"Wooden" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... quiet and well ordered, so eloquent of disciplined service and gentle living. Yet there beyond the house, and near the hedge that rose between the garden and the hot, white road, stood the gardener's toolshed, by which the body had been found, lying tumbled against the wooden wall, Trent walked past the gate of the drive and along the road until he was opposite this shed. Some forty yards further along the road turned sharply away from the house, to run between thick plantations; ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley
... Thor. Far away, seen over a low projecting point of land, white sails gleamed now and then, as ships moved upon the lake from whence the river came; and nearer, upon the great stream itself, a few boats were idling. In the bend formed by the point, and quite near the lake, lay a small town, its wooden wharves and warehouses lining the shore for some distance. Lower down, the bank rose high, dropping precipitously to the water's edge; and nearer still, the precipice changed to a steep, but green and wooded bank, and here, on the ...
— A Canadian Heroine, Volume 1 - A Novel • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... gratified Keppler. "There's a winder with a wooden shutter at the back of the barn. You can get in by it, if you have some one to boost ...
— The Boy Scout and Other Stories for Boys • Richard Harding Davis
... they get a clear complexion, and become strong of limb, tall and agile, and with them beauty consists in tallness and strength. Therefore, if any woman dyes her face, so that it may become beautiful, or uses high-heeled boots so that she may appear tall, or garments with trains to cover her wooden shoes, she is condemned to capital punishment. But if the women should even desire them, they have no facility for doing these things. For who indeed would give them this facility? Further, they assert that among us abuses of this kind arise from the leisure and ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... to be," Roddy pointed out, "that every comic opera had one act on a tropical island. Then some fellow discovered Holland, and now all comic operas run to blonde girls in patched breeches and wooden shoes, and the back drops are 'Rotterdam, Amsterdam, any damn place at all.' But this town combines both the ancient and modern schools. Its scene is from Miss Hook of Holland, and the girls are out of ...
— The White Mice • Richard Harding Davis
... running the same way but so fastened that at one end they could be either raised up above the level of the first row or dropped beneath it. Sitting at the tied end her mother would throw a little wooden boat skimming between the two sets of threads, from one side to the other, the boat being laden with a spool of yarn and dragging a thread behind it. When the boat reached the other side, the thread would be drawn tight. Then with the foot in a strap the loose ...
— The Iron Star - And what It saw on Its Journey through the Ages • John Preston True
... attack of cold or influenza, or a necessity for sweating off a few pounds, or especially after a severe fall, there is no bath so effective and so simple as the hot-air or Indian bath. This is made with a wooden-bottomed kitchen chair, a few blankets, a tin cup, and a claret-glass of spirits of wine. For want of spirits of wine you might use a dozen of Price's ...
— A New Illustrated Edition of J. S. Rarey's Art of Taming Horses • J. S. Rarey
... night Mrs. Ericson was sitting alone in her wooden rocking-chair on the front porch. Little Hilda had been sent to bed and had cried herself to sleep. The old woman's knitting was on her lap, but her hands lay motionless on top of it. For more than an hour she had not moved a muscle. She simply sat, as only the Ericsons and the mountains ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... plan and invest it on the land-side. With the assistance of Epimachus, an Athenian engineer, he constructed a machine which, in anticipation of its effect, was called Helepolis, or "the city-taker." This was a square wooden tower, 150 feet high, and divided into nine stories, filled with armed men, who discharged missiles through apertures in the sides. When armed and prepared for attack, it required the strength of 2300 men to set this enormous machine in motion. But though it was assisted by the operation ...
— A Smaller History of Greece • William Smith
... and, thus running, we came in sight at length of what appeared to be a vast wooden shed, or barn, with one rude chimney, and surrounded by a thick fence, or stockade, many feet high and apparently of ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare
... brandy, and tobacco. The women seldom speak English, but appear more shrewd and intelligent in their dealings than the men; in their domestic concerns the general appearance of cleanliness is deserving of particular praise. The wooden ware, with which every dwelling is well stored, rivals in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... 1st of January, 1543, Francis I. entered the town in state, surrounded by his escort. The people's advocate fell on his knees, and appealed to the king's clemency in dealing with a revolt of which every one repented. The king, who was seated on a wooden boarding, rose up. "Speak we no more of revolt," said he; "I desire neither to destroy your persons nor to seize your goods, as was lately done by the Emperor Charles to the Ghentese, whereby his hands are stained with blood; I long more for the hearts of my subjects than for their lives ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... on different levels, and the unevenness of the stories was remedied by steps. For us children,—a younger sister and myself,—the favorite resort was a spacious floor below, near the door of which was a large wooden lattice that allowed us direct communication with the street and open air. A bird-cage of this sort, with which many houses were provided, was called a frame (/Geraems/). The women sat in it to sew and knit; ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... such an insinuation. With respect to the pretty toy model of Hexameter and Pentameter from Schiller, we believe the case to have arisen thus: in talking of metre, and illustrating it (as Coleridge often did at tea-tables) from Homer, and then from the innumerable wooden and cast-iron imitations of it among the Germans—he would be very likely to cite this little ivory bijou from Schiller; upon which the young ladies would say: 'But, Mr. Coleridge, we do not understand German. Could you not give us an idea of it in some English version?' ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... of it, and, if at times a portion was granted to exiles, to strangers, to a contiguous clan, the whole tribe was consulted on the subject. Over the common land large herds of cattle roamed—the property of individuals who could own nothing, except of a movable nature, beyond their small wooden houses. ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... she whispered. "I dunno if 'e isn't dead; I never see any one lie so still. The nurse wouldn't sit there like a wooden image if 'e was dead, ...
— Captain Jim • Mary Grant Bruce
... crossing the Po, they began to construct a bridge, partly as a demonstration against the gladiators[289] on the opposite bank, partly to find something for their idle troops to do. Boats were placed at equal intervals with their heads up stream and fastened together by strong wooden planks. They also cast anchors from them to ensure the solidity of the bridge, but they allowed the hawsers to drift slack, so that when the river rose the boats might all rise with it without the line being broken. To guard the bridge a high ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... these border meetings we stopped another night with a family of two bachelor brothers and two spinster sisters. The home consisted of one large room, not yet lathed and plastered. The furniture included a cooking stove, two double beds in remote corners, a table, a bureau, a washstand, and six wooden chairs. As it was late, there was no fire in the stove and no suggestion of supper, so the Governor and I ate apples and chewed slippery elm before retiring to dream of comfortable beds and well-spread ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... county jails wherein are assembled tramps, drunks, beggars, and the riff-raff of petty offenders. The word itself is a pretty one, and it has a history. Hautbois—there's the French of it. Haut, meaning high, and bois, wood. In English it becomes hautboy, a wooden musical instrument of two-foot tone, I believe, played with a double reed, an oboe, in fact. You remember in ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London
... chuckles and chatters; the golden-footed flame leaps, dancing to the accompaniment of my song (or in accompaniment to my song); the great log covers itself with down, the sap boils in the wooden embers ("duvet," meaning "down," refers to the soft fluffy white ash that forms upon the ...
— Books and Habits from the Lectures of Lafcadio Hearn • Lafcadio Hearn
... so near, So neighbourly fancies to the spell that brought The run of Ali Baba's Cave Just for the saying 'Open Sesame,' With gold to measure, peck by peck, In round, brown wooden stoups You borrowed at the chandler's? . . . Or one time Made you Aladdin's friend at school, Free of his Garden of Jewels, Ring and Lamp In perfect trim? . . . Or Ladies, fair For all the embrowning scars in their white breasts Went labouring under some dread ordinance, ...
— Poems by William Ernest Henley • William Ernest Henley
... arbalestiers (for no long-bow men were over against our stead) had all of them bright headpieces, and stout body-armour of boiled leather with metal studs, and as they came towards us, I could see over their shoulders great wooden shields hanging at their backs. Further to our left their long-bow men had shot almost as soon as ours, and I heard or seemed to hear the rush of the arrows through the apple-boughs and a man's cry therewith; but with us the long-bow had been before the cross-bow; ...
— A Dream of John Ball, A King's Lesson • William Morris
... hundred yards broad. It does not swim upon the surface of the water, but comes up occasionally to breathe, which it does in the same manner as the turtle. The natives sit upon the banks, with small wooden spears, and watch them every time they rise to the surface, till they get a proper opportunity of striking them. This they do with much dexterity, and frequently succeed in catching them ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 2 • David Collins
... that light before. I proposed that we give three cheers for Oppenheimer, which was done, and I thought that would settle it, but he insisted on having cash. I told the boys, and they said he was a rebel. I told Oppenheimer, and he got out a wooden bung-starter, and said he could clean out the whole party. Finally we compromised, in this way. We had given two rounds of cheer, one for the Union and one for Oppenheimer, which were a total loss, so it was agreed that if Oppenheimer would give three cheers for the Union ...
— How Private George W. Peck Put Down The Rebellion - or, The Funny Experiences of a Raw Recruit - 1887 • George W. Peck
... West. While waiting in the parlor, I noticed how peculiarly it was furnished. Every corner of the little square room contained a monument of symmetrical design, all different, but each some three or four feet high, and all built of books, as a child might build a fairy castle out of his wooden blocks. A closer inspection showed that all the volumes were copies of the same book bound in "half morocco"! The explanation came later when I was incidentally informed that "Willie had tried canvassing, but ...
— The Building of a Book • Various
... piece of Architecture. The Quartos were separated from the Octavos by a Pile of smaller Vessels, which rose in a delightful Pyramid. The Octavos were bounded by Tea Dishes of all Shapes, Colours, and Sizes, which were so disposed on a wooden Frame that they looked like one continued Pillar indented with the finest Strokes of Sculpture, and stained with the greatest Variety of Dyes. That Part of the Library which was designed for the Reception of Plays ...
— The Private Library - What We Do Know, What We Don't Know, What We Ought to Know - About Our Books • Arthur L. Humphreys
... sopping side-walks gave, as it peered through its veil of melting snow and freezing rain, a peculiar cheerfulness to the landscape. Here and there in the vacant lots abandoned hoop-skirts defied decay; and near the half-finished wooden houses, empty mortar-beds, and bits of lath and slate strewn over the scarred and mutilated ground, added their interest ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... had been borne till she reached the grave, where she was quietly standing when the caretaker arrived to point it out. The grave is at some distance from the chapel, and is not on one of the main roads; it had nothing on it to mark it, save the wooden peg with the number, and this would be no help to identification at a distance since all the graves are thus marked, and at a little way off these pegs are not visible. How she found the grave remained ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... called the Prior's Chair, and belonged to the priory of Southwick, which formerly stood near Portsmouth, in Hampshire. It is made of oak, its several parts being fastened together with small wooden pegs. On the back of the chair, within a square panel, is carved an animal somewhat resembling a buck, which was probably the armorial bearing of the prior; as it was anciently, and is now, the custom to carve or paint on chairs placed in ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. 577 - Volume 20, Number 577, Saturday, November 24, 1832 • Various
... motive faculty be answerable thereunto. We see a great ship swims as well as a small cork; and an eagle flies in the air, as well as a little gnat. This engine may be contrived from the same principles by which Archytas made a wooden dove, and Regiomontanus a wooden eagle. I conceive it were no difficult matter, (if a man had leisure,) to show more particularly the means of composing it"!—which want of leisure in the credulous Bishop, our readers will regret with us, especially those inventive ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... joy the doll, or puppet, as an instance. A small imitation of a large known object carries delight to the heart of a child of either sex. The worsted cat, the wooden horse, the little wagon, the tin soldier, the wax doll, the toy village, the "Noah's Ark," the omnipresent "Teddy Bear," any and every small model of a real thing is a delight to the young human being. Of all things the puppet is the most intimate, the little image of another ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... Council of the State. Dr. Putnam, who had been attending Webster in the jail, read to the Council a confession which he had persuaded the prisoner to make. According to this statement Webster had, on the Friday afternoon, struck Parkman on the head with a heavy wooden stick in a wild moment of rage, induced by the violent taunts and threats of his creditor. Appalled by his deed, he had in panic locked himself in his room, and proceeded with desperate haste to dismember the body; he ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... were not pleasant. He sat in an uneasy position, upon a hard wooden chair, with his arms folded on the table before him, and his head ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... attended with more than ordinary magnificence; the Sultan, accompanied by the Grand Signior and all the principal officers of state, goes to exhibit himself to the people in a kiosk, or tent near the seraglio point, seated on a sofa of silver, brought out for the occasion. It is a very large, wooden couch covered with thick plates of massive silver, highly burnished, and there is little doubt from the form of it, and the style in which it is ornamented that it constituted part of the treasury of the Greek emperors when Constantinople was taken ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 350, January 3, 1829 • Various
... Describing Lord Ripon, whose death had only just taken place, as "the Viceroy who more than any other had touched the imagination of the people of India," he added: "If our rule, excellent in intention, but rather wooden, is to be made acceptable, imagination must ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... by the voice, clear, self-confident and cheerful, of a cuckoo. Maggie was in an instant out of bed, into the passage and standing, in her nightdress, before a high, old cuckoo-clock that stood at the top of the stairs. The wooden bird, looking down at her in friendly fashion, "cuckooed" eight times, flapped his wings at her and disappeared. It is a sufficient witness to Maggie's youth and inexperience that she was enraptured by this event. ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... as usual coming down the hill. Theodore Parker had not then become famous, but preached in a little square, wooden church, to his small country congregation, and once on a time, being on a visit to a friend at a distance (we will call the friend's name Smith, for convenience sake), Mr. Smith asked Mr. Parker how ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... crossed the suburb of the Guayqueria Indians, the streets of which are very regular, and formed of small houses, quite new, and of a pleasing appearance. This part of the town had just been rebuilt, for the earthquake had laid Cumana in ruins eighteen months before our arrival. By a wooden bridge, we crossed the river Manzanares, which contains a few bavas, or crocodiles ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... stiff feathers at the corners; and a pretty bell-shaped fringe of scarlet feathers. The same ornament edged a large rug like those on the wall, thrown over what at first appeared to be a bed; but on examination it was found to be a rough wooden platform, said to be the throne of Montezuma. The story is that Augustus the Strong went to Spain incognito at the age of eighteen, in search of adventures, and distinguished himself at a bull-fight. When the king (Charles II.) heard ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... so a man in heaven, with new experiences, will have new methods of communication. The comparison between that mode of utterance which we now have, and that which we shall then possess, will be like the difference between the old-fashioned semaphore, that used to wave about clumsy wooden arms in order to ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... her door that she realized that what she heard was a step on the stairs. And then, convinced that Harlan had gained entrance, she slipped noiselessly across the room to the front wall, where she took down a heavy pistol that hung from a wooden peg. ...
— 'Drag' Harlan • Charles Alden Seltzer
... of the snake. I then placed the stuffed specimen on the ground in one of the larger compartments. After a time all the monkeys collected round it in a large circle, and staring intently, presented a most ludicrous appearance. They became extremely nervous; so that when a wooden ball, with which they were familiar as a plaything, was accidentally moved in the straw, under which it was partly hidden, they all instantly started away. These monkeys behaved very differently when a dead fish, a mouse (12. I have given a short account of their behaviour on ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... a signal to the stick-kettle men, and they commenced to drum with their knuckles. The drums were wide wooden hoops with a skin drawn over ...
— The Fur Bringers - A Story of the Canadian Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... Koti, is the chief mart for the trade with Thibet through Mastang, and may contain one thousand houses. The Narayani is no where fordable below this place, and is crossed in some places on wooden bridges, (Sangga,) and in others on jholas or bridges of ropes made of rattans connected by cords of tough grass. Thakakuti is situated in a fine valley extending from Dhumpu to Kaga Koti, which is compared to the valley of Nepal, ...
— An Account of The Kingdom of Nepal • Fancis Buchanan Hamilton
... spring morning, and the children are out early, taking a walk with mama. She is carrying the baby, and little Alice is taking her new doll by the hand to try and teach her to walk. Albert is riding his wooden horse, and Rover is barking at him, he is so pleased. They are not going far, and will turn ...
— Child-Land - Picture-Pages for the Little Ones • Oscar Pletsch
... probably be our turn on Sunday. The fleet looks splendid at night now that we have most of the lights on. All night the steel riveters are at work on three battleships that are being built close by. Near us are several "wooden walls." One is a ship of Nelson's, the Queen Adelaide. Every boat, tug, lighter and motor boat here is the ...
— "Crumps", The Plain Story of a Canadian Who Went • Louis Keene
... From out the station A stiff, gaunt figure thrown against the sky, Beckoning me with some wooden salutation Caught from his signals as the ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... chimney-piece, with the clock (representing the Bellona of the Empire), are candelabra with fluted columns. Curtains of woollen damask, with under-curtains of embroidered muslin held back by stamped brass holders, drape the windows. On the floor a cheap carpet. The handsome vestibule has wooden benches, covered with velvet, and the panelled walls with their fine carvings are mostly hidden by wardrobes, brought there from time to time from the bedrooms occupied by the Thuilliers. Fear, that hideous ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... back, with the stiffness produced by the previous day's exertion dying out before the bright buoyancy produced by a sound sleep in the beautiful cool, elastic air, while the feeling of ravenous appetite that began to attack them made their task of shifting wooden fresh green spits, rather than skewers, laden with pieces of bird, from place to place, where they could catch most heat from the glowing embers, one that ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... cold, gray afternoon. Mrs. Maxwell's little kitchen was in perfect order. The fire shed flickering lights on the bright dish-covers on the wall, and the blue and white china on the old-fashioned dresser was touched with a ruddy glow. Mrs. Maxwell herself, seated in a wooden rocking-chair, in spotless white apron, was knitting busily as she talked; and Milly on a low stool, the tabby in her arms, with her golden-brown curls in pretty disorder, and her large dark eyes gazing earnestly into the ...
— Probable Sons • Amy Le Feuvre
... look down at the slow, turbid river rolling below him. He stood there a long time, leaning on the hand-rail. On the dun surface a sheen of oil gathered, and spread, and gathered again. He could hear the wash of the current, and in the railing under his hand he felt the old wooden structure thrill and quiver in the constant surge of water against the pier below him. The sun, a blood-red disk, was slipping into the deepening haze, and on either side of the river the city was darkening into dusk. All along the shore lights were pricking out of the twilight ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... passed in running errands, and Pelle was not one to curtail them; he had no liking for the smelly workshop and its wooden chairs. There was so much to be fetched and carried, and Pelle considered these errands to be his especial duty; when he had nothing else to do he roved about like a young puppy, and thrust his nose into everything. ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... standing near, grimed with blood and gunpowder. The tears were rolling down the man's cheeks. "I can't see my way, sir, for crying," he said. "Help me to carry that sad burden into the next street." He pointed to a rude wooden litter, on which lay a dead or wounded man, his face and breast covered with an old cloak. "There is the best friend the people ever had," the workman said. "He cured us, comforted us, respected us, loved us. And there he lies, shot dead while he was binding up the wounds ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... its ancient houses, and heard its names pronounced with a certain consideration, which I dare say was as much their due in Salem as it could be anywhere. The names were all strange, and all indifferent to me, but those fine square wooden mansions, of a tasteful architecture, and a pale buff-color, withdrawing themselves in quiet reserve from the quiet street, gave me an impression of family as an actuality and a force which I had never had before, but which ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... figure, fluid matter may be retained in vessels, not indeed of unbaked clay, but of alabaster or bronze. So much by way of apology for general ideas—abstruse, or intangible, or dry and seedy and wooden, as ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater
... assault upon any one of them, the enemy may be repulsed with scorpiones and other means of hurling missiles from the towers to the right and left. Opposite the inner side of every tower the wall should be interrupted for a space the width of the tower, and have only a wooden flooring across, leading to the interior of the tower but not firmly nailed. This is to be cut away by the defenders in case the enemy gets possession of any portion of the wall; and if the work is quickly done, ...
— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius
... regal. It cast its deep contrasts of clear-cut light and shadow among the thin, wooden, unarchitectural forms and weed-grown vacancies of the half-settled neighborhood, investing the matter-of-fact with mystery, and giving an unexpected charm to the unpicturesque. It was—as Richling said, taking his place beside his wife—midspring in March. As he spoke he noticed ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... of the bridge, thrown out into the river a little way for the convenience of fishermen, was a small wooden platform, with a railing, which held a seat. The seat was well hidden under the trees and bank, and ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. I. • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Grotte, an ancient and spacious mansion behind the church of St. Francis, at Lausanne," which was demolished by the Swiss authorities in 1879. Not only has the mansion ceased to exist, but the garden has been almost entirely changed. The wall of the Hotel Gibbon occupies the site of the famous wooden pavilion, or summer-house, and of the "berceau of plum trees, which formed a verdant gallery completely arched overhead," and which "were called after Gibbon, La Gibboniere."—Historic Studies, i. I; ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... trees converted into jet, though the original forms are so perfectly preserved that he could often detect the species; and, among others, he mentions birch and walnut. What is even more remarkable, he found a wooden pail and a wooden shovel ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 360 - Vol. XIII. No. 360, Saturday, March 14, 1829 • Various
... time to order people to be beheaded before having a proper cause for it. Off they go with all their army with them; but while the soldiers were striking their tents, the Prince bethought himself of his Welsh harp, and had it sent for immediately to take with him in a beautiful wooden case. They called to see each of those three brothers whom the Prince had to stay with when he was on his way to the Castle of Melvales; and I can assure you, when they all got together, they had a very merry time of it. And ...
— More English Fairy Tales • Various
... sale of that beverage classically termed "rot-gut," and eatables which, unlike wine, are by no means improved in flavor by age. There is the "bar," and the red-nosed gentleman behind it seems to be one of its best patrons. A wooden bench extends around the apartment, and upon it are seated about twenty persons of both sexes. A brief sketch of a few of the "ladies" of this goodly company may prove interesting, from the fact that the names are real, and belong to prostitutes ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... intelligible thing. In Fayal, holiday and holy-day have not yet undergone the slightest separation. A festival has to the people necessarily some religious association, and when the Americans celebrate the Fourth of July, Mr. Dabney's servants like to dress with flowers a wooden image in his garden, the fierce figure-head of some wrecked vessel, which they boldly personify as the American Saint. On the other hand, the properties of the Church are as freely used for merrymaking. On public days there are fireworks provided by the priests; they are kept ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... the structure by pinning up preposterous window-caps, hanging horrible brackets under the eaves that must always be in doubt whether they support the cornice or are supported by it, fixing fantastic verge-boards to the gables, and covering the roof with wooden knick-knacks that mock consistency and defy description. Look rather to the materials at your command, and, whatever they may be, try to dispose them in such way that, while each part performs a legitimate, necessary service, you shall still ...
— Homes And How To Make Them • Eugene Gardner
... her back as though she had forgotten them. She stood for a moment as though her feet were wooden, not putting her feet as she usually put her feet. She took slow, wide, unsure steps. She went out—like something that is mortally injured and still walks—into the autumnal sunshine. She left the door wide ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... who has no more to do with these lands than Father Abraham or the patient Job. Well, thanks or no thanks, those estates are yours, though I had not meant to tell you of them yet. But now I have something to propose to you. Say, first, does Margaret think aught of that wooden face and those shut ...
— Fair Margaret • H. Rider Haggard
... the bottom so as to form a thick wall of green. In front of the house were some fine English elms, quite different from the American variety, and from these the house got its name. It was a large, square, old-fashioned wooden house, and though it had stood for over a hundred years, it remained during Lowell's ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody
... September people were preparing to winter on the coast, and Skagway was growing into a substantial town. Where in the beginning of August there were only a couple of shacks, there were in the middle of October 700 wooden buildings and a population of about 1,500. Businesses of all kinds were carried on, saloons and low gaming houses and haunts of all sorts abounded, but of law and order there was none. Dyea also, which at one time was almost deserted, was growing into a place ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... took pity on the fretted structures of earlier generations: the Post Office with its shingle-tortured mansard, the red brick minarets of hulking old houses, factories with stingy and sooted windows, wooden tenements colored like mud. The city was full of such grotesqueries, but the clean towers were thrusting them from the business center, and on the farther hills were shining new houses, homes—they ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... Peggy!" cried Rose Barclay. "You are never going to stop there! What became of the one with the wooden leg? We must know!" ...
— Peggy • Laura E. Richards
... half-way to death already, but the hopeful dust that holds the seeds of all life. He felt it between his toes, patted it with his palms, and joint by joint, sighing luxuriously, laid him down full length along in the shadow of the wooden-pinned cart. And Mother Earth was as faithful as the Sahiba. She breathed through him to restore the poise he had lost lying so long on a cot cut off from her good currents. His head lay powerless upon her breast, and his opened hands surrendered ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... old gate keeper, was seated on his wooden settle within the porch of the lodge, smoking a long clay pipe, and occasionally quaffing long draughts of rare old cider. He was just thinking of turning in for the night, when a vehicle stopped, and a voice demanded admittance. As the gates ...
— Vellenaux - A Novel • Edmund William Forrest
... following day she wished the shop to be opened. She feared she would go mad if she continued to remain alone in her room. She went down the wooden staircase with heavy tread, placing her two feet on each step, and seated herself behind the counter. From that day forth, she remained riveted ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola
... necessary; also, a large wooden dipper, (as metal is apt to rust;) two or three pails; a grooved wash-board; a clothes-line, (sea-grass, or horse-hair is best;) a wash-stick to move clothes, when boiling, and a wooden fork to take them out. Soap-dishes, made to hook on the tubs, save soap and time. Provide, also, a clothes-bag, in which to boil clothes; an indigo-bag, of double flannel; a starch-strainer, of coarse linen; ...
— A Treatise on Domestic Economy - For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School • Catherine Esther Beecher
... ore, lead, zinc, manganese, bauxite, vehicle assembly, textiles, tobacco products, wooden furniture, tank and aircraft assembly, domestic ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... some hundreds of Families, and fix upon the richest Ground to build their wooden Houses, which they place in a circular Form, meanly defended with Pales, and covered with Bark; the middle Area (or Forum) being for common Uses and publick Occasions. The Women in order to plant their Indian Corn and Tobacco (to clear the Ground of Trees) cut the Bark ...
— The Present State of Virginia • Hugh Jones
... her years, and as unlike her as he well could be. His long flaxen hair waved over a brow as white as hers was dark, and his eyes were a light clear blue. He sat on a stool in front of the fire, gazing into the charred wooden embers with intent fixed eyes. The woman had glanced at him several times, but neither had spoken for above half an hour. ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt
... start away from Carlisle Castle, Mr. Somerled condemned Vedder to sit at his feet; but the man seemed to take this quite for granted, and not to mind in the least. "Would one of you care to sit beside me?" he asked with so wooden an expression that it was impossible to guess whether he would prefer Mrs. James or me to say yes. Selfishly, I wanted him to prefer me, and because he didn't seem to mind, I pretended not to hear, ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... it as Charles O'Conor might advise,[1400] and by vetoing the Code Amendment Bill, devised by Cardozo and designed to confer authority upon the judges to punish the press for attacking the Ring; but the facts inspiring Nast's cartoon, which pictured him as the Tammany wooden Indian on wheels, pushed and pulled by the Erie and Tweed combination, had fixed the Governor in the popular mind as the blind tool of rings. "I saw him in 1885," says Rhodes, "at the Schweizerhof in Lucerne. Accompanied by his wife he was driving ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... lifting, to show barges at anchor, and empty rowboats rocking by the pier. The tide was low, piles closely covered with shining black barnacles rose lank from the water; odorous webs of green seaweed draped the wooden cross-bars and rusty iron cleats ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... the road and made our way across the snow to a little wooden hut which Archie had noticed the day before. Here we were to meet Dahlia for lunch; and here, accordingly, we left the rucksack and such garments as the heat of the sun suggested. Then, at the top of a long snow-slope, steep at first, more gentle ...
— Once a Week • Alan Alexander Milne
... to observe," replied the lad, "and from what I saw, and from what I have since heard concerning our numbers I judge that we were at least four to one, perhaps more. But we threw away all our advantage when we came with bare breasts against their wooden ...
— The Sun Of Quebec - A Story of a Great Crisis • Joseph A. Altsheler
... door, and it was opened by a very strange man. He had a huge head, big, strong teeth, and no arms. He invited them to come in and eat. There was meat cooking in a wooden pot on the fire. The man lifted it off when they were not looking, and gave them all something to eat. They wondered how he could do this, and how he had killed the animal, but they soon learned the secret. He was ...
— Thirty Indian Legends • Margaret Bemister
... wandered on and on for hour after hour. The breaking dawn recalled me to myself. I was outside the palings of a park. In the faint shadowy light it looked strange and unfamiliar. I was too tired to walk further. I scrambled over the low wooden fencing, and reaching a seat, ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... materials altogether superior to those that the appearance of the arable land, or the condition of the small farm, would seem to render necessary. The periagua, in which the proprietor had made his passage across the outer bay, lay at a small wooden wharf immediately below. ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... and lay them around the piles," the young sea-king shouted; and the half-naked rowers, unshipping their oars, reached out under the roofs and passed the stout cables twice around the wooden supports of the bridge. The loose end was made fast at the stern of each vessel, and then, turning and heading down stream, King Olaf's twenty stout war-ships ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... for the island of Zanzibar, where we arrived shortly after, and there made ourselves a new boat, of such boards as we had in our ship. We continued here till the 15th of February, 1591, during which time we saw several pangaias, or boats, of the Moors, which are pinned with wooden pins, and sewed together with cords made of the palmito, and caulked with the husks of the cocoa-nut, beaten into a substance like oakum. At length a Portuguese pangaia came out of the harbour of Zanzibar, where they have a small factory, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr
... to this curious abode is marked by a swinging wooden gate opening into a narrow tunnel which dodges under the front house. It is an uncanny sort of passageway, mouldy and wet from a long-neglected leak overhead, and is lighted at night by a rusty lantern with dingy ...
— Colonel Carter of Cartersville • F. Hopkinson Smith
... a train, but it would surely burn the bridge down," Westy said. "The ties are wooden. There's enough wood to curl the steel all up into a mess of wreckage. And all that might happen before the ...
— Roy Blakeley's Camp on Wheels • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... ivery inch av him from his blissid ould pigtail, tied up with a siezin' of ropeyarn, down to his rum wooden brogues an' all, the craythur!" replied Tim, stretching out his big hairy fist to the other, who had advanced on seeing him and stopped just abreast, his saffron-coloured face puckered up into a sort of wrinkled smile of pleasure at meeting an old shipmate like the boatswain, ...
— Afloat at Last - A Sailor Boy's Log of his Life at Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... before her that the Rakshasa of cruel deeds, addressed Vasishtha in these words, full of anxiety and fear, 'O illustrious one, the cruel Rakshasa, like unto Death himself armed with (his) fierce club, cometh towards us with a wooden club in hand! There is none else on earth, except thee, O illustrious one, and, O foremost of all that are conversant with the Vedas to restrain him today. Protect me, O illustrious one, from this cruel ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... employment. But pardon, gentles all, The flat unraised spirits that hath dar'd On this unworthy scaffold to bring forth So great an object. Can this cockpit hold The vasty fields of France? Or may we cram Within this wooden O the very casques That did affright the air at Agincourt? O, pardon! since a crooked figure may Attest in little place a million; And let us, ciphers to this great accompt, On your imaginary forces work. Suppose within the girdle of these walls Are now confin'd two ...
— The Life of King Henry V • William Shakespeare [Tudor edition]
... yeoman opened the door of a long covered shed commonly called the "mews," and shortly appeared again with four hooded hawks—two falcons, and two males or tiercel-gentles—placed on a wooden frame or cadge. These he handed to a stout yokel to carry, and the whole party sallied forth towards the downs. The squire and the parson were mounted on their palfreys, the rest of the ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... field, for this was a day of festival. Presently the white cat came to his apartment; and having politely inquired after his health, she invited him to partake of their amusement. The prince willingly accepted, mounted a wooden horse, richly caparisoned, which had been prepared for him, and which he was assured would gallop to admiration. The beautiful white cat mounted a monkey, dressed in a dragoon's bonnet, which made her look so fierce that all the ...
— Fairy Tales Every Child Should Know • Various
... demons upon the water's leaden surface. An hour of anxiety passed, a signal of war echoed forth, and murmured over the landscape like distant thunder coursing along the heavens. Then the murmuring sound re-echoed, as if the battlements above had opened upon the earth and sea. Soon Britannia's wooden walls were seen veering into line and preparing for action; America's ranged in the same order, waiting the dread moment. Anxious eyes and thoughts strained in expectation of the bloody struggle; then the boatswain's shrill whistle sounded forth, the leaden clouds overhead chased away, ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... problem over in his mind till his head ached, and had eaten in the process one-third of a wooden penholder, when Psmith arrived. ...
— Psmith in the City • P. G. Wodehouse
... pleasant (even if you do seem nearer the stars) when somebody you love is sick; and then, too, Gretchen began to think that Santa Claus and Rupert had forgotten her; for when she set her two little wooden shoes outside the door, they were never filled with goodies, and people stumbled over them ...
— Mother Stories • Maud Lindsay
... back to the winter of 1758 and '59. The mountain is snow-capped and the St. Lawrence is frozen several feet thick, making good roads for the shaggy Canadian pony and cariole, or heavy traineau with wooden runners. In the early winter's evening, lights gleam through the small windows of the earthen citadel which guards the Porte St. Martin, and the clash of arms or halberds, and the pacing of the sentries' footsteps, are heard at ...
— Famous Firesides of French Canada • Mary Wilson Alloway
... ar-re two large bequests to charity. Wan is a thrust fund set aside f'r his maiden sister Annybelle, who will receive f'r life th' income on eight hundhred dollars in stock iv th' Hackensack Meadows Comp'ny. Th' other is forty-two dollars to buy a wooden leg f'r his brother Isaac, it bein' undherstood that no charge is to be made be th' estate against th' brother f'r a set iv false teeth bought f'r him in th' year nineteen four. Th' balance iv th' property is left in trust f'r th' minor childher until they ar-re 90 years old. Th' deceased requested ...
— Mr. Dooley Says • Finley Dunne
... boys, we're a set of wooden-heads! I'd like to know if we need be afraid of any thing Joe and Fuz ...
— Dab Kinzer - A Story of a Growing Boy • William O. Stoddard
... flying about one day in Heath Lane, and it saw Mr. Preston and a young lady—we won't say who—walking together in a very friendly manner, that is to say, he was on horseback; but the path is raised above the road, just where there is the little wooden bridge ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... feet wide. On one side of it was nailed with brass-headed tacks the richly-embroidered sack, which was open in front and laced up and down with buckskin strings. Over the arms of the infant was a wooden bow, the ends of which were firmly attached to the board, so that if the cradle should fall the child's head and face would be protected. On this bow were hung curious playthings—strings of artistically carved bones and hoofs of deer, which ...
— Indian Boyhood • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... Derette's eyes. Stephen had ever been more brotherly to her than her own brothers. It was Stephen who had begged her off from many a punishment, had helped her over many a difficulty, had made her rush baskets and wooden boats, and had always had a sweetmeat in his pocket for her in childhood. She was grieved to think of ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt
... of 32 tons of documents, all classified "Confidential," "Secret" or "Top Secret." There were not enough safes or secured files in the whole of France to hold this material, which meant that established procedures could not be followed. A permanent guard and watch was put on the archive. Wooden cases were made from scrap lumber. Ample fire-fighting equipment was brought in. Personnel was drilled in evacuating the material in its order of importance, should fire occur. The setup was inspected ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... it appears, was much devoted to dolls, and played with them until she was nearly fourteen years old. Her favourites were small wooden dolls which she would occupy herself in dressing; and she had a house in which they could be placed. As she had no girl companions, many an hour was solaced in this manner. She dressed these dolls from some costumes she saw in the ...
— Queen Victoria • Anonymous
... Washington, for these United States. With his hand lifted up he has just taken his oath, has sworn before God and before his people to serve the destinies of a nation. And now along a hundred thousand miles of wire on dumb wooden poles, a hope, a prayer, a kind of quiet, stern singing of a mighty people goes by. And I am sitting here in my study window wondering what he will be like, what he will think, and what he will believe ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... a grove of huge cacti, whose fleshy, spiked branches had the look of so many wooden hands, or glove stretchers, set up on end; and beyond these again were the more naturally-wooded heights, leading up to the summit of ...
— The Island Treasure • John Conroy Hutcheson
... recognized. He then proceeded inland, and visited the mountain range of Amanus, where he cut timber, set up a sculptured memorial, and offered sacrifice. After this he returned to Assyria, carrying with him, besides other plunder, a quantity of wooden beams, probably cedar, which he carefully conveyed to Nineveh, to be ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson
... at my disposal: it is very old, and dates at least from the time of the Goths, as may be seen by the wooden joists crossed on the narrow front and by the mossy tiles. It has but one window on each floor. The one on the first floor is all the year round garnished with flowers, strings are attached, and all sorts of climbers run up them in springtime. ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France
... sciences will generally be the flower of the youth, the most acute, the most industrious, the most ambitious of honourable distinctions. If the Ptolemaic system were taught at Cambridge instead of the Newtonian, the senior wrangler would nevertheless be in general a superior man to the wooden spoon. If, instead of learning Greek, we learned the Cherokee, the man who understood the Cherokee best, who made the most correct and melodious Cherokee verses, who comprehended most accurately the effect of the Cherokee particles, would generally be a superior man to him who was ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... lighted down and helped the old dame slip from the horse; then he led the way into the house. They passed through a mean hallway and into a room hung round with cobwebs. The room was poorly furnished with a wooden bed, a table and a few chairs. In the bed lay a little, round-faced woman with a snub nose and a coarse, freckled skin, and in the crook of her arm was a baby so small and weak-looking the nurse knew it could not be more than a ...
— Tales of Folk and Fairies • Katharine Pyle
... wooden blocks used for lighting fires. See Swift ("Description of the Morning"), "The small-coal man was heard with cadence deep, Till drowned in shriller notes of chimney-sweep;" and Gay (Trivia, ii. 35), "When small-coal murmurs in the hoarser throat, From ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... the world all dead silence, save when, from far down below us in the woods, comes up the crepitation of the little wooden drum that beats to church. Scarce a leaf stirs; only now and again a great, cool gush of air that makes my papers fly, and is gone. - The King of Samoa has refused my intercession between him and Mataafa; and I do not deny this is a good riddance to me of a difficult business, in which ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... lived one is ashamed to describe! No garden, no theatre, no decent band; the public library and the club library were only visited by Jewish youths, so that the magazines and new books lay for months uncut; rich and well-educated people slept in close, stuffy bedrooms, on wooden bedsteads infested with bugs; their children were kept in revoltingly dirty rooms called nurseries, and the servants, even the old and respected ones, slept on the floor in the kitchen, covered with rags. On ordinary days the houses smelt ...
— The Chorus Girl and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... Junker class—a class special to East Prussian territories, including the eastern portion of the Mark of Brandenburg—whom the moderate Conservative Minister Stein himself characterized as "heartless, wooden, half-educated people, only good to turn into corporals or calculating-machines." This class then, as ever since, opposed an increase of popular control and the progress of free institutions with might and main. Friction arose between the Government ...
— German Culture Past and Present • Ernest Belfort Bax
... Renoir produced a certain number of unconvincing and uncharacteristic pictures (e.g., the dance series, Dance a la Ville, etc.). There is an uneasy harshness about the contours, the forms are imperfectly felt, they are wooden even, and in their placing one misses the old inevitability. Signed with another name these essays might by a dashing critic be called doctrinaire. Then in 1885 came the first Baigneuses (collection J.E. Blanche), whereby Renoir put himself a good head above all ...
— Since Cezanne • Clive Bell
... or both as to their landward faces, without exception they presented to the river false backs of wooden framework which overhung the water. Ordinarily, their windows were tight-shut, the panes opaque with accumulated grime—many were broken and boarded. Their look was dismal, their ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... when his wife was not with him he never had any luck. One day, when he was away hunting, the woman fell ill, and in a few days she died. Her husband grieved bitterly and buried her in the house where she had passed her life; but as the time went on he felt so lonely without her that he made a wooden doll about her height amid size for company and dressed it in her clothes. He seated it in front of the fire and tried to think he had his wife back again. The next day he went out to hunt, and when he came home the first thing he did was to go up to the doll and brush off ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... and women—most of them carrying small bundles, stood at this turning, about 100 steps from the prison. To the right there were several low wooden buildings; to the left, a two-storeyed house with a signboard. The huge brick building, the prison proper, was just in front, and the visitors were not allowed to come up to it. A sentinel was pacing up and down in front ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... closely as if they were behind the glass of an aquarium. Trout which leap out of the water every two minutes in a spring afternoon, and yet which are tame enough to come and be fed under the rail of a wooden arbour by trooping visitors, are a sight for idle fishermen to see. I have fed them with worms, but I suspect them to be ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... amusement to our fellow benchers and to passers-by in the hall, and with nothing to keep us warm but the genial influences of the occasion. Finally, each in his turn, we were passed through the door into a sort of office, with clerks and Dr. Weaver, the prison physician, at $1500 a year,—a tall, wooden faced young medical school graduate, who cultivated a skeptical expression and a jeering intonation of speech. He and an assistant put us through a physical examination, and took a series of measurements, all of which were entered by the clerks in ledgers. Our photographs were then taken, ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... bark from the large white birch-trees were tied with small, flexible spruce roots to the frame, which was of light poles. The door was a small square sheet of bark bound to a little frame that would open and shut on curious wooden hinges. Though the camp was frail, it kept off the wind and was slightly warmer than it was outside. The boys found a couch of dry fir boughs inside, but the only cover for it was a dried deerskin and one of Daddy ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens |
