"Horsehair" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... afraid that he determined to go and talk to a black man he knew who dealt in magic. He found the man sitting at the door of his hut, making magic with a horsehair and a snakeskin, and some ground-up glass. Jean Malin, told him everything that had happened, about the bull, and how it had changed itself into a man and had come to visit the lady, and about the magic words, and how he ...
— Tales of Folk and Fairies • Katharine Pyle
... supplied him. Taking them with him, he recrossed the river, and after a short but hearty meal, busied himself in the preparation of a sleeping place. In that heavenly region, nature has supplied the means for a simple, but delightful bed, in the tillandsea or Spanish moss, whose long, delicate, horsehair-like threads, compose the most luxurious couch. With this moss Hodges now filled the canoe, and carried it to the hiding-place where he had found it. This had been selected between two cedars, whose lower boughs served as rollers, upon which he only had to raise ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... covered with a large flag, was carried on a caisson, and his horse, led by an orderly, was covered with a large blanket of black cloth. Over this was the saddle, and on top of the saddle rested his helmet—the yellow horsehair plume and gold trimmings looking soiled by long service. His sabre was there, too, and strapped to the saddle on each side were his uniform boots, toes in stirrups—all reversed! This riderless horse, with its pall of black, yellow helmet, and footless ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... flowers, butterflies, and birds. There was a polished mahogany wash-stand in one corner of the room, and a small mahogany swing-table against the bulkhead between the bunk and the closed door of the berth; a horsehair sofa ran along the ship's side, opposite the doorway; a small lamp, apparently of silver, hung in gimbals from the ship's side, near the head of the bunk, and the apartment was amply lighted by a large round open port or scuttle, through which the gentle sigh of the evening breeze came pleasantly, ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... on the left by the Ulai, while the flower of the Elamite nobility was ranged around him. The equipment of his soldiers was simpler than that of the enemy: consisting of a low helmet, devoid of any crest, but furnished with a large pendant tress of horsehair to shade the neck; a shield of moderate dimensions; a small bow, which, however, was quite as deadly a weapon as that of the Assyrians, when wielded by skilful hands; a lance, a mace, and a dagger. He had only a small body of cavalry, but the chariotry formed an important force, ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 8 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... shut him out, left him standing on the verandah. After a lengthy absence, he returned, and with a "Well, come along in then!" opened the door of a parlour. This was a large room, well furnished in horsehair and rep. Wax-lights stood on the mantelpiece before a gilt-framed pierglass; coloured prints hung on ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... presented by Marie Antoinette and her court, powdered wigs and patches, paniers and enormous hats, surmounting the horsehair erections, heavy with powder and grease, lace, ribbon flowers and jewels, are quaint, delightful and diverting, but not to be compared with the Greek or mediaeval ...
— Woman as Decoration • Emily Burbank
... placed across a hole about the size of a crown piece, and consists of a strong noose made of horsehair, which is fixed to a peg, and so arranged that the slightest touch causes it to rebound and catch them by ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... moments I was under the impression that the adventure had been a dream: an object that hung on the opposite wall came under my eyes, and recalled the reality—it was my saddle, over the holsters of which lay a coil of white horsehair rope, with a silver ring at the end. I ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... house was a stately mansion, refurnished, with the exception of old colonial pieces, after the grand tour in Europe. This room, although clean and sufficiently equipped, was sordid and commonplace, and the bed was as hard as the horsehair furniture. Her body as well as her aesthetic sense had rebelled more ...
— Sleeping Fires • Gertrude Atherton
... had closed the front door. Then they went into the parlour and sat down side by side on the little horsehair sofa placed against the wall facing the window. The anxiety in their hearts betrayed itself ...
— Esther Waters • George Moore
... speculation could go no further; the old escritoire or secretaire which Mr. M'Ruen always opened the moment he came into the room; the rickety Pembroke table, covered with dirty papers which stood in the middle of it; the horsehair- bottomed chairs, on which Charley declined to sit down, unless he had on his thickest winter trousers, so perpendicular had become some atoms on the surface, which, when new, had no doubt been horizontal; the ornaments (!) on the chimney, broken ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... wore on his wrist a gold band for each campaign which he had undertaken. There was no attempt at uniformity as to their appointments. Their helmets and shields were of gold or silver, surmounted with plumes or feathers, or with tufts of white horsehair. Their breastplates were adorned with arabesques or repousse work of the highest art. Their belts were covered with gold and studded with gems. Their short kilted skirts were of rich Tyrian purple ...
— The Young Carthaginian - A Story of The Times of Hannibal • G.A. Henty
... room seemed a mile square, because there was nothing in it except some rows of books, on unpainted white-pine bookshelves, a cracked marble-top table, a rag rug, a hairless horsehair sofa and two or three chairs. Yes, there was a picture on the wall, a colored crayon drawing of a cluster of pansies. I looked around for the portrait of Andrew Jackson and the pinecone hanging basket but they were ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... protected wholly from the light, or had light admitted from above or on one side as the case might require, and were covered above by a large horizontal sheet of glass, and with another vertical sheet on one side. A glass filament, not thicker than a horsehair, and from a quarter to three-quarters of an inch in length, was affixed to the part to be observed by means of shellac dissolved in alcohol. The solution was allowed to evaporate until it became so thick that it set hard in two or three seconds, ...
— Outlines of Lessons in Botany, Part I; From Seed to Leaf • Jane H. Newell
... nose into the domino and throwing the bundle on the table like a champion throwing down his glove. He is now seen to be a stout, tall man between forty and fifty, clean shaven, with a midnight oil pallor emphasized by stiff black hair, cropped short and oiled, and eyebrows like early Victorian horsehair upholstery. Physically and spiritually, a coarsened man: in cunning and logic, a ruthlessly sharpened one. His bearing as he enters is sufficiently imposing and disquieting; but when he speaks, his powerful, menacing ...
— You Never Can Tell • [George] Bernard Shaw
... Queen; "these are words of wise men and conjurers; they are like horsehair bustles—they serve for filling out—that's all. I like better to drink; so fill the glasses, Ninny Moulin; some champagne, Rose-Pompon; here's to the health of your ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... consciousness she was lying upon the old horsehair sofa in the library. Ivy had gone on an errand, but Cynthia stood over her and the girl's face shocked the reviving woman into alertness. Familiarity had dulled her in the past, but now she saw the expression and outline of Theodore Starr's features ...
— A Son of the Hills • Harriet T. Comstock
... said. He felt he would like to creep into The Rigs, into the sitting-room where his mother had always sat (the other larger rooms, the "good room" as it was called, was kept for visitors and high days), and lay his tired body on the horsehair arm-chair by the fireside. He could rest there, he thought. It was impossible, of course. There would be no horsehair arm-chair, for everything had been ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)
... and flinging her arms round me sobbed louder than I. It would have been wicked to offer further resistance. She brought down pillows, covered them with a red shawl, and propped me up till the horsehair sofa became an easy couch, and with mixed tears and smiles I contrived to swallow a few mouthfuls, a feat which she exalted to an ...
— Miscellanea • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... ecole was to be followed by an exhibition of "transportation throughout the ages," headed by a Gaulish chariot driven by a trooper with a long horsehair moustache and mistletoe wreath, and ending in a motor of which the engine had been taken out and replaced by a large placid white horse. Unluckily a heavy rain began while this instructive "number" awaited its turn, and we had ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... other street, we'll let him slide. But as to that d——d old Frenchman Ferrers, in the next loft, with his stuck-up airs and high-falutin style, we must get quit of him; he's regularly gouged me in that ere horsehair spekilation." ...
— By Shore and Sedge • Bret Harte
... coffee-room. To this latter more aristocratic quarter Miss Strong conducted her pupils. Some of them had never before been in a small village hostelry, and were much amused at the quaint old parlor with its sporting prints, its glass cases of stuffed squirrels and badgers, and its horsehair-seated chairs with crochet antimacassars hung over the backs. The atmosphere was certainly rather redolent of stale beer and tobacco, but a bunch of crimson wall-flowers on the table did their best to spread a pleasant perfume. The tea, when, after much delay, it ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... procession had drawn nigh, and two mounted troopers, glittering in casques of highly polished bronze, with waving crests of horsehair, corslets of burnished brass, and cassocks of bright scarlet cloth, dashed by as hard as their fiery Gallic steeds could trot, their harness clashing merrily from the rate at which they rode. Before these men were out of sight, a troop of horse rode ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... Mrs. Lear in the dim kitchen. Since then she had gone monotonously enough on her errand, avoiding speech even with the elder Mrs. Lear as much as possible, and seeing Primrose not at all—an easy matter, since the girl kept her room, or lay on the horsehair sofa, languidly stitching woollen roses on a handscreen, for all the world like the spoilt ...
— The White Riband - A Young Female's Folly • Fryniwyd Tennyson Jesse
... the passage of the bell-rope. They therefore slipped out of the church, and up into the belfry, where they hid. In a few moments a man appeared who began to work at something. They sprang on him and seized his wrists, and found in one of his hands a thin line of horsehair, to one end of which a hook was attached. The holder being frightened, dropped the line and fled, and although M. de Laubardemont, the exorcists, and the spectators waited, expecting every moment that the cap would rise into the air, it remained quite firm on the owner's head, to the no ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - URBAIN GRANDIER—1634 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... which cut off the room where once it had flowed on to join the great length of salon parlor. A folding-bed with an inlay of mirror and a collapsible desk arrangement backed up against those folding-doors. A divan with a winding back and sleek with horsehair was drawn across a corner, a marble-topped bureau alongside. A bronze clock ticked roundly from the mantel, balanced at either side by a pair of blue-glass cornucopias with warts ...
— Gaslight Sonatas • Fannie Hurst
... first to relax its strain, and Letty responded with an instant collapse; for instantly she feared she had done it all, and disgusted Godfrey. But he led her gently to the sofa, and sat down beside her on the hard old slippery horsehair. Then first he perceived what a change had passed upon her. Pale was she, and thin, and sad, with such big eyes, and the bone tightening the skin upon her forehead! He felt as if she were a spectre-Letty, not the Letty he had loved. Glancing up, ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... short-tempered activity, like washing-day. "Think shame on yourself, Ellen Melville!" she rebuked herself. "She's a better woman than ever you'll be, with the grand work she's done at the Miller's Wynd Dispensary." But that the doctor was a really fine woman made the horsehair texture of her manner all the more unpleasing, for it showed her sinisterly illustrative of a community which had reached an intellectual standard that could hardly be bettered and which possessed certain moral energy, ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... units) at from 50-200 deniers on the silk counts. It is a thread of high lustre, and more nearly approaches the normal cellulose in chemical properties than any of the other artificial silks. It can also be spun in threads of very much larger diameter, which can be used as a substitute for horsehair, for carbonising ...
— Researches on Cellulose - 1895-1900 • C. F. Cross
... wilderness; for he has sent us a fine flight of fieldfares across the barren sea, so that they whirr out of every bush as ye come near it. Who will now run down into the village, and cut off the mane and tail of my dead cow which lies out behind on the common?" (for there was no horsehair in all the village, seeing that the enemy had long since carried off or stabbed all the horses). But no one would go, for fear was stronger even than hunger, till my old Ilse spoke, and said, "I will go, for I fear nothing, ...
— The Amber Witch • Wilhelm Meinhold
... bazaar, where everything in connection with riding or loading animals can be purchased, are also to be found the bell shops. These confine themselves particularly to horses', mules' and camels' neck decorations. Long tassels, either red or black, in silk or dyed horsehair, silk or leather bands with innumerable small conical shrill bells, and sets of larger bells in successive gradations of sizes, one hanging inside the other, are found here. Then there are some huge cylindrical bells standing about two and a half feet high, with scrolls and geometrical ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... accomplished by means of a halter of horsehair, which is passed round under the neck of the horse, and both ends braided into the mane, on the withers, thus forming a loop which hangs under the neck and against the breast. This being caught by the hand, makes a sling, into which the elbow falls, taking the weight of the body on ...
— The Dog Crusoe and his Master • R.M. Ballantyne
... a new book which deals with these curious questions you were talking about, and others like them. You know they find their way almost everywhere. They do not worry me in the least. When I was a little girl, they used to say that if you put a horsehair into a tub of water it would turn into a snake in the course of a few days. That did not seem to me so very much stranger than it was that an egg should turn into a chicken. What can I say to that? Only that it is the Lord's doings, and marvellous ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... parlour. We had never entered the parlour before, and accordingly looked about with interest and curiosity. The furniture, which had belonged to Pap's father-in- law, a Spanish-Californian, was of mahogany and horsehair, very good and substantial. In a bookcase were some ancient tomes bound in musty leather. A strange-looking piano, with a high back, covered with faded rose-coloured silk, stood in a corner. Some half a dozen daguerreotypes, a case of stuffed humming-birds, and a wreath ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... groveled to it. His red face glowed with pleasure; he swelled with a pride very different from Mary Virginia's. I thought he had an upholstered look in his glossy clothes, reminding me unpleasantly of horsehair furniture. ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... the strange hats they have. Some of the men wear hats that go down over their shoulders. This is the kind of hat they wear when they are in mourning, after the death of a father or mother. Some wear hats made of straw. These hats look like large flowerpots turned upside down. Some have hats made of horsehair. ...
— Big People and Little People of Other Lands • Edward R. Shaw
... 4th.—There is much virtue in horsehair. Few who attended the informal opening of the Third Parliament of KING GEORGE THE FIFTH would have guessed that under the full-bottomed wig and gorgeous black-and-gold robes of the dignified figure on the Woolsack lay the volatile personality of "F. E." He played ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 12, 1919 • Various
... insect destroyers; if more than one pair, there will be continual warfare as often as one encroaches on the domains of the other. Their nests are made of strips of vegetable fibre, weeds, etc., and lined with horsehair or catkins. They are sometimes quite bulky and generally very substantially made. The three to five eggs are laid the latter part of May, and are of a creamy ground color splashed with reddish brown and lilac. Size .95 x .70. Data.—Worcester County, Massachusetts, June ...
— The Bird Book • Chester A. Reed
... lay back on the lumpy pillow, murmuring them again. The lumps of knotted flock under his head reminded him of the lumps of knotted horsehair in the sofa of her parlour on which he used to sit, smiling or serious, asking himself why he had come, displeased with her and with himself, confounded by the print of the Sacred Heart above the untenanted sideboard. He saw her approach him in a lull of the talk ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... article of furniture stood in exactly the same place it had always stood. Nothing was ever suffered to be disturbed. The tassels of the crazy cushion lay just so over the arm of the sofa, and the crochet antimacassar was always spread at precisely the same angel over the horsehair rocking chair. No speck of dust was ever visible; no fly ...
— Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... less, Aunt Deming said it ought not to be made at all. It makes my head itch, & ach, & burn like anything Mamma. This famous roll is not made wholly of a red Cow Tail, but is a mixture of that, & horsehair (very course) & a little human hair of yellow hue, that I suppose was taken out of the back part of an old wig. But D—— made it (our head) all carded together and twisted up. When it first came home, aunt put it on, & my new cap on it, she then took up her apron ...
— Diary of Anna Green Winslow - A Boston School Girl of 1771 • Anna Green Winslow
... little parlour, which she had been made to take into use by Vassie, who had successfully made it hideous with antimacassars and vases of artificial flowers. As Annie sat rigidly upright upon a slippery horsehair-covered chair, her eyes wandered vaguely here and there and fell on the album in which Vassie had collected all the photographs taken of the family from time to time. Photographs printed on paper were only just ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... old grandfather and grandmother Westcott in ill-fitting clothes and heavy gilt frames, the white marble clock on the mantelpiece, a clock that would tick solemnly for twenty minutes and then give a little run and a jump for no reason at all, the straight horsehair sofa so black and uncomfortable with its hard wooden back, the big dining-room table with its green cloth (faded a little in the middle where a pot with a fern in it always stood) and his aunt with her frizzy yellow hair, her black mittens and her long bony ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... arenga palm, which is of great value to the Malays. The black horsehair like fiber surrounding its leaf-stalks is made into cordage; a large amount of toddy or palm wine is obtained by cutting off the flower spikes, which, when inspissated, affords sugar, and when fermented a capital vinegar. Considerable quantities of inferior sago and several other products ...
— Catalogue of Economic Plants in the Collection of the U. S. Department of Agriculture • William Saunders
... of rags round his bent waist; brought out a black horsehair bag embroidered with silver thread; and shook therefrom on to my tablethe dried, withered head of Daniel Dravot! The morning sun that had long been paling the lamps struck the red beard and blind sunken eyes; struck, too, a heavy circlet of gold studded with raw turquoises, that Carnehan ...
— The Man Who Would Be King • Rudyard Kipling
... to move some of the books and papers which were strewn on the table. Lisle sat on the end of the horsehair sofa and watched him. "I can't think how you can endure that blue thing and those awful flowers continually before your eyes," he said ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... herself about her ordinary household work. Then she sat down alone in the dingy old dining-room, to think what had better be done in her present circumstances. The carpet of the room was worn out, as were also the covers of the old chairs and the horsehair sofa which was never moved from its accustomed place along the wall. It was not a comfortable Squire's residence, this old house at Vavasor. In the last twenty years no money had been spent on furniture or embellishments, and for the last ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... in the cushioned basket-chair, the only comfortable chair in the room, and we sat on incredibly hard, horsehair things having antimacassars tied to their backs by means of lemon-coloured bows. It was different from those dear old talks at Surbiton, somehow. She sat facing the window, which was open (the night was so tranquil and warm), and the dim ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells
... furniture of the other three rooms—an ante-chamber, a waiting-room, and a private office—would not have fetched three hundred francs altogether at a distress-warrant sale. You know enough of Paris to know the look of it; the stuffed horsehair-covered chairs, a table covered with a green cloth, a trumpery clock between a couple of candle sconces, growing tarnished under glass shades, the small gilt-framed mirror over the chimney-piece, and in the grate a charred stick or two of firewood which had lasted them for two winters, as ...
— A Man of Business • Honore de Balzac
... be a job we care for, and I am keeping up the delusion, but all the time I run my seams straight, pull the horsehair out to the last fine shred, turn in my corners as the corners of a leather book are turned, so that I may be kept at it, although out of cunning I appear to grumble and ...
— A Diary Without Dates • Enid Bagnold
... however, always admitted of the hair being parted from the forehead to the back of the head in two equal masses, and of being plaited or waved over the ears. Nets were again adopted, and head-dresses which, whilst permitting a display of masses of false hair, hid the horsehair or padded puffs. And, lastly, the escoffion appeared—a heavy roll, which, being placed on a cap also padded, produced the most clumsy, outrageons, and ungraceful shapes ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... old horsehair sofa—the pride of all Spearhead and even of Fort Consolation—we sat down together, much closer than I had expected, as some of the springs were broken, thus forming a hollow in the centre of the affair, ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... demanding water held all Jim's attention. And while Peter procured a cupful, he lifted her gently in his arms and carried her into the parlor, and laid her on an old horsehair settee, propping her carefully into a sitting position. When the water was brought she drank thirstily, and then, closing her eyes, sank back with something ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... in the afternoon and lay on the horsehair sofa in the sitting-room, and held a sort of levee of her visitors. Tom was subdued, and the twins were envious—nothing uncommon ever happened to them! They knew too much or were too cautious, but they sat on two stools by the window and followed Mrs. Beauchamp's movements with ...
— Troublesome Comforts - A Story for Children • Geraldine Glasgow
... of the ceremony. 'Do you not know how delicate is your mistress?—you are not dressing the coarse horsehair of the widow Fulvia. Now, then, the riband—that's right. Fair Julia, look in the mirror; saw you ever anything ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... voice, sad and low, but yet sufficiently audible,—a sort of whisper that Macready would have envied, and the galleries have applauded with a couple of rounds. "Resigned it! Good heavens!" And the dignitary of the church sank back horrified into a horsehair arm-chair. ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope
... Ditmar would be to slump back into the humdrum, into something from which she had magically been emancipated, symbolized by the home in which she sat; by the red-checked tablecloth, the ugly metal lamp, the cherry chairs with the frayed seats, the horsehair sofa from which the stuffing protruded, the tawdry pillow with its colours, once gay, that Lise had bought at a bargain at the Bagatelle.... The wooden clock with the round face and quaint landscape below—the ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... furniture looks as good as new, but is subdued to a tone of sober maturity, and chimes in so well with the general effect that one scarcely notices it. The polished table is mounted in dark morocco; behind the horsehair-covered arm-chair is a gray marble mantel-piece, overshadowing an open grate with polished bars and fire-utensils in the English style. During the winter months a lump of cannel-coal is always burning there; but the flame, even on the coldest days, is too much on its good behavior ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... she had finished, a boarder or two, against the unwritten law of the house, had come downstairs. Mrs. Cortelyou, a thin little wisp of a widow, was in the rocker in the bay-window, Major Kinney, fifty, gray, dried-up, was on the horsehair sofa, watching the kitchen door over his paper. Georgia, having finished her telephoning, had come in to drop idly into her own chair, and play with her knives and forks. Miss Lydia Lord, a plain, brisk woman, her upper lip darkened with hair, her figure flat and ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... his ill luck, the Spartan warrior seized his foe by the horsehair crest of his helmet, and began to drag him towards the Grecian lines; but at this point Venus came to the aid of her favorite. Standing unseen beside him, she broke the helmet strap under his chin, and ...
— The Story of Troy • Michael Clarke
... their hams. On each side and below the throne were hundreds of attendants or guards; those in the front row sitting cross-legged, with drawn krisses; those behind them standing with long spears, tipped with bunches of red horsehair, in their hands. The remainder of the chamber was occupied by ...
— Borneo and the Indian Archipelago - with drawings of costume and scenery • Frank S. Marryat
... black blot which marks the crown of a sergeant's wig is generally spoken of as his coif, but this designation is erroneous. The black blot is the coif-cap; and those who wish to see the veritable coif must take a near view of the wig, when they will see that between the black silk and the horsehair there lies a circular piece of white lawn, which is the vestige of that pure raiment so reverentially mentioned by Fortescue. On the general adoption of wigs, the sergeants, like the rest of the bar, followed in the wake of fashion: but at first they wore their old coifs and caps ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... eggs; but not to touch, for, though Fred wanted to take it, Harry and Phil said "No;" for Papa did not approve of the birds being disturbed. Then there was a beautifully-formed mossy little cup-shaped nest in the fork of a tree, just inside the coppice, smooth, round, and soft-edged, with the horsehair and wool lining all plaited together, and made as even as possible. It was so low down that, by bending the branch, the boys could look at it, which they did, while the poor chaffinches, in the horse-chestnut tree close by, cried "pink-pink-pink" in a state of the greatest ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn
... front of her tent in the sun, watching the cowboys sitting around their camp, weaving horsehair bridles, cleaning their guns, mending their clothes, and doing other things that fall to the leisure ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... a long sala typical of its day and of many to come; whitewashed walls hung with colored prints of the Virgin and saints; horsehair furniture, matting, deep window seats; and a perennial coolness. The Chamberlain (his court title and the one commonly attached to his name) made himself as comfortable as the slippery chair would permit, and Arguello went for ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... from it, and the hand that supported her low white forehead over which her full hair was simply parted, like a brown curtain, was slim and gentle-womanly. In spite of her plain lustreless silk dress, in spite of the formal frame of sombre heavy horsehair and mahogany furniture that seemed to set her off, she diffused an atmosphere of cleanly grace and prim refinement through the apartment. The priestess of this ascetic temple, the femininity of her closely ...
— The Argonauts of North Liberty • Bret Harte
... for the fulfilment of this promise two of the spectators noticed that Laubardemont had taken care to seat himself at a goodly distance from the other participants. Quietly leaving the church, these amateur detectives made their way to the roof, where they found a man in the act of dropping a long horsehair line, to which was attached a small hook, through a hole directly over the spot where Laubardemont was sitting. The culprit fled, and that night another failure ...
— Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters • H. Addington Bruce
... Bridge the shotgun. Then he turned his attention to the woman. With the carving knife that was to have ended her life he cut her bonds. Removing the gag from her mouth he lifted her in his strong arms and carried her to the little horsehair sofa that stood in one corner of the parlor, laying her upon ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... back,—my Father's conscience was so painfully perplexed, that he desired me to come up with him to the now-deserted 'boudoir' of the departed Marks, that we might 'lay the matter before the Lord'. We did so, kneeling side by side, with our backs to the window and our foreheads pressed upon the horsehair cover of the small, coffin-like sofa. My Father prayed aloud, with great fervour, that it might be revealed to me, by the voice of God, whether it was or was not the Lord's will that I should attend the Browns' party. My Father's attitude seemed to me to be hardly fair, since he did not scruple ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... horsehair, bridle reins, ropes, and domestic utensils, is remarkably ingenious. They formerly cultivated cotton and manufactured cotton cloth of a very strong quality. The men understood spinning and weaving, and passed the ...
— Building a State in Apache Land • Charles D. Poston
... divested himself of his waistcoat. When the coat and waistcoat were taken off, Mrs. Furze invariably drew down the blinds. She had often remonstrated with her husband for appearing in his shirt-sleeves, and objected to the neighbours seeing him in this costume. There was a sofa in the room, but it was horsehair, with high ends both alike, not comfortable, which were covered with curious complications called antimacassars, that slipped off directly they were touched, so that anybody who leaned upon them was engaged continually in warfare with them, picking them up from the floor ...
— Catharine Furze • Mark Rutherford
... drilling the orifices were cleared. Meanwhile, one of the troopers took the rammer Ben had brought out, inserted it at the muzzle, and found that it would only go in half-way. So a ragged stick was fetched, run in, twisted round and round, and withdrawn, dragging after it a wad of horsehair, cotton, hay, and feathers, while a succession of trials brought out more and more, the twisting round having a cleansing effect upon the bore of the gun ...
— The Young Castellan - A Tale of the English Civil War • George Manville Fenn
... Korean "frog in the well"[8] to understand why the genuine native life and history, language and learning of his own peninsular country is of greater value to the student than the pedantry borrowed from China. Why these possess any interest to a "scholar" is a mystery to the head in the horsehair net. Anything of value, he thinks, must be on the Chinese model. What is not Chinese is foolish and fit for women and children only. Furthermore, Korea "always had" Chinese learning. This is the sum of the arguments of the Korean literati, even as it used to be of the old-time ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... the opposite side of the room, for in one of the oaken beams overhead was a shallow blue dint, where it had struck a knot and been deflected downward to the breast of its victim. Strongly attached to the same beam was what appeared to be an end of a rope of braided horsehair, which had been cut by the bullet in its passage to the knot. Nothing else of interest was noted, excepting a suit of moldy and incongruous clothing, several articles of which were afterward identified by respectable witnesses as those in which certain deceased ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... patiently pulling basting threads out of the hem of a skirt. For a minute her capable hands stopped at their work, and raising her smooth dark head she looked compassionately at her sister Jane, who was sitting, like a frozen image of martyrdom, in the middle of the long horsehair sofa. Three times within the last twelve months Jane had fled from her husband's roof to the protection of her widowed mother, a weak person of excellent ancestry, who could hardly have protected a sparrow had one taken refuge beneath her ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... siyas waving the customary horsehair fly-whisk ran shouting before their master; servants surrounded the cortege, armed with sticks which they rattled with good effect upon the shins of the more venturesome among the spectators as the procession moved slowly, as move all things ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest
... longer white and smooth as in the days of his youth, and the kindly open glance of his blue eyes had grown a little hard, as if from much peering through the smoke of battles. The ebony crop on Colonel Feraud's head, coarse and crinkly like a cap of horsehair, showed many silver threads about the temples. A detestable warfare of ambushes and inglorious surprises had not improved his temper. The beaklike curve of his nose was unpleasantly set off by deep folds on each ...
— The Point Of Honor - A Military Tale • Joseph Conrad
... evening; and the landlady, a funny little old woman with a shrivelled body and a deeply wrinkled face, had prepared high tea for him. Most of the sitting-room was taken up by the sideboard and a square table; against one wall was a sofa covered with horsehair, and by the fireplace an arm-chair to match: there was a white antimacassar over the back of it, and on the seat, because the springs were broken, a ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... the protracted worry of this misunderstanding (which had been a long one) had made me almost hysterical. I clearly remember the feeling of lying with my face against the horsehair sofa in the little dining-room, feebly repeating, 'You shouldn't, you know. You shouldn't!' amid my tears, my hair being softly stroked the while by the two sisters, who comforted me, and blamed themselves with a depth of self-abasement that almost made me laugh. ...
— Mrs. Overtheway's Remembrances • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... the narrow hall at Broadstairs, inhaling that odour of oilcloth and herrings which permeates all respectable seaside lodging-houses. On a chair—a shiny leather chair, displaying its horsehair through a hole in the top left-hand corner—stood a black despatch case. This he was filling with papers, with the Times, and a bottle of Eau-de Cologne. He had meetings that day of the 'Globular Gold Concessions' and the 'New Colliery Company, Limited,' ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... face. He usually talked to them while staring out of the window. Before this desk was a Windsor chair. There were eight other Windsor chairs in the room—Helen was sitting on one that had not been sat upon for years and years—a teeming but idle population of chairs. A horsehair arm-chair seemed to be the sultan of the seraglio of chairs. Opposite the window a modern sideboard, which might have cost two-nineteen-six when new, completed the tale of furniture. The general impression was one of fulness; the low ceiling, and the immense harvest of overblown ...
— Helen with the High Hand (2nd ed.) • Arnold Bennett
... a schoolboy's, furnished with the bed and fittings remaining from his bachelor days, as shabby and worn as he was, dusted perhaps once a week—that horrible room where everything was in a litter, with old socks hanging over the horsehair-seated chairs, the pattern outlined in dust, was that of a man to whom home is a matter of indifference, who lives out of doors, gambling in ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... solid body had descended to the floor from the level (possibly) of a bed. I have never seen consternation painted in more lively colours than on the faces of my hosts. It was proposed to smuggle me forth into the garden, or to conceal my form under a horsehair sofa which stood against the wall. For the first expedient, as was now plain by the approaching footsteps, there was no longer time; from the second I recoiled ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... fatiguing herself with our accounts." The old lady led the way into the darkened parlour. It was small and rather stiff. As one's eyes became accustomed to the dim green light one noticed the incongruity of the furniture: the horsehair chairs and sofa, and large accountant's desk with ledgers; the large Pleyel grand piano; a bookcase, in which all the books were rare copies or priceless MSS. of old-fashioned operas; hanging against the wall an inlaid guitar and some faded laurel crowns; moreover, ...
— Stories By English Authors: Italy • Various
... Kyley's comfortable white bed. His face was ghastly. Aurora uttered a little cry of pain and terror at the sight of him. There was blood upon the sheets and the pillows, and Wat Ryder, working in his shirt-sleeves, was deftly closing a gaping scalp wound with horsehair stitches. ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... tough plates, but failed to reach the skin, And Rustum plucked it back with angry groan. Then Sohrab with his sword smote Rustum's helm, Nor clove its steel quite through; but all the crest He shore away, and that proud horsehair plume, Never till now denied, sank to the dust; And Rustum bowed his head; but then the gloom Grew blacker, thunder rumbled in the air, And lightnings rent the cloud; and Ruksh, the horse, Who stood at hand, uttered a dreadful cry;— No horse's ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... out, and the Lintons looked at each other, and then at the hopeless little room. The furniture was black horsehair, very shiny and hard and slippery; there was a gimcrack bamboo overmantel, with much speckled glass, and the pictures were of the kind peculiar to London lodging-houses, apt to promote indigestion in the beholder. There was one ...
— Captain Jim • Mary Grant Bruce
... little room with a round table covered by a soiled cloth in the middle. Two windows, discreetly blinded, let in a dim London light. An armchair stood at each side of the empty fireplace, and an uncomfortable, old-fashioned, horsehair sofa lined the opposite wall. There were pink vases upon the mantelpiece, and a portrait ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle
... lace, scarfs, flowers, jewels, are mingled in a charming chaos. On the table there are pots of pomade, sticks of cosmetic, hairpins, combs and brushes, all carefully set out. Two artificial plaits stretch themselves languishingly upon a dark mass not unlike a large handful of horsehair. A golden hair net, combs of pale tortoise-shell and bright coral, clusters of roses, sprays of white lilac, bouquets of pale violets, await the choice of the artist or the caprice of the beauty. And yet, must I say ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz
... exclaimed, in a private conference with the nurse; "never did I see such a friend as Mr. Fenting, sacrificing of himself as he do, day and night, to look after that poor creature in there, and taking no better rest than he can get on that old horsehair sofy, which brickbats or knife boards isn't harder, and never ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... "fancied" they would not like it. It was early in that spring that she took a deaf aunt to live with them, the wife of her mother's brother, no blood-relation, but the poor woman had nowhere else to go; so David was put to sleep on the horsehair sofa in the sitting-room because she "couldn't refuse the poor thing." And then, of an April afternoon, while she was washing the household sheets, her neighbour, Mrs. Clirehugh, a little spare woman all eyes, cheekbones, hair, and decision, came ...
— Tatterdemalion • John Galsworthy
... off, and returned with a message from Mrs. Dixon to desire he would walk in. She conducted him through a dark passage, and up a still darker stair, into a dingy little parlour, with a carpet of red and green stripes, a horsehair sofa, a grate covered with cut paper, and a general perfume of brandy and cigars. There were some preparations for breakfast, but no one was in the room but a little girl, about seven years ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... rooms. Walls all decorated with horsehair bridles—scores of them—hundreds of them. They're no use to me, and they cost like Sam Scratch. But there's a lot of convicts making them, and I go on buying. Why, I've spent more money in a single night on whiskey than would get the best specialists and pay all the expenses of ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... came back, I found Miss Somers as she had been the day before, crouched listlessly in her long chair fondling her idol. I drew up a horsehair rocking-chair ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... himself back against the hard, horsehair sofa, and pulled up the blind. The room was instantly filled with gray and lavender shadows, while without the Fens stretched out in unbroken lines as though all the rest of the world were made up of nothing else. Lonely? Merriton had known the loneliness of Indian ...
— The Riddle of the Frozen Flame • Mary E. Hanshew
... sturdy shoulders, showed character and strength far above the ordinary. She was a man's woman, was Jerkline Jo Modock, and only a man among men might hope to become her mate. She wore a broad-brimmed Stetson with a horsehair band, a blue-flannel man's shirt, worn leather chaps for comfort, and riding boots. A holstered six-shooter hung close at hand, the ivory-handled butt of the big weapon ready to her grasp. Here was a wonderful woman, and Hiram Hooker knew it, and knew, too, that here at last was the ...
— The She Boss - A Western Story • Arthur Preston Hankins
... backwards towards a big horsehair sofa, beneath the deer heads and assegais from Zululand. He did it on tiptoe, aware that this mysterious and suggestive way of walking has a marked effect on children in the dark. "I did not shoot it," he said, "because I lived with it. It was the most extraordinary ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... usually made of dried grasses and fine roots, but the chipping sparrow weaves horsehair with the grass and makes his nest very delicate and dainty. He is often called the hair-bird. He is known also as the social sparrow because he likes best to live near houses, and seems ready to be friendly with mankind. The tree sparrow, though ...
— Friends and Helpers • Sarah J. Eddy
... animal which Mr. Porfer after due examination pronounced to be that of an ass. The distinguishing ears were gone, but much of the inedible head had been spared by the beasts and birds, and the stout bridle of horsehair was intact, as was the riata, of similar material, connecting it with a picket pin still firmly sunken in the earth. The wooden and metallic elements of a miner's kit lay near by. The customary remarks were made, cynical on the part of the men, sentimental and refined by the lady. A little later ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... came into the circle. He was painted all over a greenish-rhubarb color, like a stagnant pool: his chin was blue, his face was streaked with red. He wore a very short shirt of deer-skin, with a very deep fringe of black horsehair. Though sansculotte, his legs were painted with red and blue hands on the rhubarb ground: all over his horse were these red and blue hands and red stripes, and the beast had a red mane and tail. This villain, who had a most appropriate name, unmentionable ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... waking, was up and standing back from the little window with his six-shooter in his hand before Rabbit had stopped to whirl and look for what had scared him. So Starr was in time to see a "big four" Stetson hat with a horsehair hatband sink from sight behind the high board fence at the rear ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... proved a most delightful repository. The wigs were in neat boxes; many of them were of horsehair, but a few were of human hair, frizzed and tortured out of all softness or beauty. Dainty Margaret did not incline to put them on, but Peggy was soon glorious in a huge white structure, with a wreath of roses on the top, that made ...
— Three Margarets • Laura E. Richards
... lazo of white horsehair, beautifully plaited, that was coiled upon the saddle of ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... mantle that he'll wear, Embroidered by his bride! Admire his burnished helmet's glare, O'ershadowed by the dark horsehair That waves in ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... shuffling step approach the door, it was unlocked, and a gray old woman, with a huge horsehair wig upon her head, ...
— The Girl from Sunset Ranch - Alone in a Great City • Amy Bell Marlowe
... set snares for fig-birds, and stuffed themselves to the throat with grapes and custard-apples. The fat beccaficoes beloved of the epicurean fell by hundreds into the limed horsehair traps. Greek, Egyptian and negro girls, laughing under garlands of hibiscus, periwinkle and tuberoses, coaxed the fat morsels out of the black men to carry home for a supper treat, while acrobats, comic singers, sellers of ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... be proof against bad luck," she said, as she undid the case, and drew out a prismatic compass. She adjusted the eye-piece, in which was a slit and a glass prism and lifted the sight-vane, down the centre of which a horsehair stretched perpendicularly to the card of the compass. Putting the instrument to her eye, Rose took the bearing of one of the twin forest-clad heights, and said, "Eighty degrees ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... and found him leaning back in a high chair of black horsehair, in an apartment commanding a view southward of James River and Chesterfield. On a table beside him were books and papers—the furniture of the room ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... Harry returned to the farm where he had left his horse and, early next morning, put on his disguise again, painted lines round his eyes, touched some of the hairs of his eyebrows with white paint, mixed some white horsehair with the tuft on the top of his head, and dropped a little juice of a plant resembling belladonna—used at times, by ladies in the east, to dilate the pupils of their eyes and make them dark and ...
— At the Point of the Bayonet - A Tale of the Mahratta War • G. A. Henty
... of taking wild horses should not be generally known to my readers, I will relate it here in few words. The Indian who wishes to capture some horses, mounts one of his fleetest coursers, being armed with a long cord of horsehair, one end of which is attached to his saddle, and the other is a running noose. Arrived at the herd, he dashes into the midst of it, and flinging his cord, or lasso, passes it dexterously over the head of the animal ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to the Northwest Coast of America in the years 1811, 1812, 1813, and 1814 or the First American Settlement on the Pacific • Gabriel Franchere
... specially constructed for indoor play, being much larger and more elastic than those for outdoor play. This ball is generally composed of a core of packed leather strips, around which is placed curled horsehair tied on with string. The cover is of leather, preferably horsehide, somewhat softer in quality than that used on the outdoor baseball. The dimensions of the ball vary from 15 to 17 inches in circumference, or about 5 inches in diameter. The weight is from 8 to 8-3/4 ounces. The official ...
— Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium • Jessie H. Bancroft
... days, with the seals apparently unbroken, but with an answer written within, strikingly appropriate to the demand that was preferred.—It is further to be observed, that the mouth of the serpent was occasionally opened by means of a horsehair skilfully adjusted for the purpose, at the same time that by similar means the animal darted out its biforked tongue to the terror of ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... mostly of mahogany, now dark with age, while chairs and sofas were covered with horsehair. Against the walls stood tall dark presses, and mirrors with the glass in two pieces, and having their gilded frames adorned with urns and garlands. The rooms were lit by old-fashioned ...
— Garman and Worse - A Norwegian Novel • Alexander Lange Kielland
... think they would have been glad if he had had a profession instead of being a canal-carrier, and I am sure it pleased them to think that Mrs. Johnson's father had been a navy captain, and that his portrait—uniform and all—hung over the horsehair sofa in the dining-room, near the window where the yellow roses used ...
— A Great Emergency and Other Tales - A Great Emergency; A Very Ill-Tempered Family; Our Field; Madam Liberality • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... knight clothed in a mantle of black glossy bearskin, bordered with costly fur, but without any ornament of shining metal. His very helmet was covered with dark bearskin, and, instead of plumes, a mass of blood-red horsehair hung like a flowing mane profusely on every side. Well did Froda and Edwald remember that dark knight, for he was the uncourteous guest of the hostelry. He also seemed to remark the two knights, for he turned his unruly steed suddenly round, forced his way through the ...
— Aslauga's Knight • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... been wiped, and the room smelt slightly of paraffin. The old window-curtains, whose harsh green age had not softened, were drawn. The mahogany sideboard, the threadbare carpet, the small horsehair sofa, the gilt mirror, standing on a white marble chimney-piece, said clearly, 'Furnished apartments in a house built about a hundred years ago.' There were piles of newspapers, there were books on the mahogany sideboard and ...
— Vain Fortune • George Moore
... at Green Gables was a rather severe and gloomy apartment, with rigid horsehair furniture, stiff lace curtains, and white antimacassars that were always laid at a perfectly correct angle, except at such times as they clung to unfortunate people's buttons. Even Anne had never been able to infuse much grace into it, for Marilla would not permit ...
— Anne Of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... his fat sides wagging about through his merriment. "You must excuse me, but I do think you would look so comical with all your feathers gummed down to your skinny sides, that wisp of a tail like a streak of horsehair, and those stilty legs sticking into your scraggy body—ho-ho-ho-ho—my fat sides! How I wish I had ribs, for then I could stop laughing easier; but you are ...
— Featherland - How the Birds lived at Greenlawn • George Manville Fenn
... is all done but the horsehair. We are on our way up to Farmer Brown's barnyard now to look for some. You haven't seen any ...
— The Burgess Bird Book for Children • Thornton W. Burgess
... noticed it, along with a fashion of stepping quickly around corners, peering and craning his neck as if perpetually on the alert for something or somebody. "You act like some feller that's 'done time'—or orter. I'll bet a hundred to one you know how to make horsehair bridles," Woods, the carpenter, had once told him pointedly, and the criticism had ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... he hovered near the parlour with its horsehair furniture, and about four-thirty the young girl came downstairs. He greeted her effusively and she endeavored to pass him and go to the kitchen. The most lively sensation of which she was conscious now was compassion for the old woman who had ...
— In Apple-Blossom Time - A Fairy-Tale to Date • Clara Louise Burnham
... of brilliant colors, over which they wore gold chains, necklaces, and bracelets, with strings of coral, pearl, and amber; while their hair was in little curls, adorned with jewels and flowers. But all this was concealed by the thick, muffling, outer veil; they also had horsehair visards through which they could see without ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... through the side of his breastplate, but only grazed his robe. Menelaus drew his sword, and rushed in, and smote at the crest of the helmet of Paris, but his bronze blade broke into four pieces. Menelaus caught Paris by the horsehair crest of his helmet, and dragged him towards the Greeks, but the chin- strap broke, and Menelaus turning round threw the helmet into the ranks of the Greeks. But when Menelaus looked again for Paris, with a spear in his hand, he could see him nowhere! The ...
— Tales of Troy: Ulysses the Sacker of Cities • Andrew Lang
... hotel and down the street to watch them from the tower above the snow. The pony which had fallen into the tunnel was still there. I noticed it wore an expensive Mexican saddle, all heavy embossed leather, with a high cantle, silver ornaments, big tapaderos on the stirrups, and a horsehair bridle with silver bit. There was a red blanket rolled up and ...
— Track's End • Hayden Carruth
... remained motionless, the fine, rugged face of his son on one side and the amazing beauty of Cunningham's on the other. But in the morning light, in repose, Cunningham's face was tinged with age and sadness. There was, however, no grain of pity in Cleigh's heart. Cunningham had made his bed of horsehair; let him twist ...
— The Pagan Madonna • Harold MacGrath
... crin (the horsehair) La desazon (the ailment) La imagen (the image) La razon (the reason) La sinrazon (the injustice) La sarten (the ...
— Pitman's Commercial Spanish Grammar (2nd ed.) • C. A. Toledano
... the voice of a gendarme saying: "You are commanded to present yourself before the Governor-General!" Turning round, Chichikov stared in horror at the spectacle presented; for in the doorway there was standing an apparition wearing a huge moustache, a helmet surmounted with a horsehair plume, a pair of crossed shoulder-belts, and a gigantic sword! A whole army might have been combined into a single individual! And when Chichikov opened his mouth to speak the apparition repeated, "You are commanded to present yourself before the ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... obeisance, but there was no liking in his eye. At the gate he slowly, somewhat stiffly, dismounted, for it was evident he had ridden long and far. The roan with hanging head tripped eagerly, yet wearily, to his accustomed stall, and a swarthy Mexican unloosed at once the cincha and removed the horsehair bridle. Thus Sancho and the engineer were left by themselves, though inquisitive ranch folk sauntered to the gateway and peered after them into the corral. Over at the little clump of willows Blake's men were throwing their carbines across their shoulders and ...
— A Wounded Name • Charles King
... Rustum came, But Rustum strode to his tent door, and call'd 260 His followers in, and bade them bring his arms, And clad himself in steel: the arms he chose Were plain, and on his shield was no device, Only his helm was rich, inlaid with gold And from the fluted spine[25] atop a plume 265 Of horsehair wav'd, a scarlet horsehair plume. So arm'd, he issued forth; and Ruksh, his horse, Followed him, like a faithful hound, at heel, Ruksh, whose renown was nois'd through all the earth, The horse, whom Rustum on a foray once 270 Did in Bokhara by the river find, A colt beneath its ...
— Narrative and Lyric Poems (first series) for use in the Lower School • O. J. Stevenson
... operate and got him to tell me about it. They felt it was a historic occasion even at the time; cheered him at the end of it. And that sort of virtuosity does seem worthier of cheers than any scraping of horsehair over cat-gut could ever come to. I wonder how many lives there are to-day that owe themselves altogether to him just as my sister does.—How many children who never could have been born at all except for his skill and courage. Because, of course, ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... to say that these Indians were well made, with very good countenances, but hair like horsehair, their colour yellow; and that they painted themselves. They neither carried arms, nor understood such things, for when he showed them swords, they took hold of them by the blade, and hurt themselves. ...
— The Life of Columbus • Arthur Helps
... ingrates was a mouse bestowed upon me by one of the stable hands. I named the waif "Caspar Hauser" forthwith, being fresh from the perusal of the history of that engaging fraud, and inducted him into a spare rat-trap set about closely with wires. A horsehair sparrow's nest was lined with raw cotton and put in one corner, a toy saucer of water in the other, and in the third a toy plate filled with cracked hickory nuts, interspersed with bits of sugar. Then I sat down upon the floor ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... Sir William W. Gull, Physician to her late Majesty Queen Victoria: "Having passed the period of the goldheaded cane and horsehair wig, we dare hope to have also passed the days of pompous emptiness; and furthermore, we can hope that nothing will be considered unworthy the attention of physicians which contributes to the saving ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann
... Aunt Winnie. And a little ready cash to make a new start in Mulligan's upper rooms would help matters immensely. Just now he had not money enough for a fire in the rusty little stove, or to move Aunt Winnie and her old horsehair ...
— Killykinick • Mary T. Waggaman
... was such a small, poor house, but so very nice inside. Mother and grown daughters and little girl, with father and grown son, all sleep on a little brick platform, hardly big enough for me—one man. She and the grown daughter support the family by needlework—making horsehair women's head fittings, which the father sells, when he has ...
— James Gilmour of Mongolia - His diaries, letters, and reports • James Gilmour
... and mounted the stairs. She didn't stop with the second floor and her own little room, but kept right on to the attic. There was a door at the head of the attic stairs. Elliott pushed it open. On a broken-backed horsehair sofa Gertrude lay, face down, her nose buried in a faded pillow. In a wabbly rocker, at imminent risk of a breakdown, Priscilla jerked back and forth. Gertrude's hair was tousled and Priscilla's ...
— The Camerons of Highboro • Beth B. Gilchrist
... The furniture was of horsehair, and everything was hard and shiny, so when the stranger sat down in the slippery—looking arm-chair that Mrs. Hableton pushed towards him; he could not help thinking it had been stuffed with stones, it felt so cold and hard. The lady herself sat opposite to him in another ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume
... no sordid secrets to keep—and when the landlord called for the rent Mr. Beale was able to ask him to step in—into a comfortable room with a horsehair sofa and a big, worn easy-chair, a carpet, four old mahogany chairs, and a table with a clean blue-and-red checked cloth on it. There was a bright clock on the mantelpiece, and vases with chrysanthemums in them, and there were red ...
— Harding's luck • E. [Edith] Nesbit
... reverence and awe. The two had long ago manufactured and fitted up a serpent's head of linen; they had given it a more or less human expression, and painted it very like the real article; by a contrivance of horsehair, the mouth could be opened and shut, and a forked black serpent tongue protruded, working on the same system. The serpent from Pella was also kept ready in the house, to be produced at the right moment and take its part in the drama—the leading ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... on the right. On the left were priests in fustian, holding enormous flagons of Rhenish wine and dancing in a drunken measure with their arms round more drunken doxies dressed like German women. In the centre stood grave and reverend men wearing horsehair beards and the long gowns of English bishops and priests. Before these there knelt an angel in flame-coloured robes with wings like the rainbow. The angel supported a great volume on the back of which might be read in letters of gold, ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford
... told you what it would be. I knew she'd find out sooner or later. Oh, why didn't you let me tell her?—I begged you to let me. It's not my fault. I warned you what it would be—oh dear! oh dear!" and June fell into a sobbing heap on the uncomfortable horsehair ...
— The Phantom Lover • Ruby M. Ayres
... reason seems to me twofold: First, that Man is a Spirit, and bound by invisible bonds to All Men; secondly, that he wears Clothes, which are the visible emblems of that fact. Has not your Red hanging-individual a horsehair wig, squirrel-skins, and a plush-gown; whereby all mortals know that he is a JUDGE?—Society, which the more I think of it astonishes me the ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... a young Egyptian, dressed in a robe of white linen, and wearing a great black wig of horsehair with many small plaits. His scribes sat at tables below him, writing down any orders ...
— Children of the Old Testament • Anonymous
... jacket was unmarked, except where a narrow line of powdered flakes outlined the seams as if worn. To the right was an apartment, half office, half sitting-room, furnished with a dark and chilly iron safe, a sofa and chairs covered with black and coldly shining horsehair. Here Hays not only removed his upper coat but his under one also, and drawing a chair before the fire sat down in his shirt-sleeves. It was his usual rustic pioneer habit, and might have been some lingering reminiscence of certain remote ancestors to whom clothes were an impediment. ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... was sick of the abominable homes, the horsehair furniture with the anti-macassars—Lord! and they called themselves clean.... He wanted the spotlessness of the Syrian courtyard.... The daubs on the British walls, sentimental St. Bernard dogs and dray-horses with calves' eyes, brought him ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... he could almost see that chamber which he had so often imagined; the low whitewashed ceiling held up by a heavy beam, the smears of smoke and long usage, the cracks and fissures of the plaster. Old furniture, shabby, deplorable, battered, stood about the room; there was a horsehair sofa worn and tottering, and a dismal paper, patterned in a livid red, blackened and moldered near the floor, and peeled off and hung in strips from the dank walls. And there was that odor of decay, of ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... comes natural to some people," said Bud, "and then, too, he may have been in Mexico. Some of the Greasers are pretty slick with the horsehair. ...
— The Boy Ranchers on the Trail • Willard F. Baker
... one's deepest sorrow is in the midst of one's greatest joy—the deepest lake is the old crater on top of the highest mountain. Sappy's eyes were not the sinister black beads of the wily Red-man, but a washed-out blue. His ragged, tow-coloured locks he could hide under wisps of horsehair, the paint itself redeemed his freckled skin, but there was no remedy for the white eyelashes and the pale, piggy, blue eyes. He kept his sorrow to himself, however, for he knew that if the others got an inkling of his feelings on the subject his name would have been promptly ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... the other is not so good, but has suffered in re-painting, the eyelid being made too red; if this were remedied, as it easily might be, the figure would gain greatly. Cav. Prof. Antonini has very successfully substituted plaster hair for the horsehair, which had in great measure fallen off. The motive of this incidental group is repeated, but with less success, in Giovanni D'Enrico's Nailing ...
— Ex Voto • Samuel Butler
... and has a protecting cape for the hands.) The saddle has also small pommel bags in which are matches, compass, leather thongs, knife and a whistle (this last in case I get lost), and there are rings and strings in which other bundles such as lunch can be attached while on the march. A horsehair army saddle blanket saves the animal's back. Nimrod's saddle is exactly like mine, only with longer and ...
— A Woman Tenderfoot • Grace Gallatin Seton-Thompson
... of the hand from him, the others left us. We sat down in the "horsehair" chairs of a well-to-do farmer's parlor—furnished in black walnut, with the usual organ against one wall, and the usual marble-topped bureau against the other. I remember the "store" carpet, the mortuary hair-wreaths on the walls, the walnut-framed ...
— Under the Prophet in Utah - The National Menace of a Political Priestcraft • Frank J. Cannon and Harvey J. O'Higgins
... fine wool all about the room, and even endeavoured to construct small nests of wool and horsehair. But the incorrigible little creature seemed to take an especial delight in eluding them, and in laying ...
— Skipper Worse • Alexander Lange Kielland
... The captain holloaed. 'Do they hear that? Lord! but wouldn't our old Celtic fill the world with poetry if only we were a free people to give our minds to 't, instead of to the itch on our backs from the Saxon horsehair shirt we're forced to wear. For, Pat, as you know, we're a loving people, we're a loyal people, we burn to be enthusiastic, but when our skins are eternally irritated, how can we sing? In a freer Erin I'd be the bard of the land, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... you. Forget you're a dub. Try to be human. Hang it, I'm no greener at the opera than old horsehair sofa there ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... thirty or forty, came on board our boat, on their way to Washington, where they desired to lay their grievances before the President. They arrived on board in full war paint, their faces painted half red and half yellow, and their heads dressed, like a cuirassier's helmet, with horsehair and big feathers, their bodies naked, but hung about with baubles, their legs thrust into leather breeches, and big blankets over all. Their squaws were with them. They were ugly, but the men were splendid, with the most resolute and impassive countenances. They behaved with the greatest ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... than that of the gunner who skulks on one knee behind his canoe, pushing it with one hand, and dragging himself along by the aid of the other. Then, it is disagreeable to have to use a gun so heavy that the stock is fitted with a horsehair pillow, or even with a small bolster. The whistle of widgeon and the shrill-sounding pinions of wild geese may be attractive noises, and no doubt all shooting is exciting; and a form of shooting which stakes all on one shot must offer some thrilling moments of expectation. The quarry has to be ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang |
