"Oaken" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... our City lessons rather well, and these disturbers did not continue to defile. A man may build his house, if he can also forget it. A few good things—perennials, by all means an elm-tree, stone-work and an oaken door; the things that need not replenishing in materials, that grow old with you, or reach their prime after you have passed—these are enough. For a home that does not promote your naturalness, is a place of vexation to you and to ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort
... willow, etc.; so that the use of the oak was in a manner dedicated wholly unto churches, religious houses, princes' palaces, navigation, etc., but now sallow, etc., are rejected, and nothing but oak any where regarded. And yet see the change; for when our houses were builded of willow, then had we oaken men; but now that our houses are come to be made of oak, our men are not only become willow, but a great many altogether of straw, which is a sore alteration. In these the courage of the owner was a sufficient defence to ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... logs supplied, Went roaring up the chimney wide; The huge hall-table's oaken face, Scrubb'd till it shone, the day to grace, Bore then upon its massive board No mark to part the squire and lord.[358-20] Then was brought in the lusty brawn,[358-21] By old blue-coated serving-man; Then the grim boar's head frown'd on high, Crested ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... they all came swimming and sailing down into a large saloon, where they spent the rest of their morning. It was a vast low room, with bright polished oaken floors, and with only a bit of fine carpet in the middle of it. They each brought with them a bag for knotting, and they generally sat together in such state till it was time for ...
— The Fairchild Family • Mary Martha Sherwood
... only possible retreat near at hand. Already they could hear the girls' footsteps creaking along the oaken boards of the picture gallery; in another moment they would have turned into the passage, and reached the top of the stairs. Without more ado both hiders scrambled inside the settle, and pulled down ...
— The Manor House School • Angela Brazil
... memory, and blow them up with a sigh, for lack of more inspiring breath. Vividly for an instant, but anon, with the dimmest gleam, and with just as little fervency for my heart as for my finger-ends! The staunch oaken logs were long ago burnt out. Their genial glow must be represented, if at all, by the merest phosphoric glimmer, like that which exudes, rather than shines, from damp fragments of decayed trees, deluding the benighted wanderer through a forest. Around such ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... them, as though by some enchantment, the present had become the past. The unrest of western Europe in the modern sense was dead. In dining rooms trays of the finest Japanese lacquer formed a background for oaken tables into which the beard of Barbarossa might have grown. Knights in armor kept watch over billiard tables whose green baize had survived the fadings of two hundred years. For me this half-visionary world held the same intoxicating spell that many ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... bulwarks Britons never will be slaves Brook, noise like a hidden Brooks, hooks in the funning Brotherhood, monastic Brow, when pain and anguish wring the Braised reed Brutus is an honorable man Bubbles, the earth hath Bucket, as a drop of a —, the old oaken Bucks had dined Bug, snug as a Build, he lives to Burden, the grasshopper a —, bear his own Burning, one fire burns out another's Bush, good wine needs no —, the thief doth tear each Butterfly upon ...
— Familiar Quotations • Various
... leading the way, the searchers passed through the various offices, and, on lights being provided and a big key being fetched from the squire's study table, the big, crypt-like, vaulted cellars were searched from end to end. Lastly, Waller led the way upstairs to the gallery, where the oaken polished floor echoed to ...
— The New Forest Spy • George Manville Fenn
... rooms have been added to the house by the same occupant, who has, however, religiously preserved all the old rooms, which still exhibit the "fittings" that existed in Cowley's time. The bed-chambers are wainscotted with oaken panels. The staircase is a very solid structure, with ornamental balusters, leading toward the small study in which the poet wrote,—a little back room, about five feet wide, looking upon the garden. It may be distinguished in our back ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... someone dancing Hawaiian dances over their heads. But on Fifty-seventh Street the atmosphere wasn't right, and when Motty turned up at three in the morning with a collection of hearty lads, who only stopped singing their college song when they started singing "The Old Oaken Bucket," there was a marked peevishness among the old settlers in the flats. The management was extremely terse over the telephone at breakfast-time, and took a lot ...
— My Man Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... influence of the same mesmeric sleep of amazement, went up the large oaken stairs after the respectful attendant. He entered a splendid suite of apartments that seemed to be designed specially for him. He walked up to a long mirror with the ordinary instinct of his class, to pull his tie straight ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... the cudgel, which might be levelled at her at any moment, never took her eyes off him; and hunchbacked Mary showed the whites of a large pair of eyes, similarly employed, as she stood against the oaken press, her dark face hardly distinguishable in the distance from the brown panel ...
— J.S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 5 • J.S. Le Fanu
... the deserted streets. If the inhabitants, behind their oaken windows, heard occasionally some sound interrupting the stillness of the night, it was the hurried step of some benighted artisan who made as much noise as possible with his feet in order to frighten away the robbers; or it was the slow tread ...
— The Amulet • Hendrik Conscience
... ribbon in his shirt: Or an actor betray'd to prostitute himself on th' stage, by the vanity of showing his pretty shapes there; of this sort is my lady; who indeed," added she, "prefers the paultry lover of the upper gallery, with his dirty face, and oaken staff, to all the fine gentlemen of the boxes, with their patches, gunpowder-spots, and tooth-pickers." When pleas'd with the humour of her talk, "I beseech you, child," said I, "are you the she that's so in love with my person?" Upon which the maid fell into a fit of laughing. "I wou'd not," return'd ...
— The Satyricon • Petronius Arbiter
... and medical students living in cheap lodgings—in Greyfriars Place. There, in Ye Olde Greyfriars Dining-Rooms, owned by Mr. John Traill, and four doors beyond the kirkyard gate, was a cozy little inglenook that Auld Jock and Bobby had come to look upon as their own. At its back, above a recessed oaken settle and a table, a tiny paned window looked up and over a retaining wall into the ancient place ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson
... a shock in minds accustomed to the proposition that money is the root of all evil, and to the idea that Utopia necessarily implies something rather oaken and hand-made and primitive in all these relations. Of course, money is not the root of any evil in the world; the root of all evil in the world, and the root of all good too, is the Will to Live, and money becomes harmful only when by bad laws ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... compel the sap of sturdier growth, So between earth and heaven stand simply great, 35 That these shall seem but their attendants both; For nature's forces with obedient zeal Wait on the rooted faith and oaken will; As quickly the pretender's cheat they feel, And turn mad Pucks to flout and ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... school I went, where I read the Latin tongue and the Greek letters, with a nice old clergyman, who sat behind a black oaken desk, with a huge Elzevir Flaccus before him, in a long gloomy kind of hall, with a broken stone floor, the roof festooned with cobwebs, the walls considerably dilapidated, and covered over with strange figures ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... green and pleasant farm lands, of social farmers at barn-raisings, and of tables filled with fatness. I am walking again in my stocking feet, high on the "purline plate," beetle in hand, driving home the oaken "pins." I am shingling on the broad roof of a suburban house from which I can see the sunny slopes of a meadow and sheep feeding therein. I am mending a screen door for a farmer's wife while she confides to me the tragedy of her life—and always I have the foolish boyish notion that I ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... bed prepare, But set me out my oaken chair, And bid me other guests beside The ghosts that shall around ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick
... the pulpit stairs and bolt, was contemptibly great. His eyesight played tricks on him. Below there, in the body of the church, the rows of faces ran together into irregular pink blots spread meaninglessly above the brown of the oaken pews, the brown, drab, and black, too, of their owners' Sunday best. Here and there a child's light frock or white hat intruded upon the prevailing neutral tints; as did, in a startling manner, Damaris ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... up the receiver and turned to the gentleman who stood by the window on the other side of the private office agitatedly twirling the end of his thick gray-threaded moustache with one hand, while with the other he drummed a nervous tattoo upon the broad oaken sill. "Not at home, Sir Henry; but fortunately I know where to find him with but little loss of time," he said, and pressed twice upon an electric button beside his desk. "My motor will be at the door in a couple of minutes, and with ordinary luck we ought to be able to pick him up inside ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... two upon the left and one upon the right. We tried them all. All were unfastened, and the rooms into which they opened bare and deserted. Then we came upon a short, descending stair, at its foot a massive oaken door. ...
— The Quest of the Sacred Slipper • Sax Rohmer
... with his drawn rapier to cover the retreat of the constables; but shouting, "the sword of the Lord and of Gideon!" the deranged man, with the stout oaken staff, dashed the rapier from Jethro's hand, and administered to him a sounding whack over the head, which made the blood come. Then he picked up the rapier and throwing the staff behind him, laughed wildly as he saw the crowd, constable and all, tumbling out of the ...
— Dulcibel - A Tale of Old Salem • Henry Peterson
... small lads of the village, Lead the suitor to my chambers, With your auburn locks uncovered, From your hands remove your mittens, See if ye can lead the hero Through the door without his stooping, Lifting not the upper cross-bar, Sinking not the oaken threshold, Moving not the oaken casings, Great ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... the ante-room, a spacious chamber, bare of furniture save for an oaken table in the middle, some faded and mildewed tapestries, and a cane-backed settle of twisted walnut over against the wall. An alabaster lamp on the table made an island of light in that place of gloom, ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... out from the wealth of brown hair which fell over his shoulders. His left hand rested on his sword, and Jean marked the refinement and delicacy of his right hand, which was ungloved, as if for salutation. The day had been cloudy, and the hall, with its stone floor, high roof, oaken furniture, and walls covered by dark tapestry, was full of gloom, only partially relieved by the firelight from the wide, open hearth. While Claverhouse was coming up the stairs to the sound of his spurs and the striking ...
— Graham of Claverhouse • Ian Maclaren
... was! Fair and slight, but straight as a spear and strong as an oaken staff. His face was still young; the smooth skin was bronzed by wind and sun. His gray eyes, clear and kind, flashed like fire when he spoke of his adventures, and of the evil deeds of the false priests with whom ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... kind, but it spoke a true word which touched the Anglo-Saxon heart in its tenderest spot, and being happily married to a plaintive air was sold by the hundred thousand, and is evidently destined to be sung forever. A like success has attended the Old Oaken Bucket, composed by Samuel Woodworth, a printer and journalist from Massachusetts, whose other poems, of which two collections were issued in 1818 and 1826, were soon forgotten. Richard Henry Wilde, an Irishman by birth, a gentleman of scholarly tastes ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... musing and still, with her eyes almost involuntarily drawn toward the oaken door of the inner room, she saw it slowly swinging out upon its hinges, she heard the swishing of the heavy curtain behind it, and the next moment she saw the praefect of Rome standing on ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... from these, she slowly turned towards the clothes-press, and, opening the oaken doors, looked at a suit of black—'the Sunday best' of her dead husband, left undisturbed since his sudden decease ten years before. Then, turning to a box at the foot of the bed—that historic four-poster whereon the twin messengers of birth and death had so ...
— Lancashire Idylls (1898) • Marshall Mather
... helping to make the place comfortable and attractive. Among other things she built a curbing around the well, using for the purpose boulders from the inexhaustible supply in the bed of the stream, and, to have all complete, even sent to Boston for a real "old oaken bucket." At just the right intervals along the steep road to the cabin, measured off by her own indefatigable feet, she placed rustic seats, where the tired climber ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... is of vast bulk. This copy was contained in great bundles of loose sheets. Luckily these papers were in stout oaken boxes on the ground-floor of a detached building opening on a courtyard. The Versailles troops had reached the spot, and ninety sappers and miners, with seven brave firemen, were at work with water-buckets attempting to save the main building, which ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... Plowman," which she was to take to her English Literature tutor on the following day, went aimlessly upstairs and put her head into Connie's room. The old house was panelled, and its guest-room, though small and shabby, had yet absorbed from its oaken walls, and its outlook on the garden and St. Cyprian's, a certain measure of the Oxford charm. The furniture was extremely simple—a large hanging cupboard made by curtaining one of the panelled recesses of the wall, a chest of drawers, a bed, a small dressing-table and glass, a carpet that was ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... chapel, moreover, there was a confessional—a little oaken structure, about as big as a sentry-box, with a closed part for the priest to sit in, and an open one for the penitent to kneel at, and speak through the open-work of the priest's closet. Monuments, mural and others, ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... one appalling fact of which Mrs. Smithson was entirely ignorant. And that was the fact that Matthew Brook had entered the castle by a little half-glass door on several occasions, half an hour or more after the great oaken door leading into the servants'-hall had been bolted and barred with all due solemnity before the approving eyes ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... the changes were equally visible, an oaken door with mouldings having taken the place of the old one with iron trimmings that was under the stairway; and the great central arcade, of which the lower part, the sides, and the point had been plastered over, so as to leave only one rectangular opening, was ...
— The Dream • Emile Zola
... oaken mantle-shelf, A cigar of high degree, An old cigar, a large cigar, A cigar that was given to me. The house-flies bite you day by day— Bite you, and kick, and sigh— And I do not know what the insects say, But they creep away ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., December 13, 1890 • Various
... is raised in Egypt, in India, and in the United States. 4. The brain is protected by the skull, or cranium. 5. Nature and art and science were laid under tribute. 6. The room was furnished with a table, and a chair without legs. 7. The old oaken bucket ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... that escape by means of excavation or anything of that kind was absolutely out of the question. The room was somewhat peculiarly shaped, being evidently situated in one of the angles of the fort. The wall containing the thick, oaken, iron-studded door through which he had been thrust was evidently enormously thick, while the chamber itself was some fifteen feet wide by about thirty-five feet long, the end wall opposite the door being curved ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood
... Loves with me. Ah, cruel, cruel is that wound of thine, But Cypris' heart-wound aches more bitterly. The Oreads weep; thy faithful hounds low whine; But Cytherea's unbound tresses fine Float on the wind; where thorns her white feet wound, Along the oaken glades drops blood divine. She calls her lover; he, all crimsoned round His fair white breast with blood, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... officer is chief of the rock, because when he found the Governor's room lit by electricity, he demanded the same for his quarters. That's how I came to get upstairs. Now, these stairs are hewn in the rock, are circular, guarded by heavy oaken doors top and bottom, and these doors possess steel bolts on both sides of them. It is thus possible for either the military authorities upstairs, or the civil authorities, to isolate themselves from the others. In case of a revolt ...
— A Rock in the Baltic • Robert Barr
... Helen?" I turned, with my hand upon the latch of my heavy oaken door, and jerked the question ...
— The Gates Between • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... the sun scarcely pierced the dull panes and the deep walls in which they were sunk. The room contained a strong furnace and a rude laboratory. There were several strange-looking mechanical contrivances scattered about, several manuscripts upon some oaken shelves, and a large pannier of wood and charcoal in the corner. In that poverty-stricken house, the money spent on fuel alone, in the height of summer, would have comfortably maintained the inmates; but neither Sibyll nor Madge ever thought to murmur at this waste, dedicated to what had ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... than four feet of water. She was clinker-built; that is, had plates slightly overlapped, like the shingles on the side of a house. The planks and timbers of the frame were fastened together with withes made of roots, but the oaken boards of the side were united by iron rivets firmly clinched. The bow and stern were similar in shape, and must have risen high out of water, but were so broken that it was impossible to tell how they originally ended. The keel was deep and made of thick oak beams, and there was no trace of any ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... corner of the gallery, on the left, a very narrow stair leads to the Clock, of enormous size, with a pendulum 16 feet long, constructed by Langley Bradley in 1708. Ever since, the oaken seats behind it have been occupied by a changing crowd, waiting with anxious curiosity to see the hammer strike its bell, and tremulously hoping to tremble at ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume I. - Great Britain and Ireland • Various
... sat in the great oaken chair, blackened with age, in which his father had always presided at the head of the family table, and he smiled when he saw that Colomba hesitated to sit down with him. But he was grateful to her for her silence during the meal, and for her speedy retirement afterward. ...
— Columba • Prosper Merimee
... hired man at home was poling the well under the sweep and "the old oaken bucket," thinking the little fellow might have leaned over the curb and tumbled in. Shortly afterwards he came near disappearing altogether from this world by tumbling into the water-trough, being fished out by ...
— Charles Carleton Coffin - War Correspondent, Traveller, Author, and Statesman • William Elliot Griffis
... remeasure ocean and be on you unawares. So Calchas expounds the omens. This image at his warning they reared in recompense for the Palladium and the injured deity, to expiate the horror of sacrilege. Yet Calchas bade them raise it to this vast size with oaken crossbeams, and build it up to heaven, that it may not find entry at the gates nor be drawn within the city, nor protect your people beneath the consecration of old. For if hand of yours should violate Minerva's offering, then utter destruction (the gods turn rather on himself his augury!) should ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... small oaken bookstand which stood slightly in advance of the more imposing shelves in which reposed the portentous volumes of newspaper clippings and photographs which constituted ...
— The Hampstead Mystery • John R. Watson
... there he went to Cape Columbia, where he erected the cairn containing the record of the last and successful expedition of the "Peary Arctic Club." The cairn was a substantial pile of rocks, surmounted by a strong oaken guide-post, with arms pointing "North 413 miles to the Pole"; "East, to Cape Morris K. Jesup, 275 miles"; "West to Cape Thomas H. Hubbard, 225 miles"; while the southern arm pointed south, but to no particular ...
— A Negro Explorer at the North Pole • Matthew A. Henson
... out, in consequence of an order from the Lord Provost, "to attend the wheeping of Paull and Anderson, actors in the late riots at Cannonmills." A rescue riot was apprehended, and the Trained Bands met in the old Justiciary Court-room, and were armed there with "stowt oaken sticks." Marching forth in regular order, they acted as guard to the magistrates during the day, and "by their formidable and respectable appearance had the good effect of detering the multitude so that they became only peaceable spectators." Whether an honorary captain ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae
... retarded or anticipated in the manner of the great composers, think they can learn the art of Palestrina from Cherubim's treatise. All this academic art is far worse than the trade in sham antique furniture; for the man who sells me an oaken chest which he swears was made in the XIII century, though as a matter of fact he made it himself only yesterday, at least does not pretend that there are any modern ideas in it, whereas your academic copier of fossils offers them to you as the latest outpouring of the human spirit, and, worst of ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... was directly before this, flanked by two square chairs. And by the stairs was an oaken marriage chest. Save for two skin rugs, these were all ...
— Ralestone Luck • Andre Norton
... upon it, travel over it, delve into it, build your house down on it; but when you strike into the bosom of the fields with your ploughshare, wounding and healing as your feet follow deep in the long fresh cut, you feel the throbbing of the heart of life through the oaken handles as you never felt it before; you are conscious of a closer union,—dust with dust,—of a more mystical union,—spirit with spirit,—than any other approach, work, or rite, or ceremony, can give you. ...
— The Hills of Hingham • Dallas Lore Sharp
... great dread of the Indian outrages, and which their near neighborhood and irresponsible and vicious habits were well calculated to inspire. The furniture of the hotel amply accorded with all its other features. A single large and two small tables; a few old oaken chairs, of domestic manufacture, with bottoms made of ox or deer skin, tightly drawn over the seat, and either tied below with small cords or tacked upon the sides; a broken mirror, that stood ostentatiously over the mantel, ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... arch, so full of mirth, The overflowings of an innocent heart— It haunts me still, though many a year has fled, Like some wild melody! Alone it hangs Over a mouldering heirloom, its companion, An oaken chest, half-eaten by the worm, But richly carved by Antony of Trent With Scripture stories from the Life of Christ, A chest that came from Venice, and had held The ducal robes of some old ancestor. ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... one of these ancient houses first entered a small vestibule, from which a narrow passage led to the heavy oaken door. A dog was sometimes kept chained in this hallway; in Pompeii there is a picture of one worked in mosaic on the floor with the warning beneath it, "Beware of the dog." Having made known his presence by using the knocker, the guest was ushered into ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... in the night unbroken, In the land the daylight shuns, At their long tables oaken The Sea-kings and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, September 30, 1914 • Various
... Philosophy, on (if I remember rightly) Edgar Allan Poe. I combed my hair, and tried to care for Poe, and made my way to the Hall of Philosophy. This turned out to be a Greek temple divested of its walls. An oaken roof, with pediments, was supported by Doric columns; and under the enlarged umbrella thus devised, about a thousand people were congregated to greet the ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... against each other; high notes and low notes played leap-frog—they groaned, shrieked, and wheezed in a horrid discord, which could not have been worse if a thousand imps had been let loose in the old oaken case. ...
— Harper's Young People, June 29, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... He heard the heavy oaken door swing open, a murmur of voices in the hall. The next moment Detective-Inspector Manderton entered ...
— The Yellow Streak • Williams, Valentine
... hastily!—beast, and plant, and the babe, in turn: and that which dieth hath not slipped out of the order of nature, but, remaining therein, hath also its changes there, disparting into those elements of which nature herself, and thou too, art compacted. She changes without murmuring. The oaken chest falls to pieces with no more complaining than when the carpenter fitted it together. If one told thee certainly that on the morrow thou shouldst die, or at the furthest on the day after, it would be no great matter to thee to die on the day after to-morrow, rather ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... banker had not been removed from the oaken settee at the back of the hall, and was still covered with a white sheet. An enormously stout woman, clothed in a dressing-gown of black lace, was standing in the cross gallery and resisting the gentle efforts of Sylvia Manning, now attired in black, to ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... of the western wall of Jerusalem hang the "oaken valves" called the Bethlehem or Joppa Gate. The area outside of them is one of the notable places of the city. Long before David coveted Zion there was a citadel there. When at last the son of Jesse ousted the Jebusite, and began ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... Mont. The tomb of St. Genevieve, surrounded by burning candles and votive tablets, was there; the mural tablet of Jacobus Benignus Winslow was there; there was a noble organ with carved figures; the pulpit was borne on the oaken shoulders of a stooping Samson; and there was a marvellous staircase like a coil of lace. These things I mention from memory, but not all of them together impressed me so much as an inscription on a small slab of marble fixed in one of the walls. ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... it seemed to Anna Moore, as she glanced from time to time at the tiny French clock that silently ticked away the hours on the high oaken mantel-piece. Anna had dressed for tea with more than usual care on this particular Saturday afternoon. She wore a simply made house gown of heavy white cloth, that hung in rich folds about her exquisite ...
— 'Way Down East - A Romance of New England Life • Joseph R. Grismer
... immense editions of log cabin song-books were sold. Many of these songs were parodies on familiar ballads. One of the best compositions, the authorship of which was ascribed to George P. Morris, the editor of the New York Mirror, was a parody on the Old Oaken ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... gentleman. I'll school you, bully; fou or fasting, I'll school you. What, you'll not lug out, like a bonny lad should? I jaloused it. I'm thinking you would take a beating like a lamb, laddie. Well a well. I'll be blithe to rub you down with an oaken towel. Here, Patrick, give us ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey
... private, were doing his work, according to usage; and from eight o'clock in the morning, some scores of bourgeois and bourgeoises, heaped and crowded into an obscure corner of the audience chamber of Embas du Chatelet, between a stout oaken barrier and the wall, had been gazing blissfully at the varied and cheerful spectacle of civil and criminal justice dispensed by Master Florian Barbedienne, auditor of the Chatelet, lieutenant of monsieur the provost, in a somewhat confused ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... of his old surroundings since Ethelwalch the king, who sent Wilfrith to us, had destroyed the building that stood with the image of Woden in it hard by his house. Men used to take oath on that ring, as do we on the Book of the Gospels, and they held it holier than the oaken image of the god itself. I do not think that any man had seen it since that time until ...
— A Prince of Cornwall - A Story of Glastonbury and the West in the Days of Ina of Wessex • Charles W. Whistler
... old man, who acted as bellringer, thrust his head out of one of the narrow pointed windows above, and demanded their business. Satisfied with the reply, he descended, and, opening the door, admitted them into a lofty chamber, the roof of which was composed of stout planks, crossed by heavy oaken rafters, and supported by beams of the same material. On the left a steep ladder-like flight of wooden steps led to an upper room, and from a hole in the roof descended a bell-rope, which was fastened to one of the beams, showing the use to ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... against old traditions, moved her to enter, and take her place quietly in one of the curious wooden boxes where the sparse congregation were seated, listening to a man in a Geneva gown, who was preaching in a tall oaken pulpit, surmounted by a massive sounding-board, and furnished with a crimson velvet cushion, which the preacher used with great effect during his discourse, now folding his arms upon it and leaning forward to argue familiarly with his flock, now stretching a long, lean arm above it to ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... rippled from stone to stone. They went down the hill, and through a brake, and then, hidden in dark-green orchards, they came upon a long, low whitewashed house, with a stone roof strangely coloured by the growth of moss and lichens. Mr. Darnell knocked at a heavy oaken door, and they came into a dim room where but little light entered through the thick glass in the deep-set window. There were heavy beams in the ceiling, and a great fireplace sent out an odour of burning wood that ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen
... at the time of their marriage had continued seven years with their master or mistress in Lewisham; with numerous other bequests. He further left moneys for the preservation of his father's, grandfather's, his wife's, and his own monument—his own being an oaken plank oiled, and a stone 'a foot square every way, and three feet long.' The stone and plank were removed many years ago, and an inscribed tablet has been set into the ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 436 - Volume 17, New Series, May 8, 1852 • Various
... into a lake, Which him up to the neck doth take. His fury somewhat it doth slake; He calleth for a ferry; Where you may some recovery note, What was his club he made his boat, And in his oaken cup doth float, As safe ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick
... pain which accompanies all great disappointments, took hold of him, and he fell back in his seat and closed his eyes, his teeth set and his face pale with the suffering, while his broad hands convulsively grasped the heavy oaken arms of ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford
... away from that visit, and kept by me for many days, a sense of cleanness, of the freshness that pricks the senses—the freshness of cool spring water; and the large swept spaces of the rooms, the red tiles, and the oaken settles, suggested a comfort that had ...
— Dream Days • Kenneth Grahame
... the mill, eaves hoary. Swallows turn'd glossy throats, Timorous, uncertain, When to hear their matin notes, Peep'd she thro' her curtain, Shook the mill-stream sweet and clear, With its silver laughter— Shook the mill from flooring sere Up to oaken ratter. "Bouche-Mignonne" it cried "come down! "Other flowers are stirring; "Pierre with fingers strong and ...
— Old Spookses' Pass • Isabella Valancy Crawford
... dead; but if a gnat came—with what swift, accurate, and relentless vigour they sprang upon and garotted him. Sometimes a twig snapped, or a young acorn fell, or a caterpillar let himself down by a long silken thread. And the air under the oak was tonic with its good oaken smell. ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... them to idols fresh from the car of Juggernaut, or from the stern of a South Sea canoe; or, most of all, to that famous wooden image of Freya, which once leapt lumbering forth from her bullock-cart, creaking and rattling in every oaken joint, to belabour the too daring Viking who was flirting with her priestess. Even so, whispered Elsley, did those brains and tongues creak and rattle, lumbering before the blasts of Pythonic inspiration; and ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... all her childish strength, she stood in the midst of it and gazed about her with a new curiosity and pleasure. It was a fine place, with antlers, and arms, and foxes' brushes hung upon the walls, and with carved panels of black oak, and oaken floor and furnishings. All in it was disorderly and showed rough usage; but once it had been a notable feature of the house, and well worth better care than had been bestowed upon it. She discovered on the walls many trophies that attracted her, but these she could not reach, and could ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... two-story structure of yellow brick which contained the offices of the concern and the big bare room in which a few decrepit clerks pursued their uninspiring labors. Admission to this building, and through it to the yard, was by way of a stout oaken door on which the word Private was stencilled in white paint. Just above the lettering, at the height of a man's eyes, a small Judas had been cut—a comparatively recent innovation to judge from the freshness of its ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... dim old portraits on the walls, and paintings that hinted at old mastership filled whole panels; and the tall, high-backed, wonderfully wrought oaken chairs had heraldic devices in relief upon their bars and corners; and there was a great, round mosaic table, in soft, rich, dark colors, of most precious stones; these, in turn, hidden with ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... Whitney when he discovered they were gone. Backward the strong man staggered some paces, as had he been struck on the breast by a heavy fist, and, sinking down upon an oaken settee, exclaimed in ...
— The Red Moccasins - A Story • Morrison Heady
... The tower rises very nobly upon four slender columns, terminating in pointed arches but with Norman capitals. The lantern is lighted by four lancet windows on each side, the two centre ones not being open. The oaken roof is plain, and supported by very large beam-heads. Eastward from this point, the vaultings of the roof are square, with broad, simple groinings. Beneath, are two ranges of windows, running quite round the chancel, and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 570, October 13, 1832 • Various
... a Turkey carpet. He was seated in a Chippendale chair. A glorious fire blazed behind a brass fender, and the receptacle for coal was of burnished copper. Photogravures in rich oaken frames adorned the roseate walls. The ceiling was an expanse of ornament, with ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett
... lingering look on all the luxuries which had rendered life so easy and so happy since his infancy; he looked at the pictures, whose faces seemed to smile, and the landscapes, which appeared painted in brighter colors. Then he took away his mother's portrait, with its oaken frame, leaving the gilt frame from which he took it black and empty. Then he arranged all his beautiful Turkish arms, his fine English guns, his Japanese china, his cups mounted in silver, his artistic bronzes by Feucheres and Barye; examined the cupboards, and placed the key in each; threw into ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... of which any thing is made, are derived from nouns by adding en; as, from "Oak, oaken; wood, wooden; ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham
... seas and turned into stone. Make your obeisance to the august shape of Sir Isaac Newton, reclining like a weary swain in the niche at the side of the gorgeous screen. Pass through Henry VII.'s Chapel, a temple cut like a cameo. Look at the shining oaken stalls of the knights. See the banners overhead. There is no such speaking record of the lapse of time as these banners,—there is one of them beginning to drop to pieces; the long day of a century ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... politician (stop 'em) stop procession (tough boy) Little Ben Harry HARRISON Tippecanoe tariff too knapsack war-field (the funnel) windpipe throat quinzy QUINCY ADAMS quince fine fruit (the fine boy) sailor boy sailor jack tar JACKSON stone wall indomitable (tough make) oaken furniture bureau VAN BUREN rent link stroll seashore take give GRANT award school premium examination cramming (fagging) laborer hay field HAYES hazy clear (vivid) brightly lighted camp-fire war-field GARFIELD Guiteau murderer prisoner prison fare ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens
... was this dread that induced me, upon receipt of the box, appalling in its bulk and unpleasantly suggestive of the departure to other worlds of the original consignor, since it was long and deep like the outer oaken covering of a casket, to delay opening it for some days; but finally I nerved myself up to the duty that had devolved upon me, and opened ...
— The Water Ghost and Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... If he struck out at the calves with his oaken stick, he would throw them all down, and forty others beside. Once he drove the calves to the top of the mountain. He found a herdsman there who was abusing his calves, and said: "You fellow! What are you up to? Wait now, if I catch you, you will get ...
— Armenian Literature • Anonymous
... illustrated the cockney song, 'If I had a donkey as vouldn't go, do you think I'd wallop him?' etc., as follows: 'The herbaceous boon and the bland recommendation to advance, are more operative on the ansinine quadruped than the stern imprecation and the oaken cudgel: ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, June 1844 - Volume 23, Number 6 • Various
... come over the interior of the stone cottage. There was no bed now in the living-room, and the small space was well filled with decent furniture, all bright and clean enough to satisfy Dolly Winthrop's eye. The oaken table and three-cornered oaken chair were hardly what was likely to be seen in so poor a cottage: they had come, with the beds and other things, from the Red House; for Mr. Godfrey Cass, as every one said in the village, did very kindly by the weaver; and ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot
... gaze of dead Presidents and Governors looked down at him from their old-time frames ranged in stately ranks along the oaken wainscot. Over the mantel the amazing, Hebraic countenance of a moose leered at him out of little sly, sardonic little eyes, almost ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... very well in check until then, flamed up as Stoner spat out the last contemptuous epithet. He had stood with his right hand behind him, grasping his heavy oaken stick—now, as his rage suddenly boiled, he swung hand and stick round in a savage blow at his tormentor, and the crook of the stick fell crashing against Stoner's temples. So quick was the blow, so sudden the assault, that the clerk had time to do no more than throw up an arm. And as he threw ...
— The Borough Treasurer • Joseph Smith Fletcher
... the early spring season, now and then, as well as in the latter autumn; and the window curtains of the same, in one room red, in the other green; but plain, lest you should be afraid to use them occasionally. The carpets for them will be sent with the other furniture; for he will not alter the old oaken floors of the bed-chamber, nor the little room he intends for my use, when I choose not to join in such company as may happen to fall in: "Which, my dear," says he, "shall be as little as is possible, only particular friends, who may be disposed, once in a year ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... rich in good traditions, would pause in admiration of the pure collegiate-gothic style of the low hall that extended north and south three hundred feet in either direction from the base of the great tower; he would note the artistry of the iron-braced, oaken doors, flanked at the lintels by inscrutable faces of carven stone, of the windows with their diamonded panes of milky glass peeping through a wilderness of encroaching vines. Nor would this be all. Had he ever viewed the quadrangles of Oxford and Cambridge, ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... carries back my imagination to Shakspeare's days. It is a long, low, irregular building, with one room, at an angle from the house, covered with ivy, fine white-veined ivy; the first floor of the main building projecting and supported by oaken beams, and one of the windows below, with its old casement and long narrow panes, forming the half of a shallow hexagon. A porch, with seats in it, surmounted by a pinnacle, pointed roofs, and clustered chimneys, complete the picture! Alas! it is little else but a picture! ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... "you will hold the yeoman's Staff one day; be like it of an oaken English heart, and you will defy wind and weather as it has done, and as your forbears have done. Come, ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... tree, and spits his own entrails upon it, {thus} broken. Aphareus advances {as} his avenger, and endeavours to hurl a stone torn away from the mountain. As he is endeavouring {to do so}, the son of AEgeus attacks him with an oaken club, and breaks the huge bones of his arm, and has neither leisure, nor, {indeed}, does he care to put his useless body to death; and he leaps upon the back of the tall Bianor, not used to bear[36] any other than himself; and ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... royal family, which remain in the vestry. There are some large boxes covered with yellow velvet which contain their remains, and which stand ranged on a species of shelf, formed by the heads of a set of oaken presses which contain the vestments of the monks. The pictures of the kings are hung above their respective boxes, containing their bones, without any other means of preserving them. At the bottom of the lofty ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... half-mail of one or other of the noble knights assembled there. The rich plate of the abbey, all at least which had escaped the cupidity of Edward, was arranged with care upon the various altars; in the centre of the church was placed the abbot's oaken throne, which was to supply the place of the ancient stone, the coronation seat of the Scottish kings—no longer there, its absence felt by one and all within that church as the closing seal to Edward's infamy—the damning proof that as his ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... middle of the floor, which was mostly rotted away, a space about fifteen feet square was covered with thick pine planking, strongly nailed to the beams. In the centre of this planking an oaken block was firmly bolted, and to it was fastened a strong iron staple that held a log-chain, to which was attached a pair of shackles. Above this, was a queer frame-work of oak, somewhat resembling the contrivance ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... had been digging all day long the rough shingle for treasure-trove, had retired to their rudely constructed cabins. These rough huts were built of wood, and furnished with a seat on either side. There were two small windows let into the oaken walls—each of them not more than six inches square. They were absolutely free from furniture—save perhaps, a foot of cheap looking-glass, and here and there a wooden-peg used by the Miners for hanging up their slouch-hats, their red ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, July 23, 1892 • Various
... and most broken-up part of the buildings,—perhaps the most exciting locality for our exploration. We selected a little passage with wooden railings overlooking an empty space without any known outlet. A staircase with banisters led to this unknown region, but an oaken door forbade access to the stairs. We had to get around the obstacle by passing from the railing to the banisters, and walk down the outside of the worm-eaten balusters. There was a dark void below us whose depth we could not fathom. We had only a little taper (a "rat"), ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... an October evening, a sensible looking woman of forty came out through an oaken door to a broad landing on the first floor of an old English country-house. A braid of her hair had fallen forward as if she had been stooping over book or pen; and she stood for a moment to smooth it, and ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... the oaken image and gave the carver no rest until it was completed and set up where a figurehead has always stood, from that time to ...
— Myths and Legends of All Nations • Various
... halted on the threshold of a low, wide chamber, floored with red tiles and furnished with oaken tables and benches, where I beheld some half-dozen angry country-fellows grouped about a solitary individual who fronted them in very desperate and determined manner, his back to the wall; an extremely down-at-heels gentleman this, who yet cocked his hat and ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... en: as, oak, oaken; silk, silken; wheat, wheaten; oat, oaten; hemp, hempen. Here the derivative denotes the matter of ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... is one of the finest Elizabethan structures in the metropolis. It was commenced in 1562, when the old hall was converted into chambers, consumed a decade in building, and is of grand proportions. It is a hundred feet long, and the massive beauty of the glossy oaken roof, almost black with age, is alone worth an Atlantic voyage to see. The walls and windows are decorated with the arms of various members of the Inn, and the paintings are numerous and of great historical interest. Over the dais is a portrait of Charles I. on horse-back, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... almanacks of the time which have come down to us by the name of "Windy Friday." As he was very jealous of his personal and official dignity, he was inaugurated into office with great ceremony, the goodly oaken chair of the renowned Wouter Van Twiller being carefully preserved for such occasions, in like manner as the chair and stone were reverentially preserved at Scone, in Scotland, for the ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... shoe, and broad-brimmed hat; Coat as ancient as the form 'twas folding; Silver buttons, queue, and crimped cravat; Oaken staff his feeble hand upholding; There he sat! Buckled knee and shoe, ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... into the narrow aperture left by the taking out of the oaken plank, but could see nothing, as the depth of our pit made it somewhat dark at the bottom, so I knelt down, and thrust my hand through the opening and felt about. Presently I felt something hard, like a bundle of sticks, and with a tug drew them through the opening, only to ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... black with age, stood beneath the centre of the three narrow windows piercing the outer wall; a four-branched copper lamp gave light from the polished table in the middle of the room; here and there, flanking the oaken bench, at the ends of the room, and at either side of the wide fireplace, were chairs and stools. A few wolfskin rugs dotted the floor. Villon and ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... about outside. Then dinner came, and after that the time hung heavily on his hands. At last he went to his room; the family had retired some time before. There was a good supply of peat, and with this he replenished the fire. Then he drew the massive oaken bedstead in front of the door, and lounged upon it, smoking ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... save himself by clinging to the capsized canoe. He held on tenaciously, drifting like a part of the treacherous log. Burr's skiff was in full chase a few rods in the wake. The mother watched the race, breathless, numb, with all-seeing eye. Her hands gripped the oaken bar fastened across that end of the ferryboat which was farthest out in the river and she stretched forward head and body, heedless of the down-tumbling mass of her loosened hair, reckless of everything but the fate of her boy. Her strained gaze kept ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... had been given such wonderful presents), I was awakened at seven o'clock in the morning by Karl Ivanitch slapping the wall close to my head with a fly-flap made of sugar paper and a stick. He did this so roughly that he hit the image of my patron saint suspended to the oaken back of my bed, and the dead fly fell down on my curls. I peeped out from under the coverlet, steadied the still shaking image with my hand, flicked the dead fly on to the floor, and gazed at Karl Ivanitch with sleepy, wrathful eyes. He, in a parti-coloured wadded dressing-gown ...
— Childhood • Leo Tolstoy
... chamber of Armine Place was a large irregular room, with a low but richly-carved oaken roof, studded with achievements. This apartment was lighted by the oriel window we have mentioned, the upper panes of which contained some ancient specimens of painted glass, and having been fitted up by Sir Ferdinand as a library, contained a collection ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... this earth But a death's-head that from a mural slab Within the chancel leers through sermon-time, Making a mock of poor mortality. The fancy touched him, and he laughed a laugh That from his noonday slumber roused an owl Snug in his oaken hermitage hard by. A very rare ...
— Wyndham Towers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... Under her careful hand it was always neat and clean; in summer the little yard was gay with bright-colored flowers, and woe to the heedless pickaninny who should stray into her yard and pluck a rose or a verbena! In a stout oaken chest under her bed she kept a capacious stocking, into which flowed a steady stream of fractional currency. She carried the key to this chest in her pocket, a proceeding regarded by uncle Wellington with no little disfavor. He was of the opinion—an opinion he would not have dared ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... an old and venerable cathedral, where the dim yellow light fell with a rich but solemn glow upon the fretted capitals, or the grotesque tracings of the oaken carvings, lighting up the fading gildings of the stately monuments, and tinting the varied hues of time-worn banners. The mellow notes of a deep organ filled the air, and seemed to attune the sense to all the ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... over the harvest-fields, while Catharine spread a clean coarse cloth on the small oaken table beside her, and served up a frugal meal of brown bread, honey, and milk, and then stood watching her while the stranger eat sparingly and as ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... and an exclamation of relief and pleasure escaped me as I suddenly found myself in a picturesque quadrangle, divided into fair green lawns and parterres of flowers. Straight opposite me as I approached, a richly carved double oaken door stood wide open, enabling me to look into a vast circular domed hall, in the centre of which a fountain sent up tall silver columns of spray which fell again with a tinkling musical splash into a sunken pool bordered with white marble, where delicate ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... convocation. On the dais, in the recess at one side of the hall, sat the Abbot in his great carved chair of state. He was leaning slightly forward, chin on hand, regarding with calm and critical scrutiny the faces of the white-robed throng below him. And the monks, crowded on their narrow oaken benches, felt the stern eyes upon them and grew restless; for none knew how soon he might be called forward for rebuke before them all. And Aldam did not spare words when he administered his corrections; and not one of the Cistercians but would have chosen the ...
— Beatrix of Clare • John Reed Scott
... the men under her keel rang faster and faster yet. When the last block was split out from under that oaken keel it was expected that the ship would settle on the ways, that two smooth tallowed surfaces would come together, that the ship and all her five hundred tons would move the fraction of an inch, would slip, would slide, would speed stern foremost into what is called her native element. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... showing, as Mr. Cunningham observes, "a noble forehead and an intellectual eye," with much of his country, Cornish air. The picture is but of few inches dimension, in a homely, broad, flat, oaken frame, somewhat resembling that of a miniature, with the name "Opie," plainly cut in capitals. It is ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 576 - Vol. 20 No. 576., Saturday, November 17, 1832 • Various
... wheeled into place and it became the center for all the firing from the palace. In a few seconds it was pouring a steady stream of lead into the oaken door and splintering the lock into a hundred pieces. With a howl the men saw the barrier fall and pressed on. Danbury led them, but halfway he fell. ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... many dull, dreary places to overlook in "The Ring," and would, instead, have three or four more immortal tone-dramas than his colds and indigestions gave him time to write. One hates to think what Poe might have done in literature if he had taken a cure and become a chip of the old oaken bucket. Tuberculosis, they now say, is preventable. If only they had said so before the ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... large oaken table where he was engaged in writing. His form, which was of middle height, was wrapped in a comfortable dressing-gown of green silk, trimmed with black fur, which showed here and there a few worn-out, defective ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... well they fought. Easily did they withstand the men of King Ryence. Four men were slain by their might, through wondrous and fearful strokes, and four were sorely wounded. There lay the four against an oaken tree where they had been placed in a moment's lull. But two knights were left to oppose Launcelot and Gawaine but these two were gallant men and worthy, the very best of ...
— In the Court of King Arthur • Samuel Lowe
... you see Doll Vernon—Mistress Vernon, I pray your pardon—you will have grown so fond of me that you will not permit me to leave you." She thought after that speech he could not help but know her; but John's skull was like an oaken board that night. Nothing could penetrate it. He began to fancy that his companion was a simple witless person who had escaped from ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major
... stepped back from the desk, and taken his seat in the row of chairs in front of the harmonium. A dapper white-haired gentleman—a distant Hatchard—succeeded him behind the goldenrod, and began to say beautiful things about the old oaken bucket, patient white-haired mothers, and where the boys used to go nutting... and Charity began again ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton
... The oaken logs had died down to a bed of glowing coals when suddenly a red glare flashed from it. Religion closed her eyes, blinded by the light. When she opened them the doctor was sitting upright, his head hanging back, his eyes wide open and staring upward, and his breast heaving ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... the edifice however is a room exceedingly curious. Its area is large, being about seventy-eight feet long, twenty-four high and fifty-one broad. It is framed into a sort of aisles, by two rows of tall and massy oaken pillars, which serve to support a large and weighty covering of slate. This vast room was the antient hall of the castle, in which the earls of Leicester, and afterwards the dukes of Lancaster, alternately held their courts, and consumed ...
— A Walk through Leicester - being a Guide to Strangers • Susanna Watts
... and searched the forehold but could not find that the Swallow had taken any harm worth noting. Indeed, her massive oaken prow, with the weight of the gale-driven ship behind it, had crashed through the frail sides of the open Spanish boat like a knife through ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... surgeon knows, That men who with their legs have parted, Swear that they've felt a pain in all their TOES, And often at the twinges started; They stared upon their oaken stumps in vain! Fancying the toes were all come ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... same principle that the Romans, whilst they bestowed upon other occasions crowns of gold of great value, persisted always in giving only a wreath of oaken leaves to him who had saved the life of a citizen.(116) "O manners, worthy of eternal remembrance!" cried Pliny, in relating this laudable custom, "O grandeur, truly Roman, that would assign no other reward but honour, for the preservation of a citizen! a service, indeed, above all ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... pine-panels of the interior, the shelves for her books, pegs to hang her favourite drawings, and the couch-bunk under a window to conceal the summerly recliner while throwing full light on her book; and the hearth-square for logs, when she wanted fire: because Fredi bathed in any weather: the oaken towel-coffer; the wood-carvings of doves, tits, fishes; the rod for the flowered silken hangings she was to choose, and have shy odalisque peeps of sunny water ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... himself in his brushed clothes which lay on the chair and went out, though not quite refreshed, yet clean and fragrant. In the oblong dining-room, the inlaid floor of which had been polished by three of his men the day before, and containing a massive oaken sideboard and a similar extension table, the legs of which were carved in the shape of lion's paws, giving it a pompous appearance, breakfast stood ready for him. A fine, starched cloth with large monograms was spread on the table, on which stood a silver coffee-pot, ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
... the impossibility of undercutting) an absence of that effect of light and shade which is the characteristic of the mediaeval carvings. The greatest shock is, however, experienced on an examination of the interior. What at first sight appear to be highly elaborated oaken bench-ends and seats are only painted earthenware. In point of fact, it is a POT CHURCH. A similar and larger {28} structure by the same architect, and in the same material, has been erected near Platt Hall, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 63, January 11, 1851 • Various
... rode the waves with the bold freedom of her kind. Her keel was carved out of a single great tree. Her seasoned oaken timbers, overlapping, were riveted together by iron bolts, with the round heads outside. Where a timber touched a rib, a strip was cut out on each side, forming a block through which a hole was bored. Another hole was bored in the rib to ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey
... one and the glances of the chevalier awoke no repentance in the breast of the commander; on the contrary, he began to vent his anger in terms still more energetic. He strode up and down the oaken floor till it shook under his spurred heels; he stuck his plumed hat on the side of his head, and displayed the manners of a bully in a Spanish comedy. Suddenly he seemed to have come to a swift resolution: the ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - LA CONSTANTIN—1660 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... the monks, who stitched together their own compositions or transcripts, or, when the volume was more substantial, encased it in oaken boards, which a subsequent hand often improved and preserved by a coat of leather. But laymen were occasionally their own binders, as we perceive in the note to Warton's Poetry,[3] where a "Life of Concubranus" in MS. is said to have been bound ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... of the windows darkened or glistened under moving shadow or light, but the nature of that light and the shapes of those shadows we did not know and hardly dared to guess. The dream began, I think, with a dim fancy that enemies were already in the town, and that the enormous oaken doors were groaning under their hammers. Then I seemed to suppose that the town itself had been destroyed by fire, and effaced, as it may be thousands of years hence, and that if I opened the door I should come out on a wilderness as flat and sterile as the ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... intrigued by some very ancient and peculiar waterworks that formed a part of the sanitary equipment in the culinary department and which function to this day. There is a heavy hand-hewn stone sink and a copper caldron with its own firebox and ashpit. Formerly a large oaken bathtub stood in the back room off the kitchen and the water heated in the copper caldron was available to both rooms. An old brass spigot ...
— Seaport in Virginia - George Washington's Alexandria • Gay Montague Moore
... down upon a bench just within the door, and the transept was not in sight, but I could hear Pierre busy at his task of polishing the oaken floor, by skating over it with brushes fastened to his feet. Jean was bustling in and out of the sacristy, and about the high altar in the chancel. There was a faint scent yet of the incense which had been burned at the mass celebrated before the cure's departure, enough ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... fighting stock, and that even now his twin-brother, Sir Bartholomew Berghersh, was one of the most famous of those stern warriors who had planted the Cross of St. George before the gates of Paris. With lips compressed and clouded brow, he strode up and down the oaken floor, the very genius and impersonation of asceticism, while the great bell still thundered and clanged above his head. At last the uproar died away in three last, measured throbs, and ere their echo had ceased the Abbot struck a small ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... with a tap Of my finger-nail on the sand; Small, but a work divine: Frail, but of force to withstand, Year upon year, the shock Of cataract seas that snap The three-decker's oaken spine, Athwart the ledges of rock, Here ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth
... paused, drew a glittering coin from his pocket, and knocked at a strong oaken door. A janissary opened, and roughly demanded his business, but changed his tone at once and gave the Jew admission, on receiving ...
— The Pirate City - An Algerine Tale • R.M. Ballantyne
... the dais on which the table stood there was a small oaken door set in the wall and giving access to a small ante-room that was known, rightly or wrongly, as the abbot's chamber. That anteroom communicated directly with what was now the guardroom, which accounts for the new-comer ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini
... it from the oaken press; full fifty years ago I sewed those seams, my heart all full of youth and hope and Joe— Joe, whose wife I was to be—my lover, strong and brown, Captain of the stanchest craft that sailed from Gloucester town. It seems a worthless thing to hold so carefully ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... You shall hear,—you shall hear, Mac:—so, sir, with great composure, seeing a smart oaken cudgel that stood very handily in a corner of my dressing room, I ordered two of my fellows to hold the rascal, and another to take the cudgel and return the scoundrel's civility with a good drubbing as ...
— The Man Of The World (1792) • Charles Macklin
... through the peephole. Yells responded, and in the hush that fell upon the final shot a noise of fugitive feet scraping and stumbling on cobbles. A bullet struck the door a sounding thump and all but penetrated, raising a bump on the inner face of its thick oaken panels; and Victor shut ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... Faith, and Charity, upon them. There are fourteen pointed windows, stained with the patron saints of the royal family. Behind the altar the very room is preserved in which the duke died—the sacristy of the chapel now. The oaken presses, chairs, and prayer-desk are all clothed in black, giving an air of gloom to the whole apartment. Opposite the entrance there is a large painting by Jacquard, representing the death of the duke. He is lying upon a couch with his head supported ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett
... dazzling light through an arch beyond. Outside the gate we sat in a ring on square fresh-cut stones in which you could still feel a trace of the warmth of the sun. To one side was the lime-washed wall of a house, white fire, cut by a wide oaken door where the moon gave a restless glitter to the spiked nails and the knocker, and above the door red geraniums hanging out of a pot, their color insanely bright in the silver-white glare. The other side a deep glen, the shimmering tops of poplar trees and the sound of a stream. In the ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos |
