"Varnish" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... A. Oil raises the fiber of black walnut and gives it a rougher surface than when free from it. To polish any wood, it is only necessary to fill the pores well, and then rub it down to a smooth surface. Thus painters prefer to put on a coat of shellac varnish first, before oiling walnut and other hard woods. For fine floors, a thin coat of liquid wax ...
— Scientific American, Volume XXXVI., No. 8, February 24, 1877 • Various
... marble mantel, above which loomed a tarnished mirror reflecting darkness. Fleetwood rose, drew a window-shade higher, and nodded toward several pictures; and Plank moved slowly from one to another, peering up at the dead Siwards in their crackled varnish. ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... return of the "General" with a brand new coat of paint and varnish in a deal box, consigned to His Worship, the Mayor of Quebec sent by unknown hands, was made an occasion of rejoicing to every friend of the British hero whom Quebec contained, and ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... was looked at with heads at every angle, one man even kept his head erect and one went a little upstairs and looked at it under his arm. Also the most powerful lenses have been used for a minute examination, and one expert licked the varnish and looked extremely thoughtful and wise at me as he turned the booty over his gifted tongue. And now, God being with us, we mean to possess every specimen in existence—before the Americans get hold of the idea. Yesterday Justin got up and motored ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... fitting tight. "When your oil has been washed in bottle, put it into this trough with water, and put the trough in the sun all day. You will soon see the water turbid again. But mark, you must not carry this game too far, or the sun will turn your oil to varnish. When it is as clear as crystal, not too luscious, drain carefully, and cork it up tight. Grind your own prime colours, and lay them on with this oil, and they shall live. Hubert would put sand or salt ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... one of the royal domains, he managed to please the two kings, Louis XVIII. and Charles X., which proves he made the most of his nonentity; and even the liberals liked him; but his conduct and life were covered with the finest varnish; language, noble manners, and deportment were brought by him to a state of perfection. But, as the old prince said, it was impossible for him to continue the traditions of the Cadignans, who were all well known to have ruined their wives, ...
— The Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan • Honore de Balzac
... school, which it appeared from the inscription Janny had founded somewhere in the arid Thirties. It was precisely the sort of school that Janny, by the look of him, would have invented. Not even French adaptability could make anything of it. So Janny had his school, with a faint perfume of varnish, all to himself in a hot stillness of used-up air and little whirls of dust. And because that town seemed so barren, I met there a French General whom I would have gone very far to have encountered. ...
— France At War - On the Frontier of Civilization • Rudyard Kipling
... Virgin Mary. The Saviour of men elbowed St. Labre. They were of plaster run into moulds, or roughly carved in wood, and were colored with paint as glaring as the red and blue of a barber's pole, and covered with vulgar gildings. Chins in the air, ecstatic eyes shining with varnish, horribly ugly and all new, they were drawn up in line like recruits at the roll-call, the mitred bishop, the martyr carrying his palm, St. Agnes embracing her lamb, St. Roch with his dog and shells, St. John the Baptist in his sheepskin, and, ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee
... industry has not yet found out how to imitate it. When Boulle employed wood in his work it was ebony—they have abandoned that for blackened pear wood, under the pretext that ebony is a hard, close wood which twists, splits, and cracks, takes glue badly, and refuses varnish. So that they call a man who never uses ebony 'ebeniste.' They did not trouble about these things in the time of Louis XIV. They never varnished their furniture, so it did not matter that ebony would not take ...
— Intarsia and Marquetry • F. Hamilton Jackson
... Pugwash had a watery mouth when he married, I guess it's pretty puckery by this time. However, if she goes to act ugly, I'll give her a dose of 'soft sawder' that will take the frown out of her frontispiece and make her dial-plate as smooth as a lick of copal varnish. It's a pity she's such a kickin' devil, too, for she has good points,—good eye, good foot, neat pastern, fine chest, a clean set of limbs, and carries a good—But here we are. Now you'll see what 'soft ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VIII (of X) • Various
... Beneath his varnish of chivalry, it cannot be gainsayed that the knight was often a bloody and ferocious barbarian. There was little quarter in his wars, save when a ransom might be claimed. But with all his savagery, he was a light-hearted creature, like a formidable ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... of Siena, was shewn about fifteen others: the surfaces of which were glazed black, like a sort of varnish;—resisted acids;—and were too hard to be scratched with the point ...
— Remarks Concerning Stones Said to Have Fallen from the Clouds, Both in These Days, and in Antient Times • Edward King
... these light parts the glass is covered with a more or less transparent tint, according to the effect required. The easiest way is to draw the figures with water colors on thin paper and afterward varnish them. To imitate the natural motions of the objects represented, several pieces of glass placed behind each other are occasionally employed. By removing the lantern to different distances, and at the same time altering, more or less ...
— Entertainments for Home, Church and School • Frederica Seeger
... had balloon silk, big shears, a quick-drying gum solution and a pot of gasproof varnish, ready for the job of patching up the hole. But first they had to empty the big bag of gas. This was speedily done, for already enough had escaped to wrinkle the bag like a ...
— The Boy Inventors' Radio Telephone • Richard Bonner
... flow over glass? Solution too thick, glass greasy. 2. Rubber peels off on drying? Dirty glass. 3. Negative not dense enough? Use more bromide and longer development. 4. Gelatine cracks on being pulled off? Add more glycerine. 5. Gelatine not thick enough? Gelatine varnish too thin, not strong enough. 6. Does not dry sufficiently hard? Too much glycerine.—E.H. Jaques, Reported in Br. Jour. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 623, December 10, 1887 • Various
... never shocked by meeting, from the rarest chance in the world, with a single homely phrase or intelligible idea. You cannot see the thought for the ambiguity of the language, the figure for the finery, the picture for the varnish. The whole is refined, and frittered away into an appearance of the most evanescent brilliancy and tremulous imbecility.—There is no other fault to be found with the Pleasures of Memory, than a want of taste and genius. The ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... colours were vermilion, raw sienna (but sometimes yellow ochre instead), Prussian blue, burnt sienna, ivory black, crimson lake, white, of course, and the medium he used was 'gumption,' a composition of sugar of lead, mastic varnish, and linseed oil. The colours were ground by a servant in his own house and put into small pots ready for use." When one adds that his studio had a very high side-light, and that he painted on half-primed canvas with a definitely marked twill, all that is ...
— Raeburn • James L. Caw
... while we looked, hurdling the breakwater from the basin to get more quickly to some smoke on the horizon. They were brand-new planes all, with the most beautiful polished maple pontoons and bright varnish over paint ...
— The U-boat hunters • James B. Connolly
... your prospect judge it on its merits. A two by three inch square of cloth, a bit of wood to show the finish, any "chip off the block" itself speaks more eloquently than all the paper and ink your money can buy. How irresistible becomes a varnish maker's appeal when he encloses in his letters a small varnished piece of wood, on the back of which he has printed, "This maple panel has been finished with two coats of '61' Floor Varnish. Hit it with a hammer. ...
— Business Correspondence • Anonymous
... wealth leads, among other curses, to indolence and drunkenness, as the next woe shows. The people described make drinking the business of their lives, beginning early and sitting late. They have a varnish of art over their swinishness, and must have music as well as wine. So, in many a drink-shop in England, a piano or a band adds to the attractions, and gives a false air of aestheticism to pure animalism. Isaiah feels the incongruity ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... "I haven't any parlour varnish left, Jane. His shoulder was almost touching yours. It was an intentional insult, and that was enough for me. The dog! Still looking at ...
— The Pagan Madonna • Harold MacGrath
... ANACARDIUM OCCIDENTALE.—The cashew nut tree, cultivated in the West Indies and other tropical countries. The stem furnishes a milky juice, which becomes hard and black when dry, and is used as a varnish. It also secretes a gum, like gum arabic. The nut or fruit contains a black, acrid, caustic oil, injurious to the lips and tongue of those who attempt to crack the nut with their teeth; it becomes innocuous and wholesome ...
— Catalogue of Economic Plants in the Collection of the U. S. Department of Agriculture • William Saunders
... disappointed last night at finding no picture by the Shannon. {93} Mayhap you had asked Mr C[hurchyard] to come and give his judgment upon it over toasted cheese. But the truth is, the picture has just been varnished with mastick varnish, which is apt to chill with the cold at this season of the year: and so I thought it best to keep it by me till its conveyance should be safer. I hope that on Monday you will get it. But I must tell you that, besides the reason of ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... cheap rooms for a week, bought some bread and milk for the family, and after a good night's sleep set out, the next morning, to obtain work. He went into the street, and after a while read upon a sign, "Furniture varnished." He went into the shop and asked for work. The man asked him if he could varnish well. Henry replied, "Yes, I can." He was very skilful, and he had varnished his canes sometimes, and he felt ...
— The Pedler of Dust Sticks • Eliza Lee Follen
... evening mails. Occasionally there came into it a shrill electric street-car, the motor singing like a cageful of grasshoppers, and possessing a great gong that clanged forth both warnings and simple noise. At the little theatre, which was a varnish and red plush miniature of one of the famous New York theatres, a company of strollers was to play "East Lynne." The young men of the town were mainly gathered at the corners, in distinctive groups, which expressed various shades ...
— The Monster and Other Stories - The Monster; The Blue Hotel; His New Mittens • Stephen Crane
... Perhaps you thought, when I came to this part of our subject, corresponding to that set forth in our housewife's economy by the "keeping her embroidery from the moth," that I was going to tell you only how to take better care of pictures, how to clean them, and varnish them, and where to put them away safely when you went out of town. Ah, not at all. The utmost I have to ask of you is, that you will not pull them to pieces, and trample them under your feet. "What!" you will say, "when do we do such things? Haven't we built a perfectly ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin
... taste and fancy of the fag's master. Some of the Sixth Form at the Manor made their fags unlace their dirty football boots. Kinloch, who since he left the nursery had been waited upon by powdered footmen six feet high, now found, to his disgust, that he had to varnish Trieve's patent-leathers for Sunday. Trieve was second in command, and had been known as "Miss" Trieve. John would have gladly done this and more for Lawrence, his fag-master; but Lawrence, a manly youth, scorned sybaritic services. The Caterpillar ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell
... be sincere in this my lay: That which I think I shall write down without A drop of pain or varnish. Therefore, pray, Whatever I may chance to rhyme about, Read it without the shadow of a ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... creating variations in the printed intensity of etched lines. After a plate has etched for a certain time—depending on the artist's inclination—it may be removed from the acid and some of its lines covered with a stop-out varnish, similar in texture and acid resistance to the basic ground. The plate is then put back in the acid and the remaining lines etched more deeply. This can be repeated any number of times, giving a wide range of intensity to the various etched ...
— Rembrandt's Etching Technique: An Example • Peter Morse
... when chosen of equal size, and pegged together side by side to fill up the panels of framed wooden horses, they have a very neat appearance, and make better walls and partitions than boards, as they do not shrink, require no paint or varnish, and are not a quarter the expense. When carefully split and shaved smooth they are formed into light boards with pegs of the bark itself, and are the foundation of the leaf-covered boxes of Goram. All the insect-boxes I used in the Moluccas were thus made at Amboyna, and when covered ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... hardness, and capacity of giving light, in all which respects it is superior to every other species of candle. This candle is nearly translucent, and can be made to exhibit the wick, when the candle is held up between the eye and the light, while the surface is as glossy as polished wax or varnish. The principal ingredient is lard; and the value of this manufacture can be hardly exaggerated. Taking durability into account, it can be made as cheap as any other candle; and there exists no single element of comfort, convenience, profit, and economy, in which this ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 420, New Series, Jan. 17, 1852 • Various
... to buy our annual corncob, and were agreeably surprised to learn that the price is still six cents; but our friend the tobacconist said that it may go up again soon. We took the treasure, gleaming yellow with fresh varnish, back to our kennel, and we are smoking it as we set down these words. A corncob is sadly hot and raw until it is well sooted, but the ultimate flavor ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... we go in the world, how many men there are who claim it and yet debase it by ignoble use! They help to spread the notion that a man may be a man of low morality and still a gentleman; that his gentlemanliness may be a mere varnish of culture and manners, a thin veneering having underneath it only meanness, or coarseness, or corruption; and that, notwithstanding this, he may still claim to be called a gentleman. Those who spread ...
— Sermons at Rugby • John Percival
... well that the Wagnerites will not be influenced by these remarks. Their gratitude to Wagner is too great for this. He has supplied the precious varnish wherewith to hide the dull ugliness of our civilisation. He has given to souls despairing over the materialism of this world, to souls despairing of themselves, and longing to be rid of themselves, the indispensable hashish and morphia wherewith to deaden their inner discords. These discords are ...
— The Case Of Wagner, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, and Selected Aphorisms. • Friedrich Nietzsche.
... said nothing more about the invention. He browsed about the shop with unfeigned pleasure, poking in among the cans of paint, oil, and varnish, rattling the nails in the dingy cigar-boxes, and examining the tools and myriad primitive devices Willie had contrived to aid him in ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett
... she took the clipping from the paper down to the paint store, bought a can of enamel, a bottle of varnish and a paint brush, and after dinner went after that bath tub. First she scrubbed it thoroughly; then she dried it; and then she put on the white enamel; a good job too. But as she stood back and looked at it, it did not quite fill ...
— Continuous Vaudeville • Will M. Cressy
... give me more pleasure (or at any rate it ought to, I know) to dwell on his many abilities than on this one fault. But this excellent man has the misfortune to resemble wood-alcohol. Wood-alcohol is a respectable liquid; it is useful in varnish; when poured in a lamp it heats tea; yes, it has its good side. Yet how little we dwell on its uses, how much on its defect; its one small defect that ...
— The Crow's Nest • Clarence Day, Jr.
... these relics. You used to see them in the old 'suicide halls' of the Bowery, too. But that is all passing away now. Reform and agitation have closed up those old dives. Now they try to veneer it over with electric lights and bright varnish, but I suppose it comes to the same thing. After they are cast off Broadway, the next step lower is the black and tan joint. After that it is suicide, unless it ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve
... Romeo, and again in Hamlet and again in Macbeth. It is, indeed, one of the most permanent characteristics of Shakespeare. From the beginning to the end of the play, Duke Vincentio is weakly-kind in act and swayed by fitful impulses; his assumed austerity of conduct is the thin varnish of vanity that will not take on such soft material. The Hamlet weakness is so exaggerated in him, and so unmotived, that I am inclined to think Shakespeare was even more irresolute and indisposed to action than ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... garden, &c.; silk (manufactures of), &c.; silk-worm gut; skins (articles manufactured of); soap, hard and soft; spa-ware; spirits, viz., brandy, geneva, and other foreign spirits, &c.; steel manufactures; tallow; tapioca; tin; tobacco; tongues; turnery; twine; varnish; wafers; washing-balls; wax (sealing); whipcord; wire; woollen manufactures. If any of the articles here enumerated was the production of a British possession, they were to be admitted at a reduced duty. Thus, while the woollen goods of foreign countries ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... dead. The gaudy flag-staffs and trellis-work, and the pillars of the verandah, which had all been newly painted in honor of his return and were still wreathed with garlands, exhaled a smell, to him quite sickening, of melting resin, drying varnish and faded flowers. Though there was no breath of air the atmosphere quivered, as it seemed from the fierce rays of the sun, which were reflected like arrows from everything around him. The butterflies and dragonflies appeared to ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... death came to his relief. A corner of the Morning Post noticed his death, generously adding, that his manner displayed considerable genius, though his style was rather sketchy; and referred to an advertisement, which announced that Mr. Varnish, a well-known printseller, had still on hand a very few drawings and painings by Richard Tinto, Esquire, which those of the nobility and gentry who might wish to complete their collections of modern art were invited to visit without delay. So ended Dick Tinto! a lamentable proof ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... which Painters use, which are transparent, and us'd to varnish over all other paintings, 'tis well enough known that the laying on of them thinner or thicker, does very much dilute or deepen ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... did not understand my nature; it was revealed to me in the antechamber! I became a man! I came out matured; but you were no longer in the warm lands; as a man I was ashamed to go as I did. I was in want of boots, of clothes, of the whole human varnish that makes a man perceptible. I took my way—I tell it to you, but you will not put it in any book—I took my way to the cake woman—I hid myself behind her; the woman didn't think how much she concealed. I went out first in the evening; ...
— Andersen's Fairy Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... ball, in Lusatia, March, 1796; fall of a gelatinous substance, after the explosion of a meteorite, near Heidelberg, July, 1811. In the Edinburgh Philosophical Journal, 1-234, the substance that fell at Lusatia is said to have been of the "color and odor of dried, brown varnish." In the Amer. Jour. Sci., 1-26-133, it is said that gelatinous matter fell with a globe of fire, upon the island of ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... "I should prefer having it of its natural color. The bark of the beech has beautiful colors, if they are only brought out by a coat of varnish." ...
— Forests of Maine - Marco Paul's Adventures in Pursuit of Knowledge • Jacob S. Abbott
... said Hugh; "but did you never try him on white daisies? It wouldn't do, of course, to feed common horses on them, but a blood steed like yours, why, it would make his coat shine like varnish." ...
— In the Mist of the Mountains • Ethel Turner
... April. The night was dark; there was not a star to be seen; and a drizzling rain, falling at intervals, made me very uncomfortable. But my chief anxiety was concerning the balloon, which, in spite of the varnish with which it was defended, began to grow rather heavy with the moisture. I therefore set my assistants to working, and in about four hours and a half I found the balloon sufficiently inflated. I attached the car and put all my implements in it—a telescope, a barometer, a thermometer, ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... orthodox interpretation of the Bible does not hold water. But this will not be effected without a struggle, for your orthodox people are very tenacious in their dogmatism, and they will apply to themselves a certain quantity of Athanasian varnish which will close their eyes and ears. Yes, I should much like to be there! And I am about, it may be, to cut off my arms, for the priests will be all powerful yet a while, and it may well be that there will be nothing ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... "distemper". {paint types} Alesso Baldovinetti: Florentine painter, b. 1422, or later, d. 1499; worked in mosaic, particularly as a restorer of old mosaics, besides painting; he made many experiments in both branches of art, and attempted to work fresco 'al secco', and varnish it so as to make it permanent, but in this he failed. His works were distinguished for extreme minuteness of detail. "In the church of the Annunziata in Florence, he executed an historical piece in fresco, but finished ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... would one of these high-headed, damask satin parlor gentlemen make? How would they stand washtubs and boot heels? And what sort of a looking parlor chair would my friend, Mr. Wooden Bottom, be? Even if he were new, and covered with black varnish, and had a yellow rose on his forehead, how would he look among the pictures, and on ...
— Queer Stories for Boys and Girls • Edward Eggleston
... day, during which time we observed the variation to be 10 deg. 33' E. I now ordered the carpenters to work to caulk the decks. As we had neither pitch, tar, nor rosin, left to pay the seams, this was done with varnish of pine, and afterwards covered with coral sand, which made a cement far exceeding my expectation. In the afternoon, we had a boat in the water, and shot two albatrosses, which were geese to us. We had seen one of this kind of birds the day before, which ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World Volume 2 • James Cook
... Bugs:—Varnish is death to the most persistent bug. It is cheap—ten cents' worth will do for one bedstead—is easily used, is safe, and improves the looks of the furniture to which it is applied. The application, must, however, be thorough, the slats, sides, and every ...
— The Whitehouse Cookbook (1887) - The Whole Comprising A Comprehensive Cyclopedia Of Information For - The Home • Mrs. F.L. Gillette
... natives use on the Belyando, carefully put away upon a sort of scaffold of bark, and covered with bark. The shield was made of very light wood, the face being rounded, and having been covered with a dark varnish like japan; for which the surface had been made rough by crossed lines, resembling those made on the first coat of plaster. It was evident, from the marks on this shield, that the clubs were frequently used as missiles.[*] Each man of the tribe that visited my camp on the Belyando, carried ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell
... you are in that line. If you were in the line of varnish, or bicycles, or soap, or typewriters, or extract of beef, or ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... packing into the Liquor Department, next to the restaurant. That special loss-leader, Old Atom-Bomb Rye, had been a good idea. In the first place, the stuff was fit for nothing but cleaning drains and removing varnish; if he were Pelton, he would have fired that fool buyer who got them overstocked on it. But the audio-advertiser, outside, was reiterating: "Choice whiskies, two hundred dollars a sixth and up!" and pulling in the customers, who, when they discovered that the two-hundred-dollar bargain was ...
— Null-ABC • Henry Beam Piper and John Joseph McGuire
... out with a scissors, so that you have a complete pattern of them. Now take a piece of glass, whatever size your pattern requires, stick the pattern on it with wafers, then paint the glass all over, except where the pattern covers, with black paint, composed of refined lampblack, black enamel, copel varnish and turpentine, mixed. Now let this dry, then take off your patterns and paint your roses, flowers, &c., with tube paints, mixed with demar varnish, so that your roses, &c., may be, in a manner, transparent. Paint your large roses red, some of the smaller ...
— Young's Demonstrative Translation of Scientific Secrets • Daniel Young
... and intend to fall back on thirty-year-old widows. Send all you can find to Lord R'hoone, Paris. This address will suffice. He is known at the city gates. N.B.—Send them, carriage paid, free of cracks and soldering. Let them be rich and amiable; as for beauty, it is not a sine qua non. Varnish wears off, but the underneath ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... rarities, a hive of bees, so as being hived in glass, you may see the bees making their honey and combs mighty pleasantly. Thence home, and I by and by to Mr. Povy's to see him, who is yet in his chamber not well, and thence by his advice to one Lovett's, a varnisher, to see his manner of new varnish, but found not him at home, but his wife, a very beautiful woman, who shewed me much variety of admirable work, and is in order to my having of some papers fitted with his lines for my use for tables and the like. I know not whether I was more pleased with the thing, or that I was shewed it ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... to her after his death, she found scratched in the varnish under the seat a message ...
— The Great Round World And What Is Going On In It, April 1, 1897 Vol. 1. No. 21 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... fine person and for his success in gallantry. But the great show of the night was the Russian ambassador, Count Orloff, whose gigantic figure was all in a blaze with jewels, and in whose demeanour the untamed ferocity of the Scythian might be discerned through a thin varnish of French Politeness. As he stalked about the small parlour, brushing the ceiling with his toupee, the girls whispered to each other, with mingled admiration and borror, that he was the favoured lover of his august mistress; ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... Miss Wooler will continue to reside in the house. I should be sorry indeed to part with her. When will you come home? Make haste, you have been at Bath long enough for all purposes. By this time you have acquired polish enough, I am sure. If the varnish is laid on much thicker, I am afraid the good wood underneath will be quite concealed, and your old Yorkshire friends won't stand that. Come, come, I am getting really tired of your absence. Saturday after Saturday comes round, and I ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... Then suddenly when the last half-mile was reached and Torrington village, the goal of the pilgrimage, was in sight, quite without warning the panting monster had stopped and all attempts to urge it farther were of no avail. There it stood, its motionless engine sending out odors of hot varnish and little shimmering ...
— Steve and the Steam Engine • Sara Ware Bassett
... been a banker: you could scarcely paint him in characters. His wife did not make up the amount; she was a large, bright, negative woman, who had the same air as her husband of being somehow tremendously new; a sort of appearance of fresh varnish (Lyon could scarcely tell whether it came from her complexion or from her clothes), so that one felt she ought to sit in a gilt frame, suggesting reference to a catalogue or a price-list. It was as if she were already rather a bad though expensive ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... one single word that can directly or indirectly be construed as fishing for applause. Be your character what it will, it will be known; and nobody will take it upon your own word. Never imagine that anything you can say yourself will varnish your defects, or add lustre to your perfections! but, on the contrary, it may, and nine times in ten, will, make the former more glaring and the latter obscure. If you are silent upon your own subject, neither envy, indignation, nor ridicule, will obstruct ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... way of doing everything, if it be to open a book. Manners are the happy ways of doing things. They form at last a rich varnish, with which the routine of life is washed, and its details adorned. Manners are very communicable; men ...
— Reading Made Easy for Foreigners - Third Reader • John L. Huelshof
... hearts; all art and authorcraft are of small amount to that. One would say the primary character of the Koran is this of its genuineness, of its being a bona-fide book. Prideaux, I know, and others, have represented it as a mere bundle of juggleries; chapter after chapter got-up to excuse and varnish the author's successive sins, forward his ambitions and quackeries: but really it is time to dismiss all that. I do not assert Mohammed's continual sincerity: who is continually sincere? But I confess ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... the First Lieutenant were rummaging through the drawers of the knee-hole table in search of an ancient recipe of the former's for manufacturing varnish of a peculiar excellence wherewith to beautify the ...
— A Tall Ship - On Other Naval Occasions • Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... thought he could buy him some things that would help him very much in his work. Jonas carried the money into the city the next time he went, and bought him a small hone to sharpen his knife, a fine-toothed saw, and a bottle of black varnish, with a little brush, to put it on with. He brought these things home, and gave them to Georgie's father; and he carried them into the house, and ...
— Rollo at Work • Jacob Abbott
... "Symonne de Byrtonne," and, in still others, the whole of the short-verse pieces, "Songe to Aella" and "The Accounte of W. Canynge's Feast." These scraps of vellum are described as about six inches square, smeared with glue or brown varnish, or stained with ochre, to give them an appearance of age. Thomas Warton had seen one of them, and pronounced it a clumsy forgery; the script not of the fifteenth century, but unmistakably modern. Southey describes ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... "Most of us men are brutes when you take a little of the varnish off. Won't you sit down, Miss Linderham? There is no need now to reply to the question you asked me: the incident you have witnessed, and what you have ...
— Revenge! • by Robert Barr
... Wight, various places on the south coast of England and in the Channel Islands, especially in Jersey and the Isle of Sark, would suit your mother. The latter island is specially ordered as a cure for asthma. 2. After pressing the leaves between sheets of blotting-paper, varnish them with a solution ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 357, October 30, 1886 • Various
... desire, which was to return to my mother, since she had not, by her kiss, given my heart leave to accompany me forth. That hateful staircase, up which I always passed with such dismay, gave out a smell of varnish which had to some extent absorbed, made definite and fixed the special quality of sorrow that I felt each evening, and made it perhaps even more cruel to my sensibility because, when it assumed this olfactory guise, my intellect was powerless to resist it. When we have gone to sleep ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... night; and Sylvia, dressed in blue gingham, cooked and cleaned and sewed, and put her garden in shape for the winter. In spite of her year's training at Mrs. Gray's capable hands, she made mistakes; she burnt the grape jelly, and forgot to put the brown sugar into the sweet pickle, and took the varnish off the dining-room table by polishing it with raw linseed oil, and boiled the color out of her sheerest chiffon blouse; and they laughed together over her blunders. Then, when evening came, she was all in white again, and there was the simple supper served by candle-light in the little ...
— The Old Gray Homestead • Frances Parkinson Keyes
... pinnace also might be nearly in the same condition; but, upon examining her, I had the satisfaction to find that not a worm had touched her, though she was built of the same wood, and had been as much in the water; the reason of this difference I imagine to be; that the long-boat was paid with varnish of pine, and the pinnace painted with white lead and oil; the bottoms of all boats therefore which are sent into this country should be painted like that of the pinnace, and the ships should be supplied with a good stock, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... in oil, for which the Van Eycks are commonly known, was not literally that of mixing colours with oil, which was occasionally done before their day. It was the combining oil with resin, so as to produce at once a good varnish, and avoid the necessity of drying pictures in the sun, a bright thought, which may stand in the same rank with the construction, by James Watt, of that valve which rendered practicable the application of steam to machinery. The thought, occasioned by the cracking ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler
... grown, and the seeds afford the Gingellie oil or suffed-til, already extensively known in commerce in the East. The expressed oil is as clear and sweet as that from almonds, and probably the Behens oil, used in varnish, is no other. It is called by the Arabs "Siriteh," and the seed, "bennie " seed, in Africa. S. orientals is grown in the West Indies under the name of "wangle." It is said to have been first brought to Jamaica ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... white and grey horses had been shot in the several sorties; hence the necessity of varnishing the survivors. The white animals were more discernible to the eye behind a Mauser. Condy's Fluid was the "varnish" utilised; and curious to relate, one noble steed was, not khaki, but green after treatment. Perhaps he wanted to ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... abandoned to the pity or scorn of bystanders. It is impossible to reflect for a moment on such a crisis, without dropping a tear for the self-created infirmities of man: but there are considerations at which he shudders, and which he would rather varnish over with the sophistry of his refinement, ...
— Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 276 - Volume 10, No. 276, October 6, 1827 • Various
... leaves reverently. Stern, peering closely by the dim light, saw that they were loosely hung together by loops of heavy gold wire. Each page was held between two large plates of mica, and these plates were securely sealed around the edges by some black substance like varnish or bitumen. ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... sycamore wood of proper shape. Upon this draw the design with a pencil, trace over the pencil-marks with Indian ink and a fine crow-quill; then fill in the ground with Indian ink and a camel's-hair brush. After two or three days, varnish with ...
— The Lady's Album of Fancy Work for 1850 • Unknown
... him to keep his office as it is. It suggests stability, dignity, soundness. A person feels like he is entering the office of secure, reliable, established lawyers when he comes in here. It has twice the effect of entering a bright, shiny, new office, smelling of varnish and neatly kept." ...
— Spring Street - A Story of Los Angeles • James H. Richardson
... the curing process has some advantages over the other, as by it the meat is subject to the action of creosote, a volatile oil produced by the combustion of the sawdust, which is powerfully antiseptic. The process also furnishing a thin covering of a resinous varnish, excludes the air not only from the muscle but also from the fat; thus effectually preventing the meat from becoming rusted; and the principal reasons for condemning the practice of removing the ribs from the flitches of pork ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... said Madame de Chavoncourt, "do not let such serious issues turn on such a trifle. The varnish on his boots is not dry—or a consultation, perhaps, detains Monsieur ...
— Albert Savarus • Honore de Balzac
... the while nearer and nearer to the fire. "What a perfectly beautiful oak chest! That's genuine! One can see it at a glance. The lovely elbow-grease polish can never be imitated. So different from the faked-up, over-carved things glittering with varnish that one sees so often nowadays. What a shame to keep it hidden away ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... demanded adherence and did not beg alms. This was the attitude of his mind, but unhappily it was often apparently contradicted by the cringing of his body and the wheedling of his tongue. In attempting smoothness he fell into oiliness; where he aimed at polished brilliance, the result was blazing varnish. Had he known what to pray for, he would have supplicated heaven that he might meet eyes able to see the man beneath the ape. Such eyes, dimly penetrating with an unexpected vision, he had won to his side in the Benyon ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... bare boards of the staircase. On each landing prevailed a distinct odour; first came the damp smell of newly-washed clothes, then the scent of fried onions, then the workroom of some small craftsman exhaled varnish. The topmost floor seemed the ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... the specimens of art there displayed are distinguished rather by eccentricity of design, and rudeness of execution, than by striking evidences of genius. The paintings are for the most part in oil, coated with green varnish, and fitted into frames of dark yellow tinsel. A winter-piece with white trees, a ferociously red sunset, like the glow of a conflagration, a Flemish boor with a pipe and dislocated-looking arm—resembling a turkey-cock ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... other nine-tenths caring not one straw about the matter, as reading it in an age of irreflectiveness and purely through an act of obedience to their superiors, else not only does this hypocritical attempt to varnish give way all at once, and suddenly (with an occasion ever after of doubt, and causing a reflection to any self-sufficient man, suddenly coming to perceive that he has been cheated, and with some justification for jealousy thenceforwards ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... without hair or skin, and variegated with innumerable strings, red, blue, and white. It did not look like a corpse, but rather like a kind of plaything, very ugly, very clean, and smelling of varnish. ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... Tess's life as if they were vital features. It was for herself that he loved Tess; her soul, her heart, her substance—not for her skill in the dairy, her aptness as his scholar, and certainly not for her simple formal faith-professions. Her unsophisticated open-air existence required no varnish of conventionality to make it palatable to him. He held that education had as yet but little affected the beats of emotion and impulse on which domestic happiness depends. It was probable that, in the lapse of ages, improved systems of ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... colors that she could procure, a pattern of flowers of every kind that she was familiar with,—blue roses and green lilies having the preference, as making more show than their humbler sisters. This, when finished, she covered with a thick coat of varnish, thus making a very good substitute for the more ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 4, April, 1886 • Various
... called to which we have above alluded, and which is sold in our bird marts under that name, is a viscid, sticky preparation, closely resembling a very thick and gummy varnish. It is astonishingly "sticky," and the slightest quantity between the fingers will hold them together with remarkable tenacity. What its effect must be on the feathers of a ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson
... Jonathan is "busy." I am "busy." We know that, if April passes, there is still May and June, and so, if at the end of April, or early May, we do at last pick up our rods,—all new-bedight with red silk windings, and shiny with fresh varnish,—it is not alone the call of the trout that decides us, but another call which is to me at least more imperious, because, if we neglect it now, there is no May and June in which to heed it. It is the ...
— More Jonathan Papers • Elisabeth Woodbridge
... The medal, faithful to its charge of fame, Through climes and ages bears each form and name: In one short view subjected to our eye Gods, emperors, heroes, sages, beauties, lie. With sharpened sight pale antiquaries pore, The inscription value, but the rust adore. This the blue varnish, that the green endears, The sacred rust of twice ten hundred years! To gain Pescennius one employs his schemes, One grasps a Cecrops in ecstatic dreams. Poor Vadius, long with learned spleen devoured, Can taste no pleasure since his shield was scoured; And Curio, restless by the ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... stables, which contain several hundred fine Australian horses and a number of beautiful Sumbawan ponies, together with a score or more gilt carriages of state, are as immaculately kept as those of Buckingham Palace. In the palace garage I was shown a row of powerful Fiats, gleaming with fresh varnish and polished brass, and beside them, as among equals, a member of the well-known Ford family of Detroit, proudly bearing on its panels the ornate arms of the Susuhunan. I felt as though I had encountered an old friend who had ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... perfection, hid from me only the living satin of the surface; there was no doubt that everything was lovely, but I wanted to see, in the expression of her eyes, that all that my imagination created had life and was endowed with feeling. The Oriental costume is a beautiful varnish placed upon a porcelain vase to protect from the touch the colours of the flowers and of the design, without lessening the pleasure of the eyes. Yusuf's wife was not dressed like a sultana; she wore the costume of Scio, with a short skirt which concealed neither the perfection of the ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... being detached from the wall and transported in a wooden frame to any distance. The colors were applied when the composition was still wet. The fresco wall, when painted, was covered with an encaustic varnish, both to heighten the color and to preserve it from the effects of the sun or the weather; but this process required so much care, and was attended with so much expense, that it was used only in the better houses and palaces." The later ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord
... this summer, or how to get new servants. Trifling with coffee-cups, they dissected their fellow artists in the same way as his society friends of the other night had dissected the fellow—"smart"; and the varnish on the floor, the pictures, and the piano were reflected on all the faces around. Shelton moved from group ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... of idols, of which the calf worship is an instance. Elijah had long ago taunted the people with trying 'to hobble on both knees,' or on 'two opinions' at once; and here the charge is of covering idolatry with a cloak of Jehovah worship. A varnish of religion is convenient and cheap, and often effectual in deceiving ourselves as well as others; but 'as a man thinketh in his heart, so is he,' whatever his cloak may be; and the thing which we count most precious and long most for is our god, whatever our professions ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... we commenced to climb a steep hill, thickly covered with a very pricklesome heather, and black slimy bogs, wherein the varnish of my patent-leather shoes did soon become totally dimmed. So, being gravely incommoded by the shortness of my wind, I entrusted my musket to an under-keeper, begging him to inform me of the early approach of any stag ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... after it has hardened overnight, apply a coat of orange shellac. Successively apply several coats of some good rubbing varnish. Polish the first coats with haircloth or curled hair, and the last with pulverized pumice stone, mixed with raw linseed or ...
— Mission Furniture - How to Make It, Part 3 • H. H. Windsor
... passed up and down similarly crowded and displaying the flags of various journals and news organisations—the News, the Press, the Times, and the Associated Press. Private yachts, trim and very graceful and gleaming with brass and varnish, slipped by with scarcely a ripple to mark their progress, while full in the centre of the bay, gigantic, solid, formidable, her grim, silent guns thrusting their snouts from her turrets, a great, white battleship ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris
... was in the days just after the cross-Channel flight, and experimenters all over the world were building monoplanes, some of them machines of the weirdest description. The craft built by this enthusiast seemed all right in its appearance; nothing had been spared, for instance, in the way of varnish. When wheeled into the sun, for its first rolling test under power, it looked an imposing piece of work. Friends were in attendance, photographers also; and the would-be aviator was in faultless flying gear. Mounting a ladder, which had been placed beside the machine, he allowed his weight ...
— Learning to Fly - A Practical Manual for Beginners • Claude Grahame-White
... bunch of bristles or thorns. In other respects the individual forms agree very well with your delineations." Another observer had discovered a marvellous resemblance between the solar spots and the hollows left by the breaking and subsidence of bubbles, which rise when oil varnish, which has moisture in it, is boiled, and the streaky channels are left by the retiring liquid. "I cannot help," adds Sir John, "fancying a bare possibility of some upward outbreak, followed by a retreat of some gaseous matter, or some dilated portion of ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... had begun by pouring in at one port-hole and out at the other, which had bathed the prisoner in his bunk about the time of his trial by Raffles, now crowned me with fire if I sat upon the locker, and made its varnish sticky if I did not. The atmosphere of the place was fast becoming unendurable in its unwholesome heat and sour stagnation. I sat in my shirt-sleeves at the top of the stairs, where one got such air as entered by the open window below. Levy had kicked off his covering of scarlet bunting, with ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... out first, supporting his limp freight with his left arm, and in his right brandishing a revolver. He hoped it wouldn't be necessary and he was sure that underneath the splendid varnish of Anthony's fine bravado larked the belief that this entire evening was nothing more than an ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... there. Dare shut it up, and replaced it among its brethren. How triste and silent the house seemed! He wondered what the old uncle had been like, and sauntered into the staircase hall, much in need of varnish, where the Dares that had gone before him lived. But these were too ancient to have his predecessor among them. He went into the long oak-panelled dining-room, where above the high carved dado were more Dares. Perhaps that man with the book was his namesake, ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... lifelike reproduction, there is no illusion. I think if a semi-obscurity were thrown over the picture after finishing it to this nicety, it might bring it nearer to nature. I remember a heap of autumn leaves, every one of which seems to have been stiffened with gum and varnish, and then put carefully down into the stiffly disordered heap. Perhaps these artists may hereafter succeed in combining the truth of detail with a broader and higher truth. Coming from such a depth as their pictures do, and having really an idea as the ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Church keeps for her uneasy children,—and seemed to be busy with the "Querelle des Anciens et des Modernes," and the "Dispute sur les Ceremonies Chinoises." It was not yet the time for them to announce pompously their radical theories as new and true. A thin varnish of decorum and orthodoxy overspread everything; but one may see the shadow of the coming Regence in Regnard's works. He and gentlemen like him went to mass in the morning, and to pleasure for the rest of the day ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... despoiled of her man's dress, had much to fear. Brutality, furious hatred, vengeance, might severally incite the cowards to degrade her before she perished, to sully what they were about to burn. Besides, they might be tempted to varnish their infamy by a "reason of state," according to the notions of the day—by depriving her of her virginity they would undoubtedly destroy that secret power of which the English entertained such great dread, who perhaps might recover their ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... not at all pleasant. The house had been new painted, and smelt of varnish and turpentine, and a large streak of white paint inflicted itself on the back of the old boy's fur-collared surtout. The dinner was not good: and the three most odious men in all London— old Hawkshaw, whose cough and accompaniments are fit to make any man uncomfortable; old Colonel Gripley, ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... probably the wooden altar, using the colours as her fancy dictated, or as the various colours held out. The effect was remarkable. A succeeding rector began at once the work of restoration, scraping off the paint and substituting oak varnish; but when my friend took a morning service for him the work had not been completed, and he preached from a bright ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield
... he said, "that must go; and, between Pleydell and Mac-Morlan, they'll cut down my claim on it to a trifle. My character—but if I get off with life and liberty, I'll win money yet, and varnish that over again. I knew not the gauger's job until the rascal had done the deed, and though I had some advantage by the contraband, that is no felony. But the kidnapping of the boy-there they touch me closer. Let me see.—This Bertram ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... and three women. And it was not a common parlour! it was ornamented with a sofa, having springs and upholstered in green rep—the only sofa of its kind in Szybow—several armchairs to match it, and a piano. It is true, it was not very new. In several places the varnish had been rubbed off, and the narrowness of the keys and the yellowness of the ivory betrayed its great antiquity. In fact, it was the only piano in the whole of Szybow. When a year ago it had been bought for the exclusive ...
— An Obscure Apostle - A Dramatic Story • Eliza Orzeszko
... to save money on your easel, don't save on the construction and strength of it, but on the finish. Let the polish and varnish go, but get a well-made easel with solid wood. The heavier it is, the less easily it packs away, to be sure, but the more steadily it will ...
— The Painter in Oil - A complete treatise on the principles and technique - necessary to the painting of pictures in oil colors • Daniel Burleigh Parkhurst
... The Chink held the table up against him, with the legs sticking out, and Oswald went ahead to show him where to put it. Close by the door, inside his room, was the lovely, yawning new trunk. Oswald must of been afraid one of the table legs would spear it and mar its fair varnish. He raised one hand to halt the table, then closed the trunk tenderly, snapped the lock, and moved it over into the corner, ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... however, that old pictures deservedly celebrated for their colouring are often so changed by dirt and varnish, that we ought not to wonder if they do not appear equal to their reputation in the eyes of unexperienced painters, or young students. An artist whose judgment is matured by long observation, considers rather ...
— Seven Discourses on Art • Joshua Reynolds
... state was. On such nights it was as though a fit of fleshly madness were passing over Paris. The girl was rather nervous certainly, for the most modish gentlemen were always the most obscene. All the varnish would crack off a man, and the brute beast would show itself, exacting, monstrous in lust, a past master in corruption. But besides being nervous, that trollop of a Satin was lacking in respect. She would blurt out awful things in front of dignified gentlemen in carriages and assure ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... countenances and mortal frames cannot be imposed upon by the faces of adulation we make up. They who listen to that other speech, whose tones are the literally translated truth, cannot be patient with the gloss and varnish of our, at best, imperfect language. Let their awful presences shame and transfigure, terrify and transport us, into reality of communication akin to their own! "I will express myself in music to you," said a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... buy one," said a coachman from a nearby hackstand, approaching the group. "I'll give it a coating of linseed oil, then varnish it and make me ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... earth that had long been waiting for rain—he stood looking at the gardens, the woods, the yellow rye fields, the green oatfields, the dark-green strips of potatoes in bloom, that glided past. Everything looked as if covered over with varnish—the green turned greener, the yellow yellower, the ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... which Poets think so fine, Art's needless varnish to make Nature shine, Are all but Paint upon a beauteous face, And in Descriptions only claim a place. But to make Rage declaim, and Grief discourse, From lovers in despair fine things to force, Must needs succeed; for who can chuse but pity A dying hero ...
— The Art Of Poetry An Epistle To The Pisos - Q. Horatii Flacci Epistola Ad Pisones, De Arte Poetica. • Horace
... are entertained of the workmen having forged the hatchets which they offer for sale. The most general test, however, of the genuineness of the implements obtained by purchase is their superficial varnish-like or vitreous gloss, as contrasted with the dull aspect of freshly fractured flints. I also remarked, during each of my three visits to Amiens, that there were some extensive gravel-pits, such as those of Montiers and St. Roch, agreeing in their geological character ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... industry is the chief one in parts of the South where the Long-leaved Pine thrives. The United States produces more turpentine and rosin than any other country in the world. The turpentine is used in paints and in various arts. The rosin is used in varnish, laundry soap, etc. These two products come from the sap or "gum" of the pine tree. The sap is secured by tapping or "boxing" the tree, and then keeping the cut ducts of the sap-wood open by "chipping" or "pulling," that is, by putting a new "streak" ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... fact; for Solomon was an exceedingly ingenious man, and not only constructed parachutes by which people could safely descend from great heights, but he made some attempts in the direction of ballooning. I have seen small bags of thin silk, covered with a fine varnish made of gum to render them air-tight, which, being inflated with hot air and properly ballasted, rose high above the earth, and were wafted out of sight by the wind. Many people supposed that in the course of time Solomon would be able to travel through ...
— The Vizier of the Two-Horned Alexander • Frank R. Stockton
... tried her best to reveal Kate in her true character before him. Not that she wished to speak ill of her sister, only that she would be true and give this lover a chance to escape some of the pain if possible, by seeing the real Kate as she was at home without varnish or furbelows. Yet she reflected that those who knew Kate's shallowness well, still loved her in spite of it, and always ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... views throughout," added Professor Fortescue, "for if the paint theory be correct, then it is true that to know one's fellows is impossible, you can only know the upper coat; whereas if the truth lies in varnish, the substance of the nature is revealed to you frankly, if you have eyes to trace the delicacies of the markings, which tell the secrets of sap and fibre, of impetus and check: all the inner marvels of life ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... fishing season there, living amongst the people and the rivers. The casual visitor would always envy him who lived in the Norwegian cottage fragrant with its deal boards into which he loved to stick his flies when they had to be dried, or retouched with varnish or whipping, and where somewhere outside he could keep his rods in security and order when they were put together say in June, and kept ready till they were packed up for the voyage home when ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... is incredible! Nay most and still more incredible; for, strange to say and yet more strange for her to do, even this received such a varnish from her lips, her eyes, her beauties, her irradiating zeal, that reason everlastingly renounce me if I scarcely knew, while she spoke, whether it were not the history of some sylph, some heavenly ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... the chief are two. The first is to plough into the metal with a sharp steel instrument called a burin. The second is to bite them out with an acid. This is the process of etching with which Rembrandt did his matchless work. He varnished a copper plate with black varnish. With a needle he scratched upon it his design, which looked light where the needle had revealed the copper. Then the whole plate was put into a bath of acid, which ate away the metal, and so bit into the lines, but had no effect ...
— The Book of Art for Young People • Agnes Conway
... elderly grande dame francaise, who has not yet "abdicated." I then made myself up more seriously: a blue shadow on the lids, a raven touch on the lashes; a flick of the hare's-foot under my eyes and on my ear-tips: an extra coat of pink and a brilliant (most injurious!) varnish on the nails. Then, with a dash of Rose Ambree for my companion's blouse and Nuits d'Orient for mine, we sallied forth scented like a harem, to ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... trees empty, and the air filled with hoarse plaints, the rumbling speech of the railroad. She was homesick and fearful, as they mounted the steps to the new house and pushed open the shining oak door that stuck and smelled of varnish. The next morning Lane whisked off on a trolley to the A. and P. offices, while Isabelle walked around the house, which faced the main northern artery of Torso. From the western veranda she could see the ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... do as well. I should prefer to be buried in a white pine coffin; but that might be painful to my family; and I should not like to afflict them in any way. It may, therefore, be of dark wood; but be sure to have it entirely plain, without varnish or inscription. Have it made by some poor neighbor, and pay him the usual price of a handsome one; for I merely wish to leave a testimony against vain show on such occasions." He appeared to be rather indifferent where he was buried; but when he was informed ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child |
