"Match box" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... hunters on an untried trail. Also, going down, they had followed hard wherever fugitives led. Coming back, they struck across to the Western Desert road, and travelled from belt to belt of the irrigation farms, with their orange-green cottonwood groves and bluish-green alfalfa fields and little match box houses stuck out of sight among peach orchards. The parched-earth, burnt-oil smell gave place to the minty odor of hay in wind rows, with the cool water tang of the big irrigation ditch flowing liquid gold in the yellow August light. ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... and now something impelled her to get it. In the stifling darkness of the shack she felt her way to it, held its oily ring in her hand, thought, frantically, of matches, groped along toward the mantelpiece, stumbled over a chair—and clutched at the match box! Something made her open the isinglass slide, strike a match, and touch the blackened wick with the sulphurous sputter of flame,—the next moment, with the lighted lantern in her hand, she was out in the sheeting blackness ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... passing in my mind. I've got particular information about the Cesarewitch and Cambridgeshire. I could get the price you speak of—fifty to one against the two, Matchbox and Chasuble—the double event, you know. I'm inclined to go it. It's ...
— Esther Waters • George Moore
... our destination. Then I rested on my oars and waited. All round us were the lights of bigger craft, but no rowing-boat could I see. About five minutes before the hour I whispered to Wetherell to make ready, and in answer the old gentleman took a matchbox from his pocket. Exactly as the town clocks struck the hour he lit a vesta; it flared a little and then went out. As it did so a boat shot out of the darkness to port. He struck a second, and then a third. As the last one burned up and then died ...
— A Bid for Fortune - or Dr. Nikola's Vendetta • Guy Boothby
... to approach the barn, which we then did with cautious steps. Mr. Sharpley having found that the door was rather loose, pushed it so much aside as to admit us. We accordingly all entered; he replaced the board, and soon procured a light from a German matchbox that he always carried with him. He then emptied the wallet of the booty, which consisted of four large silver candlesticks, six ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... sought, which should (he realized) have been the first, to wit, the fob pocket of the white waistcoat, he found a small gold matchbox, packed tight with wax vestas; and, berating himself for crass stupidity—he had saved a deal of time and trouble by thinking of ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... the rank, and down we went—horse, cab, driver, and myself—in front of a brewer's dray. Luckily for me and the driver, we were flung right over the smash into the gutter, for the big, heavy van ran into the fallen hansom, crushed it like a matchbox, and killed the horse. Had the window been closed—well, it wasn't, so there is no need ...
— The Stowmarket Mystery - Or, A Legacy of Hate • Louis Tracy
... myself of it," said Cap'n Bill. Then he felt in the big pocket of his coat and took out a pipe and a bag of tobacco. After he had carefully filled his pipe, rejoicing in the fact that the tobacco was not at all wet, he took out his matchbox and struck a light. The match burned brightly, and soon the sailor was puffing the smoke from his pipe in great contentment. The smoke ascended through the water in the shape of bubbles, and Trot wondered what anyone who happened to be floating upon the surface ...
— The Sea Fairies • L. Frank Baum
... point a lantern was brought and set behind me, so that its light fell upon the discarded toys, miscellaneous but beloved—a china head long parted from its body, one whole new doll, a tin with little stones in it, a matchbox, and other sundries. If anything will comfort them, their toys will, I thought, as I directed their attention to the tin with its pleasant rattling pebbles, and the other scattered treasures on the ...
— Lotus Buds • Amy Carmichael
... took out his matchbox. His hand trembled a little; he failed at the first attempt ...
— Blind Love • Wilkie Collins
... into the blue room where Sir Donald had talked with Carey. The "Danseuse de Tunisie" still presided over it, holding her little marble fan. The open fireplace was filled with roses. The tea-table was already set by the great square couch. Robin shut the door and took out a matchbox. ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens
... time to spring onto the floe and drag Harry after him when the monster's head rammed the boat, splitting it to kindling wood with a terrible crackling sound. The stout timbers might as well have been a matchbox, so far as resistance to the ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... The lettering on the matchbox could be seen in the silvered mirror, enlarged to such a point that the letters were ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... him fumbling for his matchbox, and then, when he discovered that it was empty, he made some more remarks not flattering to himself or me. I was more frightened than angry; with him ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... day the Free-will Goats were disbanded, and returned to their homes; after receiving in public the thanks of the Goat-King for their distinguished behaviour, and a carved matchbox each "For valour in face of ...
— Soap-Bubble Stories - For Children • Fanny Barry
... "Here, Chips, take a squint, man," he continued, thrusting the instrument into the eager hands of the carpenter. "His decks are as bare as the back of my hand; there is not enough bulwark left standing to make a matchbox out of—nothing but the stumps of a few staunchions here and there. I can see the coamings of the hatches rising above the level of the planking; I can see the windlass; I can just make out the short stumps of the three masts, and I can find where the poop skylight stood; but ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... of box rooms in this Bastille, which means that three hundred families live like ants in it. Let us enter No. 250. Time: 3.30 p.m. Here lives a blind matchbox-maker and his wife with their seven children. The father has gone to take seven gross of boxes to the factory, for the mother cannot easily climb up and down the stone stairs of the Bastille. So she sits everlastingly at the ...
— London's Underworld • Thomas Holmes
... written by him in 1854. The scene was Swanland, near Hull, in a carpenter's shop, where Mr. Bristow was employed with two fellow workmen. To be brief, they were pelted by odds and ends of wood, about the size of a common matchbox. Each blamed the others, till this explanation became untenable. The workrooms and space above were searched to no purpose. The bits of wood sometimes danced along the floor, more commonly sailed gently ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... pocket and she heard the rattle of a matchbox, and an instant later a flame spurted out in the gloom as he lit a bundle of matches together. In the brief illumination she could see the floor of the compartment steeply tilted up and at its further end what looked like a huge, black cavity. The whole side of ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler
... help it, but we do not {84} decide its issues. In the midst of such a time of social distress, Mr. Lowell in one of his lectures wrote: "I take great comfort in God. I think He is considerably amused sometimes, but on the whole loves us and would not let us get at the matchbox if He did not know that the frame of the universe was fireproof." That is the modern statement of the underlying faith and self-control and patience which come of confessing that in this world it is not we alone who do it all. "Why so hot, little man?" says ...
— Mornings in the College Chapel - Short Addresses to Young Men on Personal Religion • Francis Greenwood Peabody
... the newcomer as he handed his matchbox. He was a young man of medium height, with sandy complexion, a little freckled, and with a straggling fair moustache. He had keen grey eyes and the faintest trace of a Scotch accent. He edged his chair a ...
— Mr. Grex of Monte Carlo • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... contorting his mobile face into a hideous grimace of imbecility, began to juggle with these two objects and his cigar, displaying the faultless technique of the professional. After a few throws, the cigar flew into his mouth, the matchbox fell into the opened pocket of his dinner jacket and the waste-paper basket descended over his head. For a second he stood grinning through the wire cage, in the attitude of one waiting for applause. Then swiftly he disembarrassed himself of the basket and threw the insulted ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... on the railing of her matchbox verandah, and gazed critically at the corner where the last of Honor Desmond's jhampannis had not long since disappeared from view. Garth, the inevitable, stood close beside her, faultlessly equipped as always, even to the gold-tipped ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... make her rich, and both of them happy; but he could not recall it, at the moment. He was worn out, weary with the seething thoughts which had rioted through his mind all day, and he turned back dumbly to his office. It was dark and cold and as he groped for his matchbox his hand encountered a strange package. And yet it was not so strange—he seemed to remember it, somehow. He struck a hasty match and looked. It was the package of stock that he had sent to Virginia, but——The match burnt his fingers and he dropped ...
— Shadow Mountain • Dane Coolidge
... of unutterable contempt, Betty lighted a cigarette and then hurled the matchbox at her unsuspecting spouse. The missile ricocheted off his chin and fell noisily into the cup of tea which was halfway ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... "Bless my matchbox, Tom, but I'm glad to see you!" cried Mr. Damon, as he hastened forward with outstretched hand. "I was afraid you might be out. Now look here! What about my friend Hardley? He's very anxious to know your ...
— Tom Swift and his Undersea Search - or, The Treasure on the Floor of the Atlantic • Victor Appleton
... to her mother of her adventures in the kitchen, where Patsy O'Hern, 'Stashie's cousin Patsy, was visiting her, and he made Ariadne a "horse out of a potato and toothpicks for legs, and a little wagon out of a matchbox, and a paper doll to sit and drive, and Patsy was perfectly loverly, anyhow, and he was making such a lot of money every day, and, oh, he made the wheels out of potato, too, as round as could be he cut it, and he gave every cent of it to his grandmother ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... continued for a couple of minutes. Then the bird stood still while seeming to reflect, with wise head askew after the manner of other thinkers. Hurrying, to its playthings—which happened to be at the far end of the veranda—it selected a matchbox, dragged it clatteringly along, ranged it precisely close to the plate, mounted it, and from the extra elevation sipped the last drop with a chuckle of content. That the bird on deliberation conceived the scheme for over-reaching the ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... not to be kept awake by the constant jarring; and with the caution characteristic of my sex looked into the wardrobe and under the bed for burglars—though Heaven knows what I should have done had I found one there—placed a candlestick and matchbox on the table by my bedside, lest the roof or window should be blown in during the night or any other catastrophe happen, and after all these preparations got into bed. At this period of my life I was a sound sleeper, and, being somewhat unusually ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... case, containing, amongst a number of other things, a tiny matchbox. She extracted and lighted a match. There was no breeze, or she must certainly have failed ...
— The Sins of Severac Bablon • Sax Rohmer
... struck a wax-match on a gold matchbox, leaning his elbow on the table to steady his shaking hand. Presently he slowly crossed one baggy red-trouser knee over the other and, blowing a cloud of cigarette smoke into the sunshine, said: "I suppose your despatch will arrive ...
— Lorraine - A romance • Robert W. Chambers
... turned to the table where the matchbox stood at his elbow, took it up, rattled it, and laid it down. He pressed the tobacco hard with his thumb, and, turning to Horner, ...
— In Kedar's Tents • Henry Seton Merriman
... and hunted for the matchbox. She found it after a time and the lamp was lighted. Emily, wearing a wrapper over her night clothes, was standing by the door, apparently listening. Her face was white ...
— Thankful's Inheritance • Joseph C. Lincoln
... sent Lloyd by parcel post, at great expense, an empty matchbox and empty cigarette-paper book, a bell from a cat's collar, an iron kitchen spoon, and a piece of coal more than half the superficies of this sheet of paper. They are now (appropriately enough) speeding towards ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson |
