns and stables or ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... idyll of infinite sweetness. Divinity shines through the rafters of that upper chamber, where round a low large table the Apostles are assembled in a group translated from the social customs of the painter's days. Divinity is shed upon the straw-spread manger, where Christ lies sleeping in the loft, with shepherds crowding through the ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... are more happily applied, to extinguish the little remainders of the virtue of the age." Now, I am to perform all this, it seems, without making any thing verisimilar or agreeable! Why, Pharaoh never set the Israelites such a task, to build pyramids without brick or straw. If the fool knows it not, verisimilitude and agreeableness are the very tools to do it; but I am willing to disclaim them both, rather than to use them to so ill purpose as ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... taken and carried within the limits of his command, has been cruel and inhuman; that in the case of John Dodge, a citizen of these States, which has been particularly stated to this board, he loaded him with irons, threw him into a dungeon, without bedding, without straw, without fire, in the dead of winter and severe climate of Detroit; that, in that state, he wasted him with incessant expectations of death: that when the rigors of his situation had brought him so low, that death seemed likely to withdraw him ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... then, and entered. Linus was lying on a bundle of straw, with an emaciated face and a forehead as yellow as ivory. Near the fire sat Lygia with a string of small fish, intended evidently for supper. Occupied in removing the fish from the string, and thinking that it was Ursus who had entered, she did not raise her eyes. But Vinicius approached, ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... spectacle, retired to the coach with Madam Clement and the Jew, while Renaldo, accompanied by the rest, entered a dismal apartment, altogether void of furniture and convenience, where they beheld the wretched hero of these memoirs stretched almost naked upon straw, insensible, convulsed, and seemingly in the grasp of death. He was worn to the bone either by famine or distemper; his face was overshadowed with hair and filth; his eyes were sunk, glazed, and distorted; ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... day Ned trudged on alone until towards evening, he came to the edge of a pine-forest, where close at hand stood a small hut made of pine-branches, plastered with mud and thatched with rye-straw. No sooner had he tapped on the door than it was opened by a girl. She looked out timidly, thinking, I suppose, it might be a robber. But when ...
— The Magic Soap Bubble • David Cory
... the bridge, and a wheel which wound up the chains, with another wheel for the smaller bridge, and a fireplace where the porter cooked his food; in the room above, which was approached by a ladder, there was a table and a chair, and a bed of boards with straw upon it, where he slept. The windows were guarded by shutters, and in winter time it was sorely cold in the tower; but the porter heeded it not, for he was a strong and rough man; he had a wild air, and his long shaggy locks ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... was at the heart of all of them, and whenever a sea-breeze blew down the street carrying with it wisps of straw from the field, or dandelion seeds, or smell of sea-pinks, we children lifted our noses and sniffed and sniffed and saw the waves curl in across the shore, or breakers burst upon the rock, and whispered to one another of the Smugglers of Trezent or the ...
— Jeremy • Hugh Walpole
... fine military bearing, with their guns and remains of old uniforms; and the old soldier, from his upright walk and the way he handled his gun, could easily be distinguished, though clothed in home-spun and buckskin, with the coarse straw hat. The early settlers all had guns of some description, except the very juvenile members, who used to carry canes to represent guns. Those trainings used to be looked forward to with intense interest by all the boys ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... into a vat of pulp, while by suction a partial vacuum is maintained in the cylinder, causing the pulp to cling to the wire until it is conveyed to a covered cylinder, which takes it up and carries it forward in a manner similar to the system already described. This machine is employed in making straw-board and other heavy ...
— A Book of Exposition • Homer Heath Nugent
... other the more surely, the more obediently they strove to fulfil His divine command. As Heinz desired to take up the cross in imitation of Christ she, too, would bear it. It was to be found beside the straw pallets of the wounded criminals. The fulfilment of every hard duty which she voluntarily performed seemed like a step that brought her nearer to the Saviour, and at the same time to the union with her lover, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... where another stood: farther to the left Bulbarrow, where there was yet another. Not far from this came Nettlecombe Tout; to the west, Dogberry Hill, and Black'on near to the foreground, the beacon thereon being built of furze faggots thatched with straw, and standing on the spot where the monument ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... red the mighty masses of porphyry, and the dark granite glows with a vermilion not its own. Every variety and form of rock is transfigured by the new-born light from heaven. The white chalkstone glitters from afar; the light grey feldspar assumes a warm flesh tint; the limestone becomes straw color; the crystals of hornblende flash like fire-flies; and the veins of white quartz, running with their nodules of serpentine and chlorite through the dark clay-slate, gleam as do ...
— Life of Schamyl - And Narrative of the Circassian War of Independence Against Russia • John Milton Mackie
... went away as he had come. And the holy man Giovanni asked himself: "Why did this Doctor say, Truth was white, I wonder?" And lying in the straw he kept revolving this question in his head. His body shared the restlessness of his mind, and kept turning first one side then the other in search of the ...
— The Well of Saint Clare • Anatole France
... knowledge, which scarce conceals the Great Presence. Vanini was thrust into the dungeons of the Inquisition at Naples on a charge of atheism. "Atheism!" contemptuously retorted the wretched captive, "I could prove God from that straw," picking up with his feet a fragment of the bed on which he lay in fetters. For the universal Life was in the straw. The life in that slender ear is one with the mighty pulsations of the ocean, the growth of the forest, and of ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... manufacturers must be protected, so a heavy tariff was placed on the foreign article. Our brick men, finding that they had a soft thing, tried to solve that conundrum which the Israelites gave up: "How do you make bricks without straw?" They made a patent brick, built the Howard Museum in Washington, (was it a museum or a college?) the thing tumbled down, and a Congressional committee sat among its ruins. Poor Gen. HOWARD is in a muddle, and wishes, from the ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 7, May 14, 1870 • Various
... 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 among them. Thompson ...
— Fighting in Flanders • E. Alexander Powell
... story of another experimental philosopher who had a great theory about a horse being able to live without eating, and who demonstrated it so well, that he had got his own horse down to a straw a day, and would unquestionably have rendered him a very spirited and rampacious animal on nothing at all, if he had not died, four-and-twenty hours before he was to have had his first comfortable bait of air. Unfortunately for, the experimental philosophy of the female to whose ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... I seemed to wake up and realize I hadn't ever really lived. Just been a tail-ender who had 'gone the pace'. Hadn't even had a beginning. Was it too late to start over again? Probably." His voice came in crisp accents. "But it was a last chance—a feeble one—a straw to the drowning," he laughed. "That sounds absurd to you but I don't know ...
— A Man and His Money • Frederic Stewart Isham
... last straw: a feverish anger laid hold of him. "Here's the ring! You see it! Damnation, Mary! You gave your word and I took it, and God knows what I've been through. Now come! Get your things on and bring your mother ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... morning I met Armour on my way to the office. He was ambling along on the leanest and most ill-groomed of bazaar ponies, and he wore a bowler. In Simla sun hats are admissible, straw hats are presentable, and soft felt hats are superior, but you must not wear a bowler. I might almost say that if one's glance falls upon a bowler, one hardly looks further; the expectation of finding an acquaintance under it is so vain. In this instance, ...
— The Pool in the Desert • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... end of the cabin marked the confines of a bedchamber for the "old folks." The older children climbed the ladder nailed to the wall to get to the loft floored with loose clapboards that rattled when trodden upon. The straw beds were so near the roof that the patter of the rain made music to the ear, and the spray of the falling water would often baptize the "tow-heads" ...
— Ox-Team Days on the Oregon Trail • Ezra Meeker
... youth, of workmen, o'er and o'er, I've asked, "Instruct me in your trade." "Begone!—our business is not more Than keeps ourselves,—go, beg!" they said. Ye rich, who bade me toil for bread, Of bones your tables gave me store, Your straw has often made my bed;— In death I lay no ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... brick mixed with rushes, as the Egyptians made sun-dried bricks mixed with straw; they worked in copper, silver, lead, and there are evidences, as we shall see, that they wrought ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... in England had long been dissatisfied with Howe's way of conducting the war. Time and again he had seemed to lose his chance of crushing the rebellion and now this idle and gay winter in Philadelphia seemed the last straw. Such bitter things indeed were said of him that he resigned his commission, and went home, and the supreme command was ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall
... Instead of returning to drink with Gregory and his comrades, Ivan went to prepare a sledge, filled it with straw, and hid at the bottom an iron crowbar. He brought this to the outside gate, and assuring himself he was not being spied upon, he raised the body of the dead man in his arms, hid it under the straw, and sat down above it. He had the gate of the hotel opened, followed Niewski Street as far as ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - VANINKA • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... houses neither candle nor lamp was to be seen; nor in the whole street; nor in the whole town, so far as eye could reach. The house to the right was a roof rather than a house; nothing could be more mean. The walls were of mud, the roof was of straw, and there was more thatch than wall. A large nettle, springing from the bottom of the wall, reached the roof. The hovel had but one door, which was like that of a dog-kennel; and a window, which was but a hole. All was shut up. At the side an ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... appearing, and then vanished, leaving the sea in its darkness, whence came those bass tones of the water's unknown emotion. A wind, cool, reminiscent of the wave wastes, made the women hold their wraps about their throats, and caused the men to grip the rims of their straw hats. It carried the noise of the band in the pavilion in gusts. Sometimes people unable to hear the music glanced up at the pavilion and were reassured upon beholding the distant leader still gesticulating and bobbing, and the other members of the band with their ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... there any temple or shrine seen in their country, nor even any cabin thatched with straw, their only idea of religion being to plunge a naked sword into the ground with barbaric ceremonies, and then they worship that with great respect, as Mars, the presiding deity of the regions ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... following, the more that the evil in his blood struggled so fiercely with such a mortal pain as he went. In Fredericksburg, one of the old family-homesteads had been taken for a camp-hospital. As they laid Gurney on a heap of straw in the library, a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... this way, Choulette lighted one of those long and tortuous Italian cigars, which are pierced with a straw. He drew from it several puffs of infectious ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... between the zinc sheds and palm huts of the soldier-workmen, they came running out to meet him, and one, who seemed to be a leader, touched his bridle, and with his straw sombrero in his hand begged for a word with ...
— Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... this kind." To less sensitive men the effect of eccentricity upon him was almost comic, as when on one occasion he was quite upset and silenced by the appearance of a bearded member of Council at an important deputation in a straw hat and blue plush gloves. He did not recover from the depression produced by those gloves for days. Many of the workmen, too, who were most prominent in the Associations were almost as little to his mind—windy inflated kind of persons, ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... kneeled down and asked her forgiveness, whom she forgave most willingly. Then he willed her to stand upon the straw, which doing, she saw the block. Then she said, I pray you despatch me quickly. Then she kneeled down, saying, Will you take it off before I lay me down? and the hangman answered No, Madam. She tied a kerchief about her eyes; then, feeling for the block, she said, What shall I do; where is it? ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude
... obedience. Were your Majesty to throw down your warder when the war is high, and these men's blood is hot, it would meet no more regard than if a sparrow should drop among a herd of battling wolves the straw which he was carrying to his nest. Nothing will separate them but the exhaustion of slaughter; and better they sustain it at the hands of each other than from the swords of such troops as might ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... then conducted by the host to a small chamber upstairs, where there was the luxury of a bed stuffed with straw. The rest of the travellers, including Wulf's companions, merely wrapped themselves in their cloaks and lay down on the raised bench ...
— Wulf the Saxon - A Story of the Norman Conquest • G. A. Henty
... narrow, dark dungeon, where the damp and stench were intolerable, and nothing could be seen until a light was procured, they found something lying on filthy straw that had human shape. The hair and beard were long and overgrown; the features, begrimed with filth, were such as the sharpest eye could not recognize; and the whole body was so worn and emaciated, so ragged ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... young, and specially succulent. We, however, were rather annoyed by the persistent way in which the seeds worked through our clothes and blankets; and before much walking, our trousers were fringed with a mass of yellow seeds, like those of a carter who has wound wisps of straw round his ankles. Truly rain is a marvellous transformer; not only vegetable but animal life is affected by it; the bush is enlivened by the twittering of small birds, which come from nobody knows where, ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... JOHNSON. 'Sir, it is not the worth of the thing, but of the skill in forming it which is so highly estimated. Every thing that enlarges the sphere of human powers, that shews man he can do what he thought he could not do, is valuable. The first man who balanced a straw upon his nose[653]; Johnson, who rode upon three horses at a time[654]; in short, all such men deserved the applause of mankind, not on account of the use of what they did, but of the dexterity which they exhibited.' ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... lucky when bees made their home in the roof, or indeed in any part of a house, and this they could easily do when houses were thatched with straw. Many a swarm of bees found shelter in the roofs of ancient churches, but in our days bees are seldom found in ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... then Lord Granville proposed Northbrook. All other names were immediately withdrawn, and Northbrook took time to consider, but evidently meant to go, and decided, I think, in the course of the same evening. Baring was then called in, and we once more began to chop straw by considering the "ulterior consequences" of the collapse of the Conference—i.e., bankruptcy. Lastly, Gordon was dealt with, and it was decided that a supplementary estimate should be proposed, with the understanding that we should spend more if it was wanted. I wrote to ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... to take walks and go for straw rides here, won't we, Wanaka?" asked Minnehaha. She used Eleanor's fire name, Wanaka, just as Minnehaha was her fire name; ...
— The Camp Fire Girls on the Farm - Or, Bessie King's New Chum • Jane L. Stewart
... and Caucalis on either side, is a welcome change to both man and beast after so much laborious marching through the bare sand. The purslane, when fresh and green, is much relished by camels. In the Melleha we saw two laden with straw, with their ...
— The Caravan Route between Egypt and Syria • Ludwig Salvator
... transformation scene at the theatre. Under my window a colony of cleome made a soft web of bloom that drew me every morning for a long still time; and one day I discovered that I was looking into a rare fretwork of fawn and straw colored twigs from which both bloom and leaf had gone, and I could not say if it had been for a matter of weeks or days. The time to plant cucumbers and set out cabbages may be set down in the almanac, but never seed-time nor ...
— The Land Of Little Rain • Mary Hunter Austin
... catches at every straw, and so we were again and again appealed to for advice by these sorely afflicted people. To those who were not yet evicted we counselled patience and submission to the absurd terms, pending an appeal to a higher authority than the South ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... floor, the roof was sound, and the window was covered by a screen of straw which made the place dark save for the warm glow of the fire, near which a little Turkish-looking man was seated, and a largely proportioned Turkish woman reclined on ...
— Yussuf the Guide - The Mountain Bandits; Strange Adventure in Asia Minor • George Manville Fenn
... she jumped right into the manger and she wiggled around in the straw until she made a little nest where she laid ...
— Here and Now Story Book - Two- to seven-year-olds • Lucy Sprague Mitchell
... in each limb as a die; Clear of hoof, and clear of horn: Sharply pointed as a thorn, With a neck by yoke unworn; From the which hung down by strings, Balls of cowslips, daisy rings, Interplac'd with ribbonings: Faultless every way for shape; Not a straw could him escape; Ever gamesome as an ape, But yet harmless as a sheep. Pardon, Lacon, if I weep; Tears will spring where woes are deep. Now, ay me! ay me! Last night Came a mad dog and did bite, Aye, ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... gleaming in the evening glow, large galleys, light skiffs, and restless, skimming pleasure-boats, were flitting to and fro; and among them, like loaded wagons among chariots and horsemen, the low corn-barges scarcely seemed to move, piled as they were with pyramids of straw and grain as ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... swiftly through the air by a dragon, Edna had done what was the correct thing to do in the circumstances—she had promptly fainted. She opened her eyes to find that she had been deposited uninjured, on a truss of straw in a Courtyard. On her right was the massive front of Castle Drachenstolz; before her were its lofty walls and the grim towers that flanked its heavy gate; to the left were the stables, from the windows of which some of the black carriage horses looked out, their wrinkled lips exposing their long ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... shelter in the camp some time later, she found Deborah absent. Impelled by an unreasoning desire to keep secret this event, she hastily hid the collar in the sand of the tent floor and laid the straw matting of her bed smoothly over its burial place. Again she struggled with her pride and demanded of herself why ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... into the little garden—a charming place with yew hedges, a lichen-covered well and old thick apple-trees, and here I found an old man in a broad-brimmed straw hat tending the bees. The hives were open and he was working with a knife whilst the bees hung in a trembling hovering cloud about him. I spoke to him but he paid no attention to me at all. I watched ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... on his breast, took his hat off, put a stone into each corner of it, then, wrapping his hand in the tail of his jerkin, whipped the flask off the fire, wedged it in between the stones, and put the hat under the old man's nose with a merry smile. The other tremulously inserted the pipe of rye-straw and sucked. Lo and behold, his wan, drawn face was seen to light up more and more, till it quite glowed; and as soon as he had ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... of hair in a box, all light, for 'here's your straw color, your orange tawny, your French crown color, and your perfect yellow' Shakespeare. They look very familiar, and I fancy I ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... straw to the flame of American enthusiasm. All her individuality seemed to have been burnt out of her. She was at present only a sort of receptacle for Sennier-mania. In dress, hair, manner, and even gesture, she strove to reproduce Madame Sennier. For one of the most curious ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... Hester and Miriam and Goodman Brown And Pyncheron, who dwelt in Salem Town— Malvin and Endicott and Ethan Brand, John Inglefield and that old crone whose hand Was lent to fashioning Scarecrows built of straw— All these through the Enchanter's eyes you saw, Strange folk who trod the bleak New England shores, Tithingmen, Sachems, Witches, Sagamores, Puritans, Soldiers, Scholars, Quaker maids, Royalists splendid in their rich brocades! To-day the past ...
— Patriotic Plays and Pageants for Young People • Constance D'Arcy Mackay
... men, they rose up to destroy all who had escaped the battle, or who were lying hidden in their dwellings. And when, eager for the blood of the barbarians, our soldiers had reached the spot, they tore to pieces the slight straw-thatched huts; nor could even the strongest-built cottages, or the stoutest beams save ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... ha!" he laughed bitterly. "Precious scientific men! Villainous old hombogues! The whole set not worth a straw! I hope to gracious, since we must fall, that we shall drop down plumb on Cambridge Observatory, and not leave a single one of the miserable old women, called professors, alive ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... dying gales the airs convey! Come, hapless orphans, meek Compassion cried, Where'er, unsheltered outcasts! ye abide 110 The bitter driving wind, the freezing sky, The oppressor's scourge, the proud man's contumely; Come, hapless orphans! ye who never saw A tear of kindness shed on your cold straw; Who never met with joy the morning light, Or lisped your little prayer of peace at night; Come, hapless orphans! nor, when youth should spring Soaring aloft, as on an eagle's wing, Shall ye forsaken on the ground ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles
... first great national emancipation, of which an account has come down to us. We read in the most ancient of books that a people bowed to the dust under a cruel yoke, scourged to toil by hard taskmasters, not supplied with straw, yet compelled to furnish the daily tale of bricks, became sick of life, and raised such a cry of misery as pierced the heavens. The slaves were wonderfully set free: at the moment of their liberation they raised a song of gratitude and triumph: but, in a few hours, they began to regret their ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... him. If he had chosen—and he was more than once upon the point of it—to assert that he was indeed above humanity he would have found millions to grant his claim. You who have heard of him as a stout gentleman in a straw hat, as he was in his later days, may find it hard to understand it, but if you had seen his mangled soldiers still with their dying breath crying out to him, and turning their livid faces towards him as he passed, you would ...
— Uncle Bernac - A Memory of the Empire • Arthur Conan Doyle
... all the unhired serving maids rushed to Sir Tristram and crowded about him and began their eternal, "I can bake, sir, I can brew, sir," etc., and begged him to hire them. Now this was the last straw, and Sir Tristram looked for Martha and Nancy to come to his assistance, but they only shrieked with laughter and urged the girls on. Meantime, Plunkett and Lionel had approached them, and, when Martha noticed that they were about to speak, she ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... cleaned with his hand, till each one gleamed like a stalk of gold, after which he cut the straws into lengths of about six inches, leaving, if he could, a notch at the bottom of each piece. He always had a beautifully sharp knife that could cut a straw clean without hurting it. Then he set in the middle of the table a heap of gunpowder, a little pile of black grains upon the white-scrubbed board. He made and trimmed the straws while Paul and Annie rifled and plugged ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... probably that examined by Perring and Lepsius, which had a base of three hundred feet, and an elevation, probably, of about one hundred and eighty-five feet. It was built of crude brick mixed with a good deal of straw, and cased with a white silicious limestone. The same material was employed for the greater part of the so-called "Labyrinth," but many of the columns were of red granite, and some perhaps of porphyry. Most likely the edifice was intended as a mausoleum for the sacred crocodiles, ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... partaking of the meal in an old room with rough tables and benches. Near him lay four huge potatoes, newly broiled in their skins. Through the window he looked out on to a yard where poultry strutted about amid straw, dung, and rubbish, in the shadow of a hay-rick. Not till then had he the heart to take the letter from his pocket. An examination of the redirections proved interesting. It had been first sent to the address where he had lived with Cleo, whence it had been redirected care of Cleo's maid, ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... saw that there was no help for it. Sir John would be offended if he did not go, and really he had no engagement. And he rather wondered how Miss Pynsent would look in Court attire. She had worn a plain cotton and a flapping straw hat ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... watched all the while by the somber, half-shut eyes. She moved the furniture, she dusted the bureau, she arranged the little row of photographs; and then she essayed to smooth Mrs. Maitland's hair—it was the last straw. The big, gray head began to lift slowly; a trembling finger pointed at the girl; ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... listened attentively, and drank remarkably well, seeming to like champagne as much perhaps as he liked his straw-colored Johannisburger. His name was Hermann, which is that of most Germans whom authors bring upon their scene. Like a man who does nothing frivolously, he was sitting squarely at the banker's table and eating with that Teutonic appetite so celebrated throughout Europe, ...
— The Red Inn • Honore de Balzac
... from the nursery they will be wrapped in moss and straw, with burlap about the roots. Do not unpack them until you are ready to plant them. If you cannot do this as soon as they are received, put them in the cellar or some other cool, shady place, and pour a pailful of water over the wrapping about the ...
— Amateur Gardencraft - A Book for the Home-Maker and Garden Lover • Eben E. Rexford
... brought a straw sun-bonnet, and Hilda tied its strings under Pink's chin, every fibre within her mutely protesting against its extreme ugliness. "She shall not wear that again," said she to herself, "if I can help it." But the sweet pale face looked out so joyously from the dingy yellow tunnel that ...
— Queen Hildegarde • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... dressing-room had the effect of settling the aversion more firmly in his mind. In the first place, the man's face was a peculiarly evil one. His dark eyes were set quite close together under a bulging forehead. His eyebrows were straw-colored, and so thin that they were almost invisible. A broad, flat nose, with spreading nostrils, not unlike that of an Ethiopian, gave to the upper part of his face a sheep-like expression. His lower lip, thick and blue and loose, protruded with flabby ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... my people, let thy youths parade Their woolly flocks before the rising sun; With curds and oat-cakes, when their work is done, By frugal handmaids let the board be laid; Let them refresh their vigor in the shade, Or deem their straw as down to lie upon, Ere the great nation which our sires begun Be rent asunder by hell's minion, Trade! If jarring interests and the greed of gold, The corn-rick's envy of the mined hill, The steamer's grudge against the spindle's ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... the man went away. He had a feeling of relief when the door closed and retreating footsteps echoed down the hall. He had grasped at a renewal of Rutherford's acquaintance as a man drowning in a sea of loneliness would grasp at any friendly straw. And Rutherford, Hollister quickly realized, was the most fragile sort of straw. The man was a profound, non-thinking egotist, the adventurer pure and simple, whose mentality never rose above grossness ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... he directed a woman, who was familiar with the locality, to mark with chalk the doors of the buildings where the Englishmen lay. Then, slipping up to the borders of Ayr, he sent a party with ropes, bidding them to fasten securely all the marked doors. This done, others heaped straw on the outside of the buildings and set it on fire. The buildings, being constructed of wood, were quickly in a flame, the English waking from their drunken slumbers to ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... this miserable petition upon your table, must, I am afraid, upon the principles of true fortification, be soon destroyed. But fortunately her walls, bulwarks, and bastions, are constructed of other materials than of stubble and straw; are built up with the strong and stable matter of the gospel of liberty, and founded on a true, constitutional, legal establishment. But, Sir, she has other securities; she has the security of her own doctrines; she has the security ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... of a splitting headache, which, as memory remounted its throne, brought up a train of recollections. I found myself to be seated upon a heavy wooden bench set flat against a wall, which was covered with a kind of straw matting. My hands were firmly tied behind me. In the first agony of that reawakening I became ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... He took the assistance of his four brothers, equally honorable with himself: and having clothed the king in a garb like their own, they led him into the neighboring wood, put a bill in his hand, and pretended to employ themselves in cutting fagots. Some nights he lay upon straw in the house, and fed on such homely fare as it afforded. For a better concealment, he mounted upon an oak, where he sheltered himself among the leaves and branches for twenty-four hours. He saw several soldiers pass by. All of them ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... I rather think her frock was of linen—at any rate, it was blue. Her large straw hat was blue, too, and so were her smart French gloves and her dainty shoes; her ankles were very pretty, but her complexion was the thing: She had one of the clearest skins I have ever seen, and the delicate bloom of her cheeks ...
— The Brother of Daphne • Dornford Yates
... Darkness, give, O give me hate For the blind weakness of my passionate love! And if thou knowest sweet pity, stretch thy wing, Spotted with sin and seamed with veins of fire, Between the gate of heaven and my life's prayer. For loving, thou didst leave me; and, for that The lowly straw-roof of a peasant's shed Sheltered my cradle slumbers, and that Morn, Clasping about my neck her dewy arms, Drew to the mountains my unfashioned youth, Where sunbeams built bright arches, and the wind Winnowed ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 5, July 29, 1850 • Various
... arbitrary rules, limits his own creative powers in just the degree that he allows himself so to be bound. "My book," says one of the greatest of modern authors, "shall smell of the pines and resound with the hum of insects. The swallow over my window shall interweave that thread or straw he carries in his bill into my web also." Far better, gentle sage, to have it smell of the pines and resound with the hum of insects than to have it sound of the rules that a smaller type of man gets by studying the works of a few great, fearless writers like yourself, and formulating ...
— In Tune with the Infinite - or, Fullness of Peace, Power, and Plenty • Ralph Waldo Trine
... father, here I am with the cart; now take me down." The father got hold of the horse with his left hand, and with the right took his little son out of the ear. Thumbling sat down quite merrily on a straw, but when the two strange men saw him, they did not know what to say for astonishment. Then one of them took the other aside and said, "Hark, the little fellow would make our fortune if we exhibited him in a large town, for money. We will buy him." They went to the peasant and said, "Sell us ...
— Grimm's Fairy Stories • Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm
... and was standing, cane and straw hat in hand. Argensola was looking at him with frank hostility. The professor, obliged to pass near him, did so with a stiff ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... screaming, wailing, stamping their feet, and beating their breasts, renouncing (in the earliest times) even their clothes, dwelling, and belongings to the dead, removing to mourning-sheds of clay, fasting, or eating only rice gruel, sleeping on straw with a clod for a pillow, and speaking only on subjects of death and burial. Office and public duties were resigned, and marriage, music, and separation ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... semi-darkness, Ezekiel's penetrating and impertinent eyes took eager note of these facts with superior complacency, quite unmindful, after the fashion of most critical travellers, of the hideous contrast of his own long shapeless nankeen duster, his stiff half-clerical brown straw hat, his wisp of gingham necktie, his dusty boots, his outrageous carpet-bag, and his straggling goat-like beard. A few looked at him in grave, discreet wonder. Whether they recognized in him the advent of ...
— The Argonauts of North Liberty • Bret Harte
... amusement, but she did approve of her going to church, so when the young lady had exhibited herself to the invalid in all her finery, she went away in the greatest good-humour. As the evening was hot, she had put on a dress of pale blue muslin adorned with white ribbons, a straw hat with many flowers and feathers, and to finish off her costume, her gloves and shoes and sunshade were white. As these cool colours rather toned down the extreme red of her healthy complexion, she really looked very well; and ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... other, stopping short, his eyes flaming above his shaggy beard and under his straw hat, like an animal glaring through ...
— The Launch Boys' Adventures in Northern Waters • Edward S. Ellis
... was nearly waste, and had a very desolate look. Scattered around, and littered upon shake-down beds of straw, some half dozen young besmutted savages, male and female, lay stretched in all positions, some north, others south, without order or decency, but all seeming in that barbarous luxury which denotes strong animal health and ...
— The Emigrants Of Ahadarra - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... turned her head this way and that; and at last, after much hesitation, said, Alad for me! I hardly know what I wanted with you. When I awoke from my intemperate trance, and found what a cursed way I was in, my conscience smote me, and I was for catching like a drowning wretch, at every straw. I wanted to see every body and any body but those I did see; every body who I thought could give me comfort. Yet could I expect none from you neither; for you had declared yourself my enemy, although I had never done you harm; for what, Jackey, in her old tone, whining through her nose, ...
— Clarissa Harlowe, Volume 9 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... are small and low, as is the rule, rather than the exception, in English towns and villages. Many are covered with tiles, but the thatch roof is also very common here. This consists of a mixture of straw and earth, often more than a foot in thickness, and covered with moss and grass. Notwithstanding this, both the houses and the streets are kept remarkably clean and inviting; so much so, that I felt nowhere else so soon and so perfectly at home ...
— The Youthful Wanderer - An Account of a Tour through England, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany • George H. Heffner
... transversal corridors. Descending a flight of stone steps, the two men with their burthen entered a range of subterranean cloisters, at whose extremity was a low and massive door, which Don Baltasar opened, and they entered a narrow cell, having a straw pallet and earthen water-jug for sole furniture. Close to the roof of this dismal dungeon was an aperture in the wall, through which a strong iron grating, and the rank grass that grew close up to it, allowed but a faint glimmer of daylight to enter. Placing their prisoner ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... set up against his argument. It is well, however, for the debater to avoid overemphasizing objections. Sometimes his discussion gives the objections a weight that they would not otherwise have. It is not wise to set up "a man of straw" for the purpose ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... and set them down again in two great wicker-baskets, which I had made on purpose for them that they might not break; and, as between the pot and the basket there was a little room to spare, I stuffed it full of the rice and barley-straw; and these two pots being to stand always dry, I thought would hold my dry corn, and perhaps the meal when the corn ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe
... Some carts were piled with cases of peaches, grapes, tomatoes, and rock-melons—the rich aromatic scent of the last mentioned strongly asserting their presence as they passed. On some waggons the water-melons were packed in straw and had the grower's initials chipped in the rind, others were not so distinguished, and at intervals the roughness of the thoroughfare bumped one off. If the fall did not break it quite in two, a ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... the wooden bridge." I heard no more, as they went into the house, and John took me to the stable. Oh, what a good supper he gave me that night, a good bran mash and some crushed beans with my oats, and such a thick bed of straw! and I was glad of it, for I ...
— Black Beauty • Anna Sewell
... sparrow; toft, a homestead, an old enclosure, low hill; udal, a particular tenure of land; ug, to loathe; wadmel, a species of coarse cloth; wake, a portion of open water in a frozen lake or stream; wale, to choose; wase, a wisp or small bundle of hay or straw; whauve, to cover over, especially with a dish turned upside down; wick, a creek, bay; ...
— English Dialects From the Eighth Century to the Present Day • Walter W. Skeat
... boyishness in a new soft roundness which her long outgrown skirt and too scant little waist failed completely to conceal. And the hillsfolk were given to shaking their heads over her now, just as the generation before had done, for to cap it all—the last straw upon the back of their toleration—Dryad Anderson had "took up" with Denny Bolton, Young Denny, the last of his name. Nothing more was needed to damn her forever in the eyes of the hills people, although they could not have explained just why, ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans
... goods, and had trodden the snow about the door into a pool of mud. Riding-saddles and bridles, pack-saddles and strings of bells, mules and men, lanterns, torches, sacks, provender, barrels, cheeses, kegs of honey and butter, straw bundles and packages of many shapes, were crowded confusedly together in this thawed quagmire and about the steps. Up here in the clouds, everything was seen through cloud, and seemed dissolving into cloud. The breath of ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... the Jaegermasters of distant posts in the forests, who came to Stuttgart on official business; and here, too, was the residence of the Grand Master of the Hunt and hounds. On the third floor, beneath the high sloping roof, were a few garrets and several large lofts filled with the straw destined for the dog-kennels. The mingled odours of hounds and straw displeased Wilhelmine's acute sense of smell, and one of her first commands upon entering her new abode was that hounds and straw should be removed ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... from The Red Lion and had a peculiar smell of stale straw. They drove with both windows closed so that the Vicar should not catch cold. The sexton was waiting at the porch to take the communion plate, and while the Vicar went to the vestry Mrs. Carey and Philip settled themselves ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... expressed his wish, than his fingers closed over some object on the ground. He grasped it with about the same hopefulness that a dying man will grasp at a straw. ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in New Mexico • Frank Gee Patchin
... pantechnicon passed Denry, at the rate of about three and a half miles an hour, he leaped, or rather he scrambled, on to it, losing nothing in the process except his straw hat, which remained a witness at his mother's door that her boy had been that way and departed under unusual circumstances. Denry had the bright idea of dropping the shafts down to act as a brake. But, unaccustomed to the manipulation ...
— The Card, A Story Of Adventure In The Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... a singular train of tubes, each filled apparently with a shining line of straw shaped metallic bodies. This was raised by some silk cord passing to a pulley and arm, perhaps ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap |
