"Mantel" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the heavily stuccoed ceiling, admitted to be one of the finest specimens of its kind in Washington, as well as the richness of the carvings ornamenting the mantel of Italian marble rising above the accursed hearthstone, only served to make more evident the extreme neglect into which the rest of the room had sunk. Being anything but anxious to subject myself further to its unhappy ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... kerosene can on the mantel reposes, Its contents were sprinkled all over the fire, And all that poor Kathleen O'Donohue knows is, This dull world has changed for ...
— The New Pun Book • Thomas A. Brown and Thomas Joseph Carey
... contributions is not at all gauged by the space they fill nor by the impression they make on the wondering gaze; articles of great merit and utility often making no figure at all compared with a case of figured silks or mantel ornaments which answer no purpose here but the owner's. And when it is considered that the manufacturers of France, Germany and Switzerland, as well as England, are here displaying their wares and fabrics before the ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... in competition. A most sumptuous Gothic apartment was that styled the "Salle Echevinale," restored with great skill in recent years by a concurrence of Flemish artists, members of the Academy. Upon either side of a magnificent stone mantel, bearing statues in niches of kings, counts and countesses, bishops and high dignitaries, were large well executed frescoes by MM. Swerts and Guffens, showing figures of the evangelists St. Mark and St. John, surrounded by myriads of counts and countesses ...
— Vanished towers and chimes of Flanders • George Wharton Edwards
... darkling than usual in the insufficient illumination of the far from brilliant lamps. Mount Dunstan, after standing upon the hearth for a few minutes smoking a pipe, which would have compared ill with old Doby's Sunday splendour, left his coffee cup upon the mantel and began to tramp up and down—out of the dim light into the shadows, back out of the shadows ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... that!" gasped Lieutenant Greg Holmes ironically, and he appeared to need the support of the mantel at ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Sergeants - or, Handling Their First Real Commands • H. Irving Hancock
... on the mantel-piece with his elbow and looking down at her. "Stirling said that, did he? I should have thought she would have been better where she is, ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... mind, so far, the next thing to do (with the clock on the mantel-piece striking midnight) was to go ...
— The Guilty River • Wilkie Collins
... (leaving window and looking at clock on mantel). Ten minutes past nine and Emma not here yet. It does seem too bad that she should worry Ed so much just for independence' sake. I am quite sure I should never want to ride a wheel anyhow, and ...
— The Bicyclers and Three Other Farces • John Kendrick Bangs
... Miss Fidely, brightening up, "we'll settle. If you'll just lift the lid of that old teapot standin' on the mantel-shelf, you'll find three one-dollar bills and a two. I wish 'twas ...
— The Wooing of Calvin Parks • Laura E. Richards
... characteristics, and the young spring flowers of New England, in their airy delicacy and fragility, were much like herself; and so strong seemed the affinity between them, that not only Mrs. Pennel's best India china vases on the keeping-room mantel were filled, but here stood a tumbler of scarlet rock columbine, and there a bowl of blue and white violets, and in another place a saucer of shell-tinted crowfoot, blue liverwort, and white anemone, so that Zephaniah Pennel was wont to say there wasn't a drink of water to be got, ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... the mirror opposite the flowery window, and so made the room a very bower. They fixed a magnificent crucifix of ivory and gold over the mantel-piece, and they took away his hassock of rushes and substituted a prie-dieu of rich crimson velvet. All that remained was to put their blue cover, with its golden cross, on the table. To do this, however, they had to remove the priest's ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... his lordship waiting," said the doctor, quietly going on with his tying; and Aunt Hannah toddled back to look at the drawing-room mantel-clock. ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn
... up wiping away the tears and began to look around. Perhaps this was the home of some friend of her missionary. She felt comforted about staying here now. She lifted her eyes to the wall above the mantel and lo, there smiled the face of her dear friend, the mother, who had just gone home to heaven, and beneath it—as if that were not enough to bring a throb of understanding and joy to her heart—beneath it hung her own little jewelled riding ...
— The Man of the Desert • Grace Livingston Hill
... stopped — not the mantel's; Geneva's farthest skill Can't put the puppet bowing That just ...
— Poems: Three Series, Complete • Emily Dickinson
... coarser folk can judge, to hurt the better feelings of the most exquisite purist. A cherry-red half window-blind kept up an imaginary warmth in the cold room, and threw quite a glow on the floor. Twelve cockle-shells and a half- penny china figure were ranged solemnly along the mantel-shelf. Even the spittoon was an original note, and instead of sawdust contained sea-shells. And as for the hearthrug, it would merit an article to itself, and a coloured diagram to help the text. It was patchwork, but the patchwork of the poor; no glowing shreds of old brocade and Chinese ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... leant on the mantel-shelf, and commenced a conversation sotto voce on the subject nearest his heart; while Cecil continued ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... went into the drawing-room, where the old, ugly lamp added its light to the candles on the mantel-piece. ...
— Amabel Channice • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... a dark floor is the beginning, and the walls grow lighter as the ceiling is approached. The richest effects should be congregated at the mantel, with the fire as ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... state in which their predecessor left it. The gilding of the pier-glasses was rubbed off; the paint on the cornices was hardly visible through the layers of dust that time had collected. The fine large rooms still retained certain sculptured marble mantel-pieces and ceilings, worthy of Versailles, together with the old furniture of the widow Bidault. The latter consisted of a curious mixture of walnut armchairs, disjointed, and covered with tapestry; rosewood bureaus; round tables on single pedestals, with ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... to the Czaritza, who received me in the same style of simple friendliness, and then, pointing to a money-box which formed a conspicuous object on the mantel-shelf, he added: ...
— The International Spy - Being the Secret History of the Russo-Japanese War • Allen Upward
... "Le COurt Mantel," an old French piece and Mr. Evans (Specimens of Welsh Poetry) from an ancient MS, of Tegan Earfron, one of Arthur's mistresses, who possessed a mantle which would not fit immodest women. See also in Spenser, ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... cherry-wood from the neighboring forest; walls that were wainscoted in the black oak of the country, and a few other articles, of a fashion so antique, and of ornaments so ingenious and rich, as to announce that they had been transported from beyond sea. Above the mantel were suspended the armorial bearings of the Heathcotes and the Hardings, elaborately ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... seven inches; carved-wood—Italian—five and three quarter inches each; old glass on mantelpiece—seven inches. And below this, dated the third: Last night, between midnight and daylight, the candle in the glass holder on the right side of the mantel was burned ...
— The Confession • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... such a dainty piece of sewing. Let us buy her some kind of an ornament. It is true that the French clock and the vases and the match receivers and two or three pictures on easels already crowd the mantel-piece, but there is an odd little bronze image which would not be amiss among them. It costs rather more than we can afford to pay, but we love her, and wish to give her something, and are at our wits' end to know what. She receives it ...
— Girls and Women • Harriet E. Paine (AKA E. Chester}
... ships.—Anthony, go down into the wine-cellar, the inner cellar, Anthony, and bring me a bottle of that old madeira of '37—stop, Anthony; make it '39. I think, judge, it is a little dryer.' Well, Anthony bowed, and left the room, and in a few moments he came back, set a lighted candle on the mantel, and, leanin' over my chair, said in a loud whisper: 'De cellar am locked, suh, and I'm 'feard Mis' ...
— A Gentleman Vagabond and Some Others • F. Hopkinson Smith
... beautiful dark eyes. As far as we could see the old house plainly showed the change. The furniture and ornaments were of a period long past, but everything was scrupulously neat. Hanging over the old marble mantel was a painting which quite evidently was that of the long since deceased Mrs. Haswell, the mother of Grace. In spite of the hideous style of dress of the period after the war, she had evidently been ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... for her. "Oh, no—it was only the first time," said Margaret, losing the sense of the painful vacancy in her absorbing desire not to distress her father, and thinking only of him as she watched him standing for some minutes leaning on the mantel-shelf with his hand ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... so at once." And La Boulaye took down an inkhorn a quill, and a sheaf of paper from the mantel-shelf behind him. These he placed on the table, and setting a chair, he signed to the aristocrat to ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... Bethlehem manger in the Dutch Reform Church at the foot of the high pulpit and dominie Bogardus told us the story of the Birthday of Our Lord in simple words which we could all understand. Early in the morning we ran down to the sitting room where our stockings were hanging from the mantel shelf filled by Santa Claus with Christmas gifts, with more piled on the table for our friends and for poor families. That was what an effusive writer once called the "halcyon and vociferous" beginning ...
— My Friends at Brook Farm • John Van Der Zee Sears
... a light wine and very soft to an appreciative palate. In some vague way the act was vastly insolent. Temple appeared uncertain, no uncommon thing with him; then, going to set his emptied glass down he put an elbow on the mantel, dropped his head, and spoke ...
— Man to Man • Jackson Gregory
... the mantel—it had wooden works and Martha wound it each night before she went to bed—banged its gong ten times. Mr. Bangs descended from Egypt as if he had fallen from a palm tree, alighting upon reality and Cape ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... corduroy trousers thrust into greased laced boots, and a black cotton shirt open on a chest and throat like pink marble. And David supported his lanky length, in a careless and dust-colored garb, with a capacious hand on the oak beam of the mantel. ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... took off his overcoat, and turned up the light in the tiny parlor. She flung her wraps over a chair, storming back and forth like a little fury. Her eyes were starry with tears of anger, her face was flushed, her hands worked nervously. He leaned against the mantel, watching ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... seems to have been in thrall to six haircloth chairs, a slippery sofa to match, and a very cold, marble-top center table, from the beginning of this century down to comparatively recent times. In all the best homes there was also a marble mantel to match the center table; on one end of this mantel was a blue glass vase containing a bouquet of paper roses, and on the other a plaster-of-Paris cat. Above the mantel hung a wreath of wax flowers in a glass case. In such houses were usually to be seen gaudy-colored ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... had thrown an impenetrable veil over it and left to tradition and fable and conjecture to say what had once been there portrayed. During the rule of many successive governors it had hung, by prescriptive and undisputed right, over the mantel piece of the same chamber, and it still kept its place when Lieutenant-governor Hutchinson assumed the administration of the province on the ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... bloodshed was included in Nancy's plan. It must be explained that when young Ensign Carey and Margaret Gilbert had been married, Cousin Ann Chadwick had presented them with four tall black and white marble mantel ornaments shaped like funeral urns; and then, feeling that she had not yet shown her approval of the match sufficiently, she purchased a large group of clay statuary entitled ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... money she earned into the little tin chimney bank which stood on the mantel shelf in her room. She called it the "ring fund" and to Sarah it seemed that there must be money enough already in it to buy several rings. But Rosemary was positive she still needed ...
— Rosemary • Josephine Lawrence
... bookcases, low and topped with bric-a-brac; the etchings and prints on the walls, which the elder Mavering went up to look at with a mystifying air of understanding such things; the foils crossed over the chimney, and the mantel with its pipes, and its photographs of theatrical celebrities tilted about over it—spoke of conditions mostly foreign to Mrs. Pasmer's memories of Harvard. The photographed celebrities seemed to ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... replied; and then they went on to tell me that at the hour in question Mr. S. and his son, a young man of about twenty, had entered their dining-room together and seen me standing leaning against the mantel-shelf. They were both hard-headed Scotchmen engaged in business in Edinburgh, and certainly not the sort of people to conjure up fanciful imaginings, nor is it likely that the same fancy should have occurred to both of them; and therefore I can only suppose ...
— The Law and the Word • Thomas Troward
... house made as green as spring-tide with their abundant decorations, tastefully arranged in wreaths and folds and circles, with the great green "Merrie Christmas" welcoming all comers from over the high parlor mantel. All was finished in ample time before the day of Christmas Eve arrived, though there were dozens of final touches still to be made, last happy thoughts that had to be worked out in green, ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 2 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... vase. I'm going to put a running border of roses and pansies on it,—the sweetest pictures you ever saw,—and I'll put it on the mantel for flowers." ...
— The Youth's Companion - Volume LII, Number 11, Thursday, March 13, 1879 • Various
... Seldom were more than half of them simultaneously busy, and their differences of opinion as to the hour were radical and irreconcilable. The big, emphatic eight-day, opposite the front door, might proclaim that it was eleven, only to be at once contradicted by the little tinkler on the parlor mantel, which announced that it was six, thereby starting up the cathedral case on the stairway and the Grandfather in the dining-room, who held out respectively for eight and two, while all the time it was really half-past one. Thence arose in the early days painful misunderstandings on the part ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... different. I had put it on the mantel over the stove I was using up-stairs the night before, and hadn't touched it since. As I sat staring at it, Terry took it from Peter and ...
— The Case of Jennie Brice • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... ornamented the mantel-piece representing the templar Bois-Guilbert bearing off a gilded Rebecca upon a silver horse. On either side of this frightful time-piece were placed two ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... against the mantel-piece, slid her hands into her pockets and looked down at her mother with faint ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 8th, 1920 • Various
... tidy little place, divided into two rooms—parlour and bedroom. The parlour was pasted all over with cheap prints reminding one of home, mostly taken from 'Punch' and the 'Illustrated London News.' Photographs of old friends were also hung over the mantel-shelf. The floor was neat and clean; the little pot was simmering over the little fire, and all was getting ready for breakfast. A very pleasant picture ...
— A Boy's Voyage Round the World • The Son of Samuel Smiles
... the gloom a little, and under the influence of the tea they brightened up and gradually got more cheerful. They discussed the sermon and the singing, and the mistake of the sexton in digging the grave in the wrong place, and the large congregation. From the mantel-piece I watched the group. They had waffles for supper,—of which I had been exceedingly fond, but now I saw them ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... the fire got lower and lower; and still Melchior sat, with his eyes fixed on a dirty old print, that had hung above the mantel-piece for years, sipping his 'brew,' which was fast getting cold. The print represented an old man in a light costume, with a scythe in one hand, and an hour-glass in the other; and underneath the picture in flourishing capitals was the ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book II - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... the door opened, was well furnished, with an open hearth, and a fire laid ready there, and even a row of saucepans twinkling above the mantel-shelf. ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... painful silence. George rose, and walking to the mantel-piece, looked down at the hearth and tapped the ironwork with his foot. He would fain have made the best of what he ruefully recognized to be a shabby situation by treating it jocosely; but her grave, grieved demeanor forbade. Yet ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... You dare to name yourself to me in the same breath with her? Get up, and look at yourself!" He pointed to a cracked mirror on the mantel-piece. "Look!" he said hoarsely, thrusting her away from him again. "Do you see how coarse and heavy and rough you are? She was light and delicate—like a snowflake. She never seemed to touch the ground. Your hair is like string—your hands are large—your voice is harsh. Her hair was ...
— The Crooked House • Brandon Fleming
... this room for the last century. It is of carved stone in the style of the Louis XV. period, and is ornamented with a mirror, let in to the back with gilt beaded moulding. This anachronism, to which the family is indifferent, would grieve a poet. On the mantel-shelf, covered with red velvet, is a tall clock of tortoise-shell inlaid with brass, flanked on each side with a silver candelabrum of singular design. A large square table, with solid legs, fills the centre of this room; ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... Steyne was standing by the fire sipping coffee. The fire crackled and blazed pleasantly There was a score of candles sparkling round the mantel piece, in all sorts of quaint sconces, of gilt and bronze and porcelain. They lighted up Rebecca's figure to admiration, as she sat on a sofa covered with a pattern of gaudy flowers. She was in a pink dress that looked as fresh as ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... at random, all well-stuffed and of lazy or voluptuous shapes, composed the furniture of that famous room, where the most momentous and the most trivial questions were discussed with the same gravity of tone and manner. There was a beautiful portrait of the duchess on the wall; and on the mantel a bust of the duke, the work of Felicia Ruys, which had received the honor of a medal of the first ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... the least uncomfortable chair in the room, which from his point of view was to say little in its favor; because the newest piece of furniture there, has been made a hundred years before the world understood that lounging was not a crime. Over the high, stone mantel hung a shield, so brightly polished as to fulfil the office of a mirror, and from where Egon sat, perforce upright and rigid, he could see himself ...
— The Princess Virginia • C. N. Williamson
... notables, Wulf came forth, clad in splendid armour inlaid with gold, wearing on his shoulder a mantel set with gems and on his breast the gleaming Star of the Luck of Hassan. To Rosamund he strode and stood by her, his hands resting on the hilt of ...
— The Brethren • H. Rider Haggard
... of a mahogany sideboard, table, and chairs,—ponderous in pattern; and a series of family portraits, in a sprawling style of art, smirked and postured on the wall. The floor was bare, but shone by reason of repeated scrubbing, and the black mantel-piece was a fine specimen of colonial carving ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... present stimulus has something in {453} common with the stimulus which has in the past aroused a certain perception, we may make the same response now as we did before—especially, of course, if the present mantel ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... On one side shone a brass candle-stick, bright as gold, ornamented with an end of wax candle; on the other side, was one of those lamps formed of a cylinder, with a tin reflector, mounted upon a steel stem, with a leaden stand. A tolerably large glass, in a frame of black wood, surmounted the mantel. ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... the way it is at home. We do not have dinner till supper-time, and there is no mantel or fireplace in my room, although the furniture is grander than anything I ever saw. I set William's photograph on the dresser, and I can tell by the way he looks at me all day long that he would not approve of the way I am carrying on. ...
— A Circuit Rider's Wife • Corra Harris
... take them for the world!" cried the rabbit. "I didn't know they were yours, it's all a mistake," and he placed the bank right back on the mantel. "But perhaps you could tell me where to find my fortune," said Uncle Wiggily, and he told the pussy ...
— Uncle Wiggily's Travels • Howard R. Garis
... the bedroom had an old-fashioned chimney-piece that was fitted with a loose wooden mantel-board, from which hung a border of needlework. It was quite easy to lift up this board and slip the papers between it and the chimney-piece; the border completely screened the hiding-place, and, except at a spring-cleaning, the arrangement was not likely to be disturbed. Ulyth ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil
... natural grouping of articles of daily use,—swords, belts, pistols, rifles, field-glasses, spurs, canteens, gauntlets,—while wreaths of gray moss above the windows, and a pelican's wing three feet long over the high mantel-piece, indicated more deliberate decoration. This, and the whole atmosphere of the place, spoke of the refining presence of agreeable women; and it was pleasant when they held their little court in the evening, and pleasant all day, with the different ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... of the department, from whom she received her work, was a man of middle-age, of rather stern and forbidding aspect; and as she approached his desk, he pointed to the clock on the mantel-piece. ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... that it was handsomely and liberally furnished with luxurious divans, capacious easy-chairs, a piano, a table loaded with the papers and periodicals of the day, an enormous mirror over the black marble mantel-piece, a clock with a set of silvery chimes for the quarters, and a deep, mellow-toned gong for the hours, and so many pictures that the whole available surface of the walls was completely covered with them. These pictures— executed in both oil and water-colour—represented out-of-the-way ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... the thousands that were homeless. Bertie,—he was six then,—he listened to the account of the children walking the streets, crying because they hadn't a roof over them or anything to eat. He didn't say a word, but he climbed up to the mantel and took down his little ...
— The Story of the Red Cross as told to The Little Colonel • Annie Fellows-Johnston
... words had hit the victor hard. Who can say what hidden string they touched, or what prescience of evil they awakened? But they went nigh to felling her. Clutching the mantel-piece, Lady Bellamy gasped for air; then, recovering ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... but the up-to-dateness here stops abruptly; the salle a manger is bare and uninviting, and the rooms above equally so, and the electric light has not penetrated beyond the ground floor. Instead one finds ranged on the mantel, above the cook-stove in the kitchen, a regiment of candlesticks, in strange contrast to the rest of the furnishings. Electric bells, too, are wanting, and there is still found the row of jangling grelots, their numbers half-obliterated, ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
... Slote is a large man at home and a giant to his wife. In his first term he comes to Washington a month ahead of the date set for the assembling of Congress, because he wants the Capital to get used to him gradually. He hires a couple of rooms in a hotel. His wife puts some flowers on the mantel piece in the sitting-room and wears her best dress all the time while she is waiting for the president's consort and the cabinet ladies to call. They do not call. The Hon. Slote is shocked almost to dumbness ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... always after legends when he has tired of collecting antiquities. Was there a Princess born here? Perhaps. At any rate it is not a legend; history nor peasantry make mention of it. Will Herr be so kind as to carry the ladder to the mantel so ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath
... the parlor mantel," advised Mrs. Pawket. "The twins is comin' up the road. I can hear them hollerin' at that echo down by the swamps. Leave it be; they'll attend ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... this crisis, quietly took the opportunity of gliding from the room. Sir Henry stretched his legs on an ottoman, and appeared immersed in the study of a print—the Europa of Paul Veronese—which hung over the mantel-piece. ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... absolution stamped upon them from the eleventh to the thirteenth century; medals and tokens of many local abbeys and confreries; coins of the Dukes of Normandy from 911 to 1216; an eleventh-century Oliphant; some glass mosaics; and the statue of Henri Court Mantel from his tomb in the Cathedral. All these are in the first room. In the next are Roman vases and glassware; some fine bronze weapons; and a large Gallo-Roman mosaic; also "La Capucine," as the first municipal fire-engine was called, which was only instituted in 1719. It was only in 1686 that ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... The onyx marble mantel-piece contained but a single ornament—an orchestra. A coral vase contained a large and perfect tiger lily, made of gold. Each stamen supported a tiny figure carved out of ivory, holding a musical instrument. When they played, each figure appeared instinct with life, like the mythical fairies ...
— Mizora: A Prophecy - A MSS. Found Among the Private Papers of the Princess Vera Zarovitch • Mary E. Bradley
... concerned. His apparent pliability hid a dexterity which evaded every recognized principle. In vain she exerted the influence with which he had pretended to invest her. The first effort proved that it had never really existed. It was no more in his life than the valuable ornament on his mantel-shelf—a thing to be dusted, preserved, and admired in leisure hours, never set to serious use. This last discovery, made shortly after their arrival in Madras, had broken her. From that moment she had felt herself crippled. Her life became a blank, colorless waste, all the more ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... her go out there while you were having your after-dinner smoke. I saw her go out there and stand by the hat-rack and pretend to be patting and admiring that beautiful fur. My back was turned, but the mirror over the mantel showed it." ...
— 'Laramie;' - or, The Queen of Bedlam. • Charles King
... the long living room, where a deep fireplace (happily the chimney had drawn well from the first, or the builder would have been sore perplexed) gave a look of hospitality to the otherwise severe furnishings. The fireplace and mantel-shelf were Gaston's pride and delight. Upon them he had worked his fanciful designs, and the result was most satisfactory. There was a low, broad couch near the hearth piled with pine cushions covered with odds and ends of material that had come into a man's ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... room in the Confederate Capitol at Richmond, two days later. A long table is on the right. Two small tables on left. Doors right and left, and mantel center. ...
— A Man of the People - A Drama of Abraham Lincoln • Thomas Dixon
... emergency station at the heart of war. We took hold of a room knee-high with battered furniture and wet plaster, cleaned it, spread army blankets on springs, found a bowl and jug, and made a den for the chauffeur. In our own room, we arranged an old lamp, then a shade to soften the light. On a mantel, were puttees, cold cream and a couple of books; in the wall, nails for coats and scarfs. The soldiers, entering, said it was homelike. It was a rest after the dreariness of the trench. We brought glass from Furnes, and patched the windows. ...
— Golden Lads • Arthur Gleason and Helen Hayes Gleason
... bunk. The walls had been papered with old charts, and he saw that most of them were of the New York-New Jersey area. A ship's lantern, wired for electricity, hung so low that it almost brushed Scotty's head. Ship models lined the mantel. ...
— Smugglers' Reef • John Blaine
... broke out sternly, "if it's neither drink, nor a scandal——" There, he stopped; for Hamilton, utterly unconscious of us, moved, rather than walked, automatically across the room. Throwing his hat down, he bowed his head over both arms above the mantel-piece. ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... rhythm to a man's walk, depending on the length of his legs, which beat more or less rapidly as they are longer or shorter, like metronomes differently adjusted, or the pendulums of different time-keepers. Commodore Nutt is to M. Bihin in this respect as a little, fast-ticking mantel-clock is to an ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... he proceeded, with facile pen, to furnish the house. There was the Log-Fire Room, with the print of George Washington over the mantel, with Jean's knitting on the table; Muffin on one side of the fire, and Polly Ann on the other. He even started to put Jean in one of the big chairs, but she made him rub it out. "Not yet, Derry. You see, I am not living ...
— The Tin Soldier • Temple Bailey
... sport of heronry. A long massive oak table, with a side board of the same wood and style of construction, and numerous high-backed chairs, completed the furniture of the room, while at the inner end was a huge fire-place, with a mantel-piece high above it, and carved oak seats on either side. The hall was used generally for banquets and other entertainments; smaller rooms leading off it were more ...
— John Deane of Nottingham - Historic Adventures by Land and Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... mantel-piece were encumbered, almost buried under a heterogeneous mass of things. Muslin petticoats, tossed down haphazard, pieces of lace, a cardboard helmet covered with gilt paper, open jewel-cases, bows of ribbon; curling-tongs, half hidden in the ashes; and on every side little ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz
... containing with difficulty a hat-rack and a table on which rested a card tray with cards. In the course of greeting an elderly woman, he stepped into the parlor. This was a small square apartment carpeted in dark Brussels, and stuffily glorified in the bourgeois manner by a white marble mantel-piece, several pieces of mahogany furniture upholstered in haircloth, a table on which reposed a number of gift books in celluloid and other fancy bindings, an old-fashioned piano with a doily and a bit of china statuary, ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... house, was therefore very spacious and comfortable, possessing three large pantries and an out-house or summer kitchen; besides, moreover, it was dark-raftered, ham-hung, with willow-pattern slates in a neat dresser, and peacock feathers over the high mantel; with, in one corner—the darkest—a covered well, into which I used to see myself the beautiful golden pats of butter lowered twice a week in summer time. One window, a small one, curtained with chintz ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison
... private library, consisting chiefly of the statutes at large, Hansard, the Annual Register, Parliamentary Reports, and legal treatises on the powers and duties of justices of the peace. A portrait of his mother is over the mantel-piece: opposite it a huge map of the county. His correspondence on public business with the secretary of state, and the various authorities of the shire, is admirably arranged: for the duke was what ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... coming in. When I were walking. When I were thinking. When I - ' It seized him again; and he stood up, holding by the mantel-shelf, as he pressed his dank cold hair down with a hand that shook ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... square apartment, with low ceiling, a small hearthstone and an immense bedstead with tester and outer coverings of flowered chintz. The light from the two small candles upon the high mantel-shelf were dimmed by the greater light from ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... tiny clock on the mantel began pealing the hour of eight. As though this were a signal for entrance, the door at the end of the bookcase opened noiselessly and a man, smooth faced, his hair brushed low across his forehead, stepped quietly ...
— The Strange Case of Cavendish • Randall Parrish
... tavern, that which played the part in this dram-shop of the chandelier of an opera house, was the fire. This cellar was so damp that the fire was never allowed to go out, even in midsummer; an immense chimney with a sculptured mantel, all bristling with heavy iron andirons and cooking utensils, with one of those huge fires of mixed wood and peat which at night, in village streets make the reflection of forge windows stand out so red on the opposite walls. A ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... drawer with fingers that twitched guiltily, and gave a jerk. It was locked. For a moment her disappointment was so great that she was ready to cry, but her face soon cleared and she began a search for the keys. Under the rug, in the vases on the mantel, behind photograph frames, into every crack where a key could be hidden, she peered with eager brown eyes. It was not to be found. Finally she climbed on a chair to the highest closet shelf, where she came across something that made her give a cry of delight. It was ...
— Mildred's Inheritance - Just Her Way; Ann's Own Way • Annie Fellows Johnston
... the house was ransacked from top to bottom, and the robber was about to abandon the search, when a sudden thought occurred to him. On the mantel-piece ticked a wooden American clock, about two feet high. The man opened the door in the case, and fumbled about with his finger. Next moment he had drawn out the nugget. He bent over the fire to get a better look at it, and then ...
— The Monkey That Would Not Kill • Henry Drummond
... became illuminated, bringing the pictures on the walls, the heavy satin curtains, the handsome furniture, the tables covered with costly knick-knacks, the large Japan vases, and a huge clock upon the mantel-piece, into view. All bore a gay and festive appearance, much at variance ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... the opposite side of the room, and was leaning with one arm on the mantel. In spite of the seriousness of the affair, it was impossible not to be amused by this sudden turn. Bell's eyes shifted ...
— Love Under Fire • Randall Parrish
... clock on the mantel. It was five minutes to eight: time to leave, if I was to get a decent breakfast before I went to the office. I found an old hat in the closet and put it on. It would do until I ...
— The Chamber of Life • Green Peyton Wertenbaker
... fell limp in a moment. One hand dropped by her side, the other rested on a fossil on the mantel-shelf, and she stared ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells
... though inconclusive, had stirred in John's mind an uneasiness which was near to apprehension. He turned and walked about the familiar room, recognizing the well-known furniture, his mother's picture over the mantel, the bookshelves filled with his boyhood's accumulations, the well-remembered pattern of the carpet, and the wall-paper—nothing was changed. It was all as he had left it two years ago, and for the time it seemed as if he had merely dreamed the life and experiences ...
— David Harum - A Story of American Life • Edward Noyes Westcott
... made always stood on Mother's mantel, and they called it the "Home Bank," because every penny that could be spared was dropped in there for the building ...
— Mother Stories • Maud Lindsay
... awaited me, and enchanted with my own idiotic heroism, I went to her in the evening. She received me in the parlour with her mother, and I was delighted to see the pier-glass over the mantel, and the china displayed on a little table. After a hundred words of love and tenderness she asked me to come up to her room, and her mother wished us good night. I was overwhelmed with joy. After a delicate little supper ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... crosses the room, and, taking up a position where his eyes can gloat upon Sybil's face, he rests one elbow upon a mantel, and so, in a comfortable after-dinner attitude, continues his pleasant meditations. Sybil stirs uneasily, but notices his proximity in no other way. Presently her eyes shoot straight past him, and she says to Evan ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... swimming in and out through openings in the rushes, rippling the glassy water, and raising spangles in their wake. The countenance of the lava beds became less and less forbidding. Tufts of pale grasses, relieved on the jet rocks, looked like ornaments on a mantel, thick-furred mats of emerald mosses appeared in damp spots next the shore, and I noticed one tuft of small ferns. From year to year in the kindly weather the beds are thus gathering ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir
... Fourth's Pavilion at Brighton. The inventive and industrious Parisian workmen had moulded the doors and window-frames; the ceilings were imitated from the middle-ages or those of a Venetian palace; marble veneering abounded on the outer walls. Steinbock and Francois Souchet had designed the mantel-pieces and the panels above the doors; Schinner had painted the ceilings in his masterly manner. The beauties of the staircase, white as a woman's arm, defied those of the hotel Rothschild. On account of the riots and the unsettled ...
— Paz - (La Fausse Maitresse) • Honore de Balzac
... was very small. Edna's round mahogany would have almost filled it. As it was there was but a step or two from the little table to the kitchen, to the mantel, the small buffet, and the side door that opened out ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin
... starting out to blow myself, or you, Honora," he said, poking with his stick a marmouset of the carved stone mantel, "I'd get a little more for my money ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... gate, and along a long stone passage, and up stone stairs into the great hall of state. Don Loris, as once before, sat peevishly by the huge fireplace. This time he was almost inside it, with its hood and mantel actually over his head. The Lady Fani sat there ...
— The Pirates of Ersatz • Murray Leinster
... the face of the amazed Harvester, who turned to the Girl as she leaned against the mantel. He stood absorbing the glowing picture of beauty and health that she made. She had removed her travelling dress and shoes, and was draped in a fleecy white wool kimono and wearing night slippers. Her hair hung in two big braids as it had during her illness. She was ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter
... that the winter is especially trying to the moral character of our young men, because some of their homes in winter are especially unattractive. In summer they can sit on the steps, or have a bouquet in the vase on the mantel; and the evenings are so short that soon after gas-light they feel like retiring. Parents do not take enough pains to make these long winter ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage
... seriousness. Their surroundings may have had something to do with this, for their papers were spread out on the leather-covered table in the directors' room at the bank, immediately under the eye of a former president, whose portrait hung over the mantel-piece, while the large-faced clock on the wall gave forth its majestic ...
— Mr. Pat's Little Girl - A Story of the Arden Foresters • Mary F. Leonard
... like Kitty, had been spending her morning assisting in preparations for the New Year callers who would present themselves later in the day, was dusting the quaint Dresden Shepherdess who presided over a corner of the drawing-room mantel, when a sharp knock at the front door announced a visitor; and she fled out of the drawing-room only to encounter ...
— An Unwilling Maid • Jeanie Gould Lincoln
... the mantel struck seven and the half hour before Bessie appeared. She was very pale, and her eyes looked away at my greeting. Passively she suffered herself to be placed in a chair, and then, with something of her own manner, she said hurriedly, "Don't think I got your note, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... reminding you of the BOURBONS. As, although lighting his lamp, he has, abstractedly, almost covered it with his hat, his room is but imperfectly illuminated, and you can just detect the accordeon on the window-sill, and, above the mantel, an unfinished sketch of a school-girl. (There is no artistic merit in this picture; in which, indeed, a simple triangle on end represents the waist, another and slightly larger triangle the skirts, and straight-lines with rake-like ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 11, June 11, 1870 • Various
... Sir Isaac was heard to break a little china figure of the goddess Kwannon, that had stood upon his study mantel-shelf. The fragments were found ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells |
