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More "Adornment" Quotes from Famous Books



... crimson and silver, and the whole collection cost upwards of 30,000 ducats. For the expenses of so large a household, and the maintenance of this fine library, not to mention a palace that was being built and churches that required adornment, the mere revenues of the duchy could not have sufficed. Federigo owed his wealth to his engagements as a general. Military service formed his trade. 'In 1453,' says Dennistoun, 'his war-pay from Alfonso of Naples ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds

... Ladies of high rank employed themselves thus, for various purposes, previous to the reformation; and it is a fact, worthy of especial notice, that in those ages, when it has been required for the adornment of the temples, and the encouragement of honorable valor and has thus become associated with the sanctifying influences of religion and manly virtue, it has flourished most.[64-*] Queen Adelicia, wife of Henry I.; Ann, queen of France; Catherine, of Aragon; Lady Jane Grey; Mary Queen of Scots; ...
— The Ladies' Work-Table Book • Anonymous

... both Paul III and Saint Pius V confirmed it. Two important tribunals were created, one called the Tribunal of the Churches, and the other the Apostolic Tribunal. The first was created by Charles V, and was under the charge of a Judge protector, and had charge of the repairs, building, and adornment of the churches of the military orders. The second was created by Philip II, in virtue of the bull of Gregory XIII, of October 20, 1584,—this bull having as its object the amicable adjustment of the disputes ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803 • Emma Helen Blair

... no appreciation of beauty. They have a passion for adornment, but there is nothing to show that their esthetic faculties are developed. They merely obey their ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden

... peaceful semi-obscurity, contrasting with the overpowering glare outside. The vast apartment, a dozen meters long and six wide, had, in addition to the press, only two bookcases, filled with books. Antique chairs of various kinds stood around in disorder, while for sole adornment, along the walls, hung with an old salon Empire paper of a rose pattern, were nailed pastels of flowers of strange coloring dimly visible. The woodwork of three folding-doors, the door opening on the hall and two others at opposite ends of the apartment, the one ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola

... and adornment. That of a book involves two other demands mutually so contradictory that bookbinding has always offered a most attractive challenge to the skill of the handicraftsman. The first demand is that the book when closed ...
— The Booklover and His Books • Harry Lyman Koopman

... houses along the road (of which there are not many, except in the villages) are almost invariably old, built of stone, and covered with a light gray plaster; generally they have a little flower-garden in front, and, often, honeysuckles, roses, or some other sweet and pretty rustic adornment, are flowering over the porch. I have hardly had such images of simple, quiet, rustic comfort and beauty, as from the look of these houses; and the whole impression of our winding and undulating road, bordered by hedges, luxuriantly ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... of the country, was built of hewn stone and very solid. Stone, too, was its foundation, stone its background. Not a blade of grass sprouted among the broken mineral about the walls, not a flower adorned the windows. Over the door, by way of sole adornment, the Mormon Eye was rudely sculptured; I had been brought up to view that emblem from my childhood; but since the night of our escape, it had acquired a new significance, and set me shrinking. The smoke rolled voluminously from the chimney-top, its edges ruddy with ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... adornment to emphasize the attractions of her gorgeous self. She was one of those rare women who are rendered more attractive by the absence of all ornament and her dark eyes were more luminous and brilliant than any jewel she might have worn. Her gown, though rich, was simplicity ...
— Princess Zara • Ross Beeckman

... is a party, and I dare say there is another frock at the Leveretts'. I think the first time I saw her she had on something very pretty—silk, I believe it was. But there is no time to get it. Recompense, if you could find a ribbon or any suitable adornment to brighten her up. In that big bureau upstairs—I ...
— A Little Girl in Old Boston • Amanda Millie Douglas

... work-stained every night. Little groups of children straggled to school, or loitered to peep through the single, front windows at the big, gilt-edged Bibles, balanced upon small, three-legged tables, which were their usual adornment. Stout women, with thick, red arms and dirty aprons, stood upon the whitened doorsteps, leaning upon their brooms, and shrieking their morning greetings across the road. One stouter, redder, and dirtier than the rest, had gathered a small ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle

... Her dress and adornment were marked by that exquisite harmony that can come only of a fine natural taste perfected by culture. Her gown was of a simple magenta tulle, cut bias, traversed by three rows of light-blue flounces, with the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... observe what antiquated figures and costumes sometimes make their appearance at Willard's. You meet elderly men with frilled shirt-fronts, for example, the fashion of which adornment passed away from among the people of this world half a century ago. It is as if one of Stuart's portraits were walking abroad. I see no way of accounting for this, except that the trouble of the times, the impiety of traitors, and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... you have discarded me," he implored her. "Say but that you will, and you shall be lady of Tressan. All that I have would prove but poor adornment to a beauty such as yours, and I should shrink from offering it you, were it not that, with it all, I can offer you the fondest heart in France. Marquise—Clotilde, I cast myself humbly at your feet. Do with me as you ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini

... duty, as a member of a commonwealth, is to assist in the maintenance, in the advance, in the defense of the state. The woman's duty, as a member of the commonwealth, is to assist in the ordering, in the comforting, and in the beautiful adornment of ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various

... dressed in a long trailing gown of black velveteen,—an inexpensive dress, but one that suits her admirably, with its slight adornment of little soft lace frillings at the throat and wrists. Pausing irresolutely, Luttrell makes as though ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton

... of those little boats?" and Teddy pointed to the davits where four polished tenders hung glistening in the sun like some articles of adornment. ...
— The Search for the Silver City - A Tale of Adventure in Yucatan • James Otis

... a deceiver and insincere, The yellow one with two faces like a hypocrite! It shows forth with two qualities to the eye of him that looks on it, The adornment of the loved one, the colour of the lover. Affection for it, think they who judge truly, Tempts men to commit that which shall anger their Maker. But for it no thief's right hand were cut off; Nor would tyranny be displayed by ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies

... her husband nor enter his clan, and the children belonged to the clan of the mother. All of the family property was held by her, descent was traced in the maternal line, and the honor of the house was in her hands. Modesty was her chief adornment; hence the younger women were usually silent and retiring: but a woman who had attained to ripeness of years and wisdom, or who had displayed notable courage in some emergency, was sometimes invited to a seat ...
— The Soul of the Indian - An Interpretation • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman

... them to this church, intending to erect a nobler edifice for their reception; but it is doubtful whether the design was carried out during his lifetime. Indeed, we know little as to that enlarging and adornment of the church which must surely have been effected in the days of the early abbots, and the first hints of the erection of the great abbey occur in the lives of Ealdred and Eadmer, eighth and ninth abbots, who collected immense quantities of red, tile-like Roman bricks from the ruins ...
— Hertfordshire • Herbert W Tompkins

... latest creation of a feverish progress in hotel-building which had covered five years and as many squares with large showy erections, utterly beyond the needs of the community, yet each superior in size and adornment to its predecessor. It struck him as being the one evidence of an abiding faith in the future of the metropolis that he had seen in nothing else. As he entered its frescoed hall that afternoon ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte

... slowest, most passionless manner, "and a row more or less ain't much account to me—but YOU, you keep your kam." He paused, stepped back, and regarding the master, with a slight wave of his crippled hand over his whole person, as if indicating some personal adornment, said, "It sets ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte

... their stead we saw the silken jacket, the spangled pale-blue sari, covered by a diaphanous black veil, like a thin cloud half-veiling the summer heavens, the necklace of pearls round the olive pillar of her throat, and above them the calm face and the wealth of dark hair that scorned all artificial adornment. There she sat in her own house, singing to two rich Arabs and a subordinate agent of one of the greatest rulers of Asia, while behind her Mimi, aged two years,—the legacy of a dead affection, ...
— By-Ways of Bombay • S. M. Edwardes, C.V.O.

... follow this lesser deity into all the details of his self-adornment. It must suffice to say that he affected an extreme neatness and simplicity of dress, every item of which was studied and discussed for many an hour. In the mornings he was still guilty of hessians and pantaloons, or 'tops' and buckskins, with a blue coat and buff waistcoat. The costume is not so ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton

... SOCIETY, an important factor in the growth and development of the village, was organized about twenty years ago. The chief object of the society has been the improvement and adornment of the streets and the fine shade trees which emborder the village thoroughfares everywhere attest the fidelity of its members to the object in view. In addition to the work of this character the society has aided in various other ways in the work ...
— A Virginia Village • Charles A. Stewart

... Belts were promptly draped over his own furry shoulders by the king—seemingly following the same primitive love for adornment that inspires an African savage to ornament his person with any new and glittering object he happens to acquire. The rat-king then graciously draped the cartridge-belt and holstered automatics around the shoulders of the metal-collared leader ...
— Devil Crystals of Arret • Hal K. Wells

... program, and thus only individuals or accidents are still partially guarding some fine old places—Shepherdstown, West Virginia, for instance, or in Maryland the towns of Sharpsburg, Middletown, and Burkittsville—against adornment with chrome and neon and fake-stone veneer. Even in these places, some changes for ...
— The Nation's River - The Department of the Interior Official Report on the Potomac • United States Department of the Interior

... powerless, all ornaments had been flung away, yet still it shone undimmed, and filled her with a passionate regret. A jewel glittered at her feet, leaving the lace rent to shreds on the indignant bosom that had worn it; the wreaths of hair that had crowned her with a woman's most womanly adornment fell disordered upon shoulders that gleamed the fairer for the scarlet of the pomegranate flowers clinging to the bright meshes that had imprisoned them an hour ago; and over the face, once so affluent ...
— Pauline's Passion and Punishment • Louisa May Alcott

... him with deference and admiration. Three hundred pounds weight of irons were put upon him for an adornment, and the Governor professed so keen a solicitude for his welfare that he never left him unattended. There was scarce a beautiful woman in London who did not solace him with her condescension, and enrich him with her gifts. Not only did the President of the Royal Academy ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley

... colonnade, six pillars being in the front, six in the rear, and twelve on either side. The altar here is gone, but its foundations remain. Various signs show a greater degree of splendor in the interior adornment of this temple, especially the fact that the pavement was mosaic work. There is reason to suppose that this temple was turned into a Christian church some time in the fourth century. Such a transformation as this was common enough throughout ...
— Among the Brigands • James de Mille

... applause as the Vicar resumed his seat. The town had taken fire. Resolving itself into Committee, the meeting then and there nominated fifty collectors, all volunteers. Nor did the movement end here. Under the leadership of Miss Pescod the ladies of Troy devoted each a favourite article of personal adornment to be coined at need into money for the Major's redemption. (I myself possess a brooch which, left by my great-grandmother to her daughter upon this condition, to this day is known in the family as the Major's Cameo.) In six days the guarantee fund ran up to eleven hundred pounds, of which ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... was a pity she attracted his notice, for he was down on her directly for having on a toque almost entirely made of young turnips and carrots. He said it was "an infraction of rule 150, cap. 4,500 of the Safety of the Empire Act, forbidding the use of the people's food for personal adornment." ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, June 20, 1917 • Various

... to be quite a party at Ventnor in the evening of New Year's day. Ellen knew this, and destined her precious flowers for Alice's adornment. How to keep them in the meanwhile? She consulted Mr. John, and, according to his advice, took them to Mrs. Bland, the housekeeper, to be put in water and kept in a safe place for her till the time. She ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner

... the Italians of old Antonio's degree. The body was clad in the holiday vestments of a fisherman, the hands and feet being naked. A cross lay on the breast; the grey hairs were blowing about in the air, and, in frightful adornment of the ghastliness of death, a bouquet of flowers was placed upon the mouth. The bier was rich in gilding and carving, another melancholy evidence of the lingering wishes and false ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper

... Rabbi Simon, "all that they have done has been from a selfish motive. The bridges bring them in a revenue, for all who use them are taxed; the bath-houses are for their personal adornment—'tis ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various

... it along neatly tied up in a separate bundle. From this cause there is a sturdy strength and genuine feeling about his poems, that more than compensate for the ingenious trinkets which he despises, and leaves for the adornment of those who need them. In him imagination predominates over fancy, and the latter is always sacrificed to the former. We do not intend to say that Mr. Taylor is without fancy. Far from it—he has fancy, but it never leads him to be fanciful. His versification is polished, correct and ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various

... on the church's history. Two or three peculiarities distinguish the interior. One is a crypt, paved with fourteenth-century encaustic tiles, which Aubrey describes as "a vault strongly barricaded with iron." Another is a magnificent Flemish chandelier, not a common adornment of a chancel. A third is a high tomb of Sussex marble, which bears no inscription. But the person buried in it must have been of considerable distinction, for the cassia in which the remains Were embalmed still sweats from the marble in wet weather—a grisly barometer. Possibly within may ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker

... seemingly divine particle of reason or spirit in him. Such a doctrine, at more leisurable moments, would of course have its precepts to deliver on the embellishment, generally, of what is near at hand, on the adornment of life, till, in a not impracticable rule of conduct, one's existence, from day to day, came to be like a well-executed piece of music; that "perpetual motion" in things (so Marius figured the matter to himself, under the old Greek imageries) according ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater

... back of his chair. His heart was beating fast, and there was a mist before his eyes—a mist through which he saw, as though in a dream, the walls of his library melt away, to be replaced by the dainty interior of that little room in Grey Street, with all the dim luxury of its soft colouring and adornment. He saw her too, the centre of the picture—saw her as she seemed to him before that final scene—saw her half-kneeling, half-crouching, before him, with her beautiful dark eyes, yearning and passionate, fixed ...
— A Monk of Cruta • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... they anoint the head with ajonjoli [i.e., oil of sesame] mixed with civet—of which, as we shall later show, there is great abundance in those regions. Even when not bathing, they are accustomed to anoint their heads for comfort and adornment, especially the women and children. Through modesty, they bathe with their bodies drawn up and almost in a sitting posture, with the water to the neck, taking the greatest care not to be seen, although no one may be near to see ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XII, 1601-1604 • Edited by Blair and Robertson

... gotten together all the necessaries for comfort, we have taken nothing for adornment," said he, "and 'twere pity the prison were duller than it need be. Choose thou a pretty face or two from among these old pictures, my little Gretchen, and an ornament for his mantelshelf. Young as thou art, thou hast the woman's ...
— Monsieur Maurice • Amelia B. Edwards

... contemplation which is the earnest application of the enamoured mind to that object wherewith it is enamoured. Then when it says, "There shall shine High miracles before thee," it announces that through her the adornments of the miracles will be seen; and it speaks truly, that the adornment of the miracles is to see the cause of the same, which she demonstrates; as in the beginning of the book on Metaphysics the Philosopher seems to feel, saying that, through the contemplation of these adornments, men began to be enamoured with this Lady. And concerning ...
— The Banquet (Il Convito) • Dante Alighieri

... her uncle and to her; kind with an infinite delicacy of tact and feeling. He seemed to understand the instinct for beauty and adornment that sent her roving to her mother's trunks. He understood her dreams and her hunger. He understood the spirit that had led her to make the garret a sort of shrine to be swept and dusted, to be kept apart and precious. There was another force, subtle and exacting: ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple

... The event happened on the 29th of November, 1836, and caused a flutter of excitement in the city and inspired the proprietor to add the words "Royal Victoria" to the inn's name, and to justify the adornment of the front of the building with the royal ...
— The Inns and Taverns of "Pickwick" - With Some Observations on their Other Associations • B.W. Matz

... trade which accompanied the crusading movement depended upon the growing demand in the West for the products of the East. Europe could provide the necessities for a simple and monotonous life, without adornment or display. But the rise of a burgher aristocracy, the growth of an elaborate and symbolic ritualism in religious worship, the desire for that pomp and display which is half the divinity of kings, created a demand for commodities which ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker

... perhaps the Sphinx is second to none. The mysterious being with the head of a man and the body of a lion is not at all uncommon in Egyptian architectural adornment, but the one placed before the Second Pyramid (the Pyramid of Shafra), and supposed to be contemporary with it, astonishes the observer by its gigantic proportions. It is known to the Arabs as Abul-hol, the father of terror. It measures more than one hundred feet in length, and was partially carved ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson

... for the purpose of using them as magical charms? Remember that it is as absurd an argument to say that these sea-creatures with gross names were sought for gross purposes, as to say that the sea-comb is sought for the adornment of the hair, the fish named sea-hawk to catch birds, the fish named the little boar for the hunting of boars, or the sea-skull to raise the dead. My reply to these lying fabrications, which are as stupid as they are absurd, is that I have never attempted to acquire ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius

... courted in gay and brilliant circles, and, following the general example of French litterateurs in fashion, lived well up to the income he received, had a delightful bachelor's apartment, furnished with artistic effect, spent largely on the adornment of his person, kept a coupe, and entertained profusely at the cafe Anglais and the Maison Doree. A reputation that inspired a graver and more unquiet interest had been created by the Vicomte de ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... little to advertise itself, but the visitors have come, and are coming, and the town is doing its best to give them a fair entertainment. Though from the coast or the sea it often makes a fine appearance, the town is one of utility rather than of adornment. It feels that its existence is fully justified, without having to resort to artificial attractions. It builds no pavilions or glass-houses or aquarium, it needs no constructed lakes to retain its sea, nor towers to emulate rocks that Nature has denied. Primarily ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon

... Viney a set of teeth that she thinks she wants, but I know she couldn't use them when she gets them. If I'm as beautiful as you say, isn't this blue homespun of great Grandmother Alloways, made over twentieth century style, adornment enough? Some people—that is, some one—Mr. Mark said this morning it was—was chic, which means most awfully stylish. I've got one for my back and one for the tub all out of the same old blue bed-spread, and ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess

... add that for that season their expectations must have been disappointed. The bonnets could never have reached them, or, if they did, it must have been in such a state as to render them unfit for any purpose of adornment. Mine was an unmerciful hand; for, once inside that box, it never ceased from wreck and ruin till the whole of those beautiful "ducks" were crumpled up and stowed away in less than a tenth part of the valuable space they had ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid

... some time has been more commonly seen than the delicate airy plumes which stand upright in ladies' bonnets. These little feathers, says a recent writer, were provided by nature as the nuptial adornment of the White Heron. Many kind-hearted women who would not on any account do a cruel act, are, by following this fashion, causing the continuance of a great cruelty. If ladies who are seemingly so indifferent ...
— Birds, Illustrated by Color Photography [July 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various

... fish. He takes an infinite amount of care of his white clothes, and swaggers about the streets immaculate; but just as soon as he gets home, the suit comes off and is reserved for future exhibition purposes. The women pay comparatively small attention to their personal adornment. Their hair is combed straight back upon their heads. The style of dresses never undergoes a change. The ordinary dress consists of three important pieces—the chemise, a long, white, sleeveless garment; ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert

... vessel, excepting the double-bowed superstructure, was left unpainted, and it shone like a polished mirror. The superstructure, however, was painted a delicate grey tint, with the relief of a massive richly gilded cable moulding all round the shear- strake and the further adornment of a broad ribbon of a rich crimson hue rippling through graceful wreaths of gilded scroll-work at bow and stern, the name Flying Fish being inscribed on the ribbon in gold letters. Altogether, notwithstanding ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood

... their exquisite marble limbs with brutish mallets, it was not, we may be sure, of the danger to their precious souls they were thinking, but of their patrician masters who had worshipped these fair images, and paid great sums to famous sculptors for such adornment of their sanctuaries. Perhaps it was human enough, for to those mobs beauty had long been associated with oppression. Yet how painful to picture those golden marbles, in all their immortal fairness, confronted with the ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne

... chimney the sun shone into, and the clear-smouldering peats; with the pipes on the mantelshelf and the three-cornered spittoons, filled with sea-shells instead of sand, on the floor; with the bare stone walls and the bare wooden floor, and the three patchwork rugs that were of yore its sole adornment—poor man's patchwork, the like of it unknown in cities, woven with homespun, and Sunday black, and sea-cloth polished on the bench of rowing. The room, like the house, had been a sort of wonder in that country-side, it was so neat and habitable; and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson

... hour of sunrise, when Miss Hepzibah Pyncheon—we will not say awoke, it being doubtful whether the poor lady had so much as closed her eyes during the brief night of midsummer—but, at all events, arose from her solitary pillow, and began what it would be mockery to term the adornment of her person. Far from us be the indecorum of assisting, even in imagination, at a maiden lady's toilet! Our story must therefore await Miss Hepzibah at the threshold of her chamber; only presuming, meanwhile, to note some of the heavy sighs that labored from ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... of needlework, both of very ancient origin, but widely different in character. Patchwork—the art of piecing together fabrics of various kinds and colours or laying patches of one kind upon another, is a development of the primitive desire for adornment. Quilting—the method of fastening together layers of cloths in such a manner as to secure firmly the loose materials uniformly spread between them, has resulted from the need of adequate protection against rigorous climates. The piecing and patching ...
— Quilts - Their Story and How to Make Them • Marie D. Webster

... saw confronting him a woman whom nature had endowed with a rare beauty, and for whom art had also done its best in the matter of outward adornment. True, she was clad in plain unrelieved black from head to foot, but no other costume could have so exquisitely displayed her glowing loveliness of coloring or the pure ...
— A Manifest Destiny • Julia Magruder

... black-coated gentry fairly overshadow the land with their shovel hats, so that Corn has no fair chance of sunshine. The Churches of this City alone must have cost Ten Millions of Dollars—for you cannot walk a hundred steps without passing one; and the wealth lavished in their construction and adornment exceeds all belief—while all the common school-houses in Genoa would not bring fifty thousand dollars. The best minds of the country are now pondering the urgent necessity of speedily establishing a ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley

... in the open beyond and round it; a light fence with one wire being put up to keep the cattle from trespassing. Clumps of young palms, bananas, and other tropical trees and shrubs, were also planted about for the future adornment of the place. Fences were erected round the cultivated ground, and an enclosure was made, into which the cattle were driven at night. These fences were easily and cheaply made. The wire cost little more at Rosario than it would have done in England, ...
— Out on the Pampas - The Young Settlers • G. A. Henty

... all outlined with gold cords and twists of different kinds and thicknesses, and the colour is added in water-colours on the silk. In the centre is the royal coat-of-arms within an oval garter ensigned with a royal crown, in the adornment of which a few seed pearls are used, as they are also on ...
— English Embroidered Bookbindings • Cyril James Humphries Davenport

... that it would have been less difficult for me to build the whole edifice anew than to mutilate it in several places, change, innovate, add and suppress in others, but I was almost perforce compelled to give it a new form, which I have done, partly for the requirements and the adornment of the stories, partly to conform to the times and the infelicity of our century, when most human things are so exulcerated that there is no work, however well digested, polished, and filed, but it is badly interpreted and slandered by the malice of fastidious persons. Take, therefore, in good ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. I. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre

... ornamentation, whether in dress, manners, speech, or writing. Long live beauty! Long live taste! Long live the "aesthetic side"! But simplicity does not necessarily imply plainness, nor homeliness, nor uncouthness. There can be a simplicity of adornment. I am aware that acting for example's sake is not a sound principle of action; but it is a question if it be not duty in this particular case. A lady physician of large practice once said to me, "I see, among poor girls, so much ...
— A Domestic Problem • Abby Morton Diaz

... above the spot where the cruel dart had entered, a fresh and blooming nosegay still exhaled its perfume—a tragic detail accentuating the pathos of a death so sudden that the joy with which she had pinned on this simple adornment seemed to ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green

... now closed, and remained so until 1838. It was then restored, and reopened for public worship. At one time it was one of the finest interiors in Paris, the royal painters and artists vying with each other in its adornment. It is now, however, only as a third-rate church in its decoration. It is cruciform in shape, with an octagonal termination. At one corner there is a tower which was built in 1649, and some portions of the building were erected in 1400. The western front has a finely ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett

... academic, one purple word is already much; three—a whole phrase—is inadmissible. Wed yourself to a clean austerity: that is your force. Wear a linen ephod, splendidly candid. Arrange its folds, but do not fasten it with any brooch. I swear to you, in your talking robes, there should be no patch of adornment; and where the subject forces, let it force you no further than it must; and be ready with a twinkle of your pleasantry. Yours is a fine tool, and I see so well how to hold it; I wonder if you see how to hold mine? But then I am to the neck in ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... and his followers wear suits of buckskin made on Indian lines. (Cotton khaki imitates the tan color of the buckskin.) Long breeches, the buckskin tunic coming about to the knee. It is fringed. There is no adornment on the tunics such as Indians wear. The lads of the party wear buckskin breeches of knee-length, and tan strapping over tan-colored stockings. They should all wear moccasins, or imitation moccasins made of khaki, ...
— Patriotic Plays and Pageants for Young People • Constance D'Arcy Mackay

... severity to her because she preferred ornament to edification, and had since excused her a hundred times by thinking how natural to womankind was a love of adornment, and how necessary became a mild infusion of personal vanity to complete the delicate and fascinating dye of the feminine mind. So at the end of the week's absence, which had brought him as far as Dublin, he resolved to curtail his tour, return to Endelstow, ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy

... although boasting only one loose white garment, walk with the air and grace of queens, or as though pure Inca blood ran in their veins. Their only adornment is a necklace of red corals and a few inches of red or blue ribbon entwined in their long raven-black hair, which hangs down to the waist in two plaits. Their houses are palm-walled, with a roof of palm-leaves, through which the rain pours and the sun shines. Their chairs are logs ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray

... could teach her, who had been much with girls of taste and of culture, and was familiar with the style and manners of those who came from what considered itself the supreme order in the social hierarchy. Her natural love for picturesque adornment was qualified by a knowledge of the prevailing modes not usual in so small a place as Oxbow Village. All this had not failed to produce its impression on those about her. Persons who, like Miss Silence Withers, believe, not in education, inasmuch as there is no healthy nature to be educated, but ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... anything quite like that room. The sheer physical comfort of its arrangements appealed to him, but after all he was not one who had ever studied his bodily ease very much, and what he regarded as the chaste refinement of its adornment had a deeper effect. Though he had lived for the most part in the bush and on the prairie, he had been endued with or had somehow acquired ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss

... art-power evolved from the master-minds of Greece and Rome, though rudely shattered by the northern tribes, it failed not to enforce from them an admission of its grandeur. Loving, as all rude nations do, so much of art as goes to the adornment of life, they also felt that there was a still higher aim in the enlarged spirit of classic invention. It is recorded that one of these ancient chieftains gazed thoughtfully in Rome upon the noble statuary of the fallen race, and declared it the work of men superior to ...
— Rambles of an Archaeologist Among Old Books and in Old Places • Frederick William Fairholt

... Maiden Stood triumphantly before them. 'You have chosen well, my children, Had you wished for wealth or beauty, Robes or jewels for adornment, Or for any selfish purpose, Then the petals would have fallen To the earth and lost their Magic. My twin daughters, ever faithful, All your thoughts are for your people; Therefore, you shall be immortal, Standing on ...
— The Legends of San Francisco • George W. Caldwell

... will. It is the purpose of my life to restore to them the holiness of the ancient Church; to rescue them from the snare of traitors to the faith, whom men call priests. They shall learn through me that the Church knew no adornment once, but the presence of the pure; that the priest craved no finer vestment than his holiness; that the Gospel, which once taught humility and now raises dispute, was in former days the rule of faith—sufficient for all wants, powerful over all difficulties. ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins

... and furnished it with rows of benches. At the upper end a raised platform was erected, and in the centre of that platform stood a simple Cross of roughly carved dark wood, some twelve or fifteen feet in height. There was no other adornment in the building,—the walls remained bare, the floor unmatted, the seats uncushioned. No subscriptions were asked for its maintenance; no collection plate was ever sent around, yet here, whenever Leigh announced a coming "Address," so vast a crowd assembled that it was impossible to find room ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli

... end of the south gardens, does not look particularly festive, and it is not original enough to shine by itself, like its very happy mate at the south end, the Horticultural Palace. There is nothing like this Horticultural Palace anywhere on the grounds in its gorgeous richness of decorative adornment. It has no relation to any other building on the site. It is very happy, with its many joyous garlands, flower-baskets, and suggestions of horticultural forms - all very well done - so very much better done than so many of ...
— The Art of the Exposition • Eugen Neuhaus

... gift of Sally's had, then, been doubly stolen. He had been wearing an adornment which had been stolen from a thief! Words failed him, but he looked at Sally as though he ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)

... and by-ways for dirty, ragged, hatless, shoeless, and godless children, whom they will hale into the Sunday-school; they will shine with unsurpassed skill in the manufacture of slippers for the rector; they will exhibit a fiery enthusiasm in the decoration and adornment of the church at Christmas and Easter festivals. Far be the thought that would deny praise to the mild raptures and delicate aspirations of gentle natures such as Cooper drew. But in novels, at least, one longs for a (p. 281) ruddier life ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury

... converted into an unsinkable life-buoy, that shall not only support itself upon the crest of the highest waves, but shall help to keep afloat the entire national body. What is now an eyesore shall become an adornment, and what is now a cause of weakness shall be a source of strength, bulwark of protection and mine of wealth to all India. How this can be done we have sought in the following pages to unfold, adhering carefully to the programme marked out by General Booth, and suggesting only such additions ...
— Darkest India - A Supplement to General Booth's "In Darkest England, and the Way Out" • Commissioner Booth-Tucker

... Empire. The climate and natural products, the genius of its writers and the spirit of its religion—nothing came amiss to his voracious intellect, which assimilated the most diverse materials and pressed them all into his service. Greek mythology provided allusions for the adornment of his proclamations, the Koran would dictate his behaviour towards the Moslems, and the Bible was to be his guide-book concerning the Druses and Armenians. All three were therefore grouped together under the head ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose

... Bella Bathgate. Bella is almost like a stage-caricature of a Scotswoman, so dour she is and uncompromising and she positively glories in the drab ugliness of her rooms. Ugliness means to Bella respectability; any attempt at adornment is 'daft-like.' ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)

... serve as common motives in general decoration, sufficiently prove that such objects attract rather than avoid attention. And while there is an invincible repugnance among some peoples to remove these articles, such repugnance being often strongest when the adornment is most minute, others have no such repugnance or are quite indifferent whether or not their aprons are accurately adjusted. The mere presence or possession of the article gives the required sense of self-respect, of human dignity, of sexual ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... his room, where Frank found him trying on a new necktie. Though decidedly plain, Mark fancied himself very good-looking, and spent no little time on personal adornment. In particular, he had a weakness for new neckties, in ...
— Making His Way - Frank Courtney's Struggle Upward • Horatio Alger, Jr.

... them, they were generally held in a narrow, badly lighted room, with no adornment but a large green cross or some picture of a saint hanging beside the master's table. The master was often an old soldier in fantastic dress, with ill-tempered visage. The scholar entered, walked the length of the room, knelt before the cross or picture, recited a prayer, then tremblingly ...
— History of California • Helen Elliott Bandini

... Barcelona. Thus we see the undaunted steadfastness of these early missionaries who, although California had already passed from Spanish to Mexican rule, and mission power was beginning to wane, still were zealous for the greater adornment ...
— Chimes of Mission Bells • Maria Antonia Field

... asked her why, she replied that she feared the maid was somewhat selfish, also too fond of drawing the eyes of men, and of the adornment of her beauty. Of those who were dearest to me, indeed, only Steinar seemed to think Iduna as perfect as I did myself. This, so far as it went, was well; but, then, Steinar and I had always thought alike, which robbed his judgment of ...
— The Wanderer's Necklace • H. Rider Haggard

... well of his imagination the commonest object becomes encrusted with imagery. Herein again he deviates from the true Nature poet, the normal Wordsworth type of Nature poet: imagery was to him not a mere means of expression, not even a mere means of adornment; it was a delight for ...
— Shelley - An Essay • Francis Thompson

... active; that he may bring the notion of them to the intelligence of his readers he gives bodies to the gods. But there is no other form of bodies than man's capable of understanding and reason. Therefore he gives the likeness of each one of the gods the greatest beauty and adornment. He has shown also that images and statues of the gods must be fashioned accurately after the pattern of a man to furnish the suggestion to those less ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch

... was built out from the back of the hall, whence up a broad stairway Leila had gone. The walls were hung with Indian painted robes, Sioux and Arapahoe weapons, old colonial rifles, and among them portraits of three generations of Penhallows. Many older people had found interesting the strange adornment of the walls, where amid antlered trophies of game, buffalo heads and war-worn Indian relics, could be read something of the owner's tastes and history. John stood by the fire fascinated. Like many timid boys, he ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell

... out in this fashion, and doubt her knowledge of the damning fact. He held it for proved that she was dressed to leave him; and the sight of her, refreshed and rejuvenated, gave the last thrust to his tottering sense. He demanded with such savageness the meaning of her adornment, that the indignant amazement with which she turned on him was real, ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson

... direction of the Territorial officers, a system of improvements has been inaugurated by means of which Washington is rapidly becoming a city worthy of the nation's capital. The citizens of the District having voluntarily taxed themselves to a large amount for the purpose of contributing to the adornment of the seat of Government, I recommend liberal appropriations on the part of Congress, in order that the Government may bear its just share of the expense of carrying out a judicious ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Ulysses S. Grant • James D. Richardson

... therefrom a faint, mysterious comfort, trying to make herself feel beautiful. From sheer dread of going back before he came, she let her hair fall, though it was quite smooth and tidy, and began brushing it. Suddenly she thought with horror of her efforts at adornment—by specially preparing for him, she must seem presumptuous to Fate. At any little sound she stopped and stood listening—save for her hair and eyes, as white from head to foot as a double narcissus flower in the dusk, bending towards some faint tune played to it somewhere oft in the fields. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... from Paris, invitations issued to several hundred guests, and the reception rooms of their city residence refurnished for the occasion; money was poured out without stint to provide the wedding feasts and flowers, rich and rare, for the adornment of the house, and ...
— Elsie's children • Martha Finley

... by a wrench, from so many companions at once, such good friends as they were, and living so pleasantly with each other in one city, far off indeed, but to me most dear. I call to witness that tomb of Damon, ever to be sacred and solemn to me, whose adornment with every tribute of grief was my weary task, till I betook myself at length to what comforts I could, and desired again to breathe a little—I call that sacred grave to witness that I have had no greater delight all this while than in recalling to my mind the most pleasant memory of all of you, ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson

... of course accepted. The ride embraced a circuit of ten miles, in which they passed only two houses. The first of these was built with an apparent regard to convenience and comfort, and even some effort at adornment, as manifested in the climbing plants with which the windows were draperied, and the flowers which adorned the little court in front. Mr. Grahame stopped before the gateway of this court, and a woman of coarse, rough exterior, though ...
— Evenings at Donaldson Manor - Or, The Christmas Guest • Maria J. McIntosh

... your doubts tend, you arrogant sage, who renounce humility, the most beautiful adornment of earthly virtues? You abandoned the friendly shelter of credulous simplicity to wander in the desert of doubt. You have seen this dead space from which the living gods have departed. Will you traverse it, you insignificant worm, who crawl in the dust of your pitiful profanation of the ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various

... wings and weave it into their nests of coarse sticks; the fox barks it, the cattle low it, and every mountain path leads to its haunts. I am not a spectator of, but a participator in it. It is not an adornment; its roots strike to the centre ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs

... appearance, I consented to have what was left of it tightly curled with a pair of tongs. I cannot say that I shared in any sensible degree the pleasure which this operation seemed to give to the artist. But when I got back to the ship the sight of my adornment kept my messmates in an uproar for the rest ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke

... round the head in manly fashion, not in the flowing love locks that some in those days affected. The dress he wore was very simple, and somewhat faded, and in his cap a little silver swan was fastened, forming the only adornment on his person. ...
— In the Wars of the Roses - A Story for the Young • Evelyn Everett-Green

... dealt out blankets and calicoes, bacon and beef, coffee, flour, and sugar. Such redoubtables as Red Dog, Little Big Man, Prowling Wolf, and Kills Asleep were swaggering about, as were their young men, in plethora of savage adornment and "store clothes." Their squaws and children were warm and fat and garbed in attractive motley. Even their dogs were in better fettle than the social exiles of the Spotted Tail school, now in rags and dependent for their daily bread on what the agent ...
— Under Fire • Charles King

... conditions imposed upon us by nature, and we have to make the best of them. And I think that the greatest mistake those of us who are interested in the progress of free thought can make is to overlook these limitations, and to deck ourselves with the dogmatic feathers which are the traditional adornment of our opponents. Let us be content with rational certainty, leaving irrational certainties to those who like to muddle their minds with them. I cannot see my way to say that demons are impossibilities; but I am not more certain about anything, than I am that the ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley

... Barclay saw Watts McHurdie under his mushroom hat; Martin Culpepper in his long-tailed coat; Philemon Ward, tall, fair-skinned, blue-eyed, slim, and sturdy; skinny, nervous Lycurgus Mason and husky Gabriel Carnine from Minneola; Jake Dolan in his shirt sleeves, without adornment of any kind, except the gold horseshoe pinned on his shirt bosom; Daniel Frye, the pride of an admiring family, in his best home-made clothes; Henry Schnitzler, Oscar Fernald, and nearly a hundred other men, to the boy's eyes so familiar then, ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White

... seemed nervous and excited. Now he is fond of getting the talk into his own hands, and is obviously conscious that he has at least one interested listener. Once or twice I have seen marks of special attention to personal adornment, a ruffled shirt-bosom, one day, and a diamond pin in it,—not so very large as the Koh-i-noor's, but more lustrous. I mentioned the death's-head ring he wears on his right hand. I was attracted by a very handsome red stone, a ruby or carbuncle or ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)

... your letter, I can assure you that you must not conceive me to be wanting in those finer feelings which are the chief adornment of humanity. It is true that for some years, absorbed as I have been in affairs of the highest importance, I have seldom taken a pen in hand, for which I can assure you that I have been reproached by many des plus charmantes of your charming sex. At the present moment I lie abed (having stayed ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle

... the primitive use Of the first suit of clothing by Adam and Eve Was not for adornment with trappings profuse, But as ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd

... P'hra Paramendr Maha Mongkut, the late Supreme King, contributed interesting souvenirs to the enlargement and adornment ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens

... est he only laughs, the little scoffer! He is always saying "Further," or "Forward." Moreover, he is not hard to please. He takes every rebuff; picks up every windfall. For instance, when the Church throws out nature as impure and doubtworthy, Satan fastens on her for his own adornment. Nay, more; he employs her, and makes her useful to him as the fountain-head of the arts; thus accepting the awful name with which others would brand him; to wit, the Prince ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet

... sunshine, where groves, temples, and colonnades were pictured in endless vistas of beauty. The furniture of the chamber was of regal magnificence. Nothing that luxury could desire, or art furnish, had been spared in its adornment. On a sofa lay a guitar, and beside it a scarf and a dainty glove fit for the hand of the ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... ideal, of its flocks, and orchards, and wild honey; the dangers of its hunters; its weariness in noonday heat; its children, agile as the goats they tend, who run, in their picturesque rags, across the solitary wanderer's path, to startle him, in the unfamiliar upper places; its one adornment and solace being the dance to the homely shepherd's pipe, cut by Pan first from the ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater

... overgrown pasture lot. The father may be the poorest of architects, but as he patiently sits brooding over the green, speckled eggs, his beautiful rosy breast just showing above the grassy rim, he is a succulent adornment for any ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan

... a word of the qualities that to his friends were his great adornment than about his colossal enterprises or the energy with which he heaved them into being; his energy that was like a force of nature, so that if he had ever "retired" from the work he loved (a thing incredible) companies might have been formed, in the land so skilful ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman

... and mineral. Conducive to travel; dreaded by all with whom it comes in contact; an article of personal adornment; when misplaced, causes terrible disasters; false; beaten, hardened, and fire-tested; of various colors; preferred when green and flexible; constantly changed, and changing others; its ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, September 1878, No. 11 • Various

... masterpiece; his sword-guard is an onyx; he has on his finger a large diamond which he flashes into all eyes, and which is perfection; he lacks none of those curious trifles which are worn about one as much for show as for use; and he does not stint himself either of all sorts of adornment befitting a young man who has married an old millionnaire. You really pique my curiosity: I positively must see such precious articles as those. Send me that coat and those jewels of Philemon's; you can keep the person. Thou'rt ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... to the adornment of the person is a barbarism all must allow; but that the pride which prompts the Esquimaux to stuff bits of stone through a hole in his cheek, is a jot less refined than that which urges the dowager-duchess to thrust coloured ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

... hotel. It was a new one, the latest creation of a feverish progress in hotel-building which had covered five years and as many squares with large showy erections, utterly beyond the needs of the community, yet each superior in size and adornment to its predecessor. It struck him as being the one evidence of an abiding faith in the future of the metropolis that he had seen in nothing else. As he entered its frescoed hall that afternoon he was suddenly reminded, ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte

... by-ways for dirty, ragged, hatless, shoeless, and godless children, whom they will hale into the Sunday-school; they will shine with unsurpassed skill in the manufacture of slippers for the rector; they will exhibit a fiery enthusiasm in the decoration and adornment of the church at Christmas and Easter festivals. Far be the thought that would deny praise to the mild raptures and delicate aspirations of gentle natures such as Cooper drew. But in novels, at least, one longs for a (p. 281) ruddier ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury

... birds flitting about the garden. A saying of Montaigne's came into my head: "I neither love nor esteem sadness, although the world has invested it, at a given price, with the honor of its particular favor. They dress up in it wisdom, virtue, conscience. Stupid and absurd adornment." ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... of personal decoration was highly developed among them, and all branches of nature were called upon to minister to their desire for ornament. Shells, pierced and strung separately or in masses, were perhaps their favourite adornment, but close on these follow beads and pendants of almost every conceivable substance, bone, horn, stone, clay, nuts, beans, copper, ...
— Rough Stone Monuments and Their Builders • T. Eric Peet

... known. The paper is white, the type new and clear, the illustrations excellent, the volumes of convenient size, the notes placed at the foot of the page, and the text enriched with the author's latest corrections. It is called the "Household Edition"; and we certainly think it would be a greater adornment, and should be considered a more indispensable necessity, than numerous articles of expensive furniture, which, in too many households, take ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various

... neck-pendants, proved in their workmanship the deftness of the goldsmith's art. Cloaks were often fastened with golden buckles of curious and exquisite form, set sometimes with rough jewels and inlaid with enamel. The bronze boar-crest on the warrior's helmet, the intricate adornment of the warrior's shield, tell like the honour in which the smith was held their tale of industrial art. The curiously twisted glass goblets, so common in the early graves of Kent, are shewn by their form to be of English workmanship. It is only in the English pottery, hand-made, ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green

... p. 365, this "raised ornament" is described as "a very curious, and, for the Pyramid, perfectly unique adornment, of a semicircular form, raised about one inch above the general surface, and bevelled off on either side and ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson

... Bekhtzeman; 'that is indeed my belief.' And Khedidan said, 'By Allah, then, thou errest in this thy belief! Woe and again woe to him whose trust is in other than God! Indeed, this army is appointed only for adornment and majesty, and victory is from God alone. I too, O Bekhtzeman, believed aforetime that victory was in the multitude of men, and an enemy came out against me with eight hundred men, whilst I had ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne

... It is the purpose of my life to restore to them the holiness of the ancient Church; to rescue them from the snare of traitors to the faith, whom men call priests. They shall learn through me that the Church knew no adornment once, but the presence of the pure; that the priest craved no finer vestment than his holiness; that the Gospel, which once taught humility and now raises dispute, was in former days the rule of faith—sufficient for all wants, powerful over all difficulties. ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins

... hoping to obtain employment in a trade which, owing to a caprice of fashion, was just then in an inflated condition. This was the business of making steel buckles, and other articles of polished steel for personal adornment. In this he was very successful, and soon after his arrival in the town, he took a small house in Bread Street, a little way down on the right from Newhall Street, and here he started business for himself. He had no capital, but he had great skill. Mr. S.A. Goddard, ...
— Personal Recollections of Birmingham and Birmingham Men • E. Edwards

... they touch. One meeting of a "sewing society" up in Canada, where this tea was served, resulted in two law-suits for slander, four black eyes that were not originally of that color, the expulsion of the minister, and the abrupt removal from the top of the sexton's head of all capillary adornment. ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage

... by the bedside. The two women formed a striking contrast in types: the strong, rugged, practical country lady, and the fragile feminine devotee of beauty and personal adornment, who, in the course of time, was to succeed the other as the mistress of the moat-house. The difference went far beyond externals; there was a wide psychological gulf between them—the difference between a woman of healthy mind and calm, equable ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees

... from the gentle eyes on the choice silver of the dining-room, on her blue antique china, on the costly, tasteful accessories of the drawing-room, and, indeed, on all the well chosen appointments of the quietly elegant home. Interest in her own person and its adornment had been gradually diverted toward Winifred, whose beauty, grace of manner, and accomplishments, were an unfailing joy. Now she sighed in quiet gratitude to the vague deity known as Providence for Winifred's peculiarly sweet gift. As to the sermon of the morning, she was ...
— The First Soprano • Mary Hitchcock

... horses up yonder have made journeys, like the bronze horse in the fairy tale: they have come hither, and gone hence, and have returned again. Do you notice the variegated splendour of the walls and windows? It looks as if Genius had followed the caprices of a child, in the adornment of these singular temples. Do you see the winged lion on the pillar? The gold glitters still, but his wings are tied—the lion is dead, for the king of the sea is dead; the great halls stand desolate, and where gorgeous paintings hung of yore, the naked wall ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen

... of Assembly is a noble structure. The admirably kept and beautifully situated Observatory, the banks, the railway station, and the docks are all excellent. The Botanical Gardens, and the shady avenue dividing them from Government House, would be an adornment to ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey

... and a crowd of people. One cannot help wondering a little what the minds of such fair ladies must consist of, to be thrown off their balance by such outward influences. Etta's eyes gleamed with excitement. She was beautifully dressed in furs, which adornment she was tall and stately enough to carry to full advantage. She held her graceful head with regal hauteur, every inch a princess. She was enjoying her keenest pleasure—a social triumph. No whisper escaped her, no glance, ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman

... enough in quality and condition, for they were the annual gift of a benevolent lady in the neighbourhood; but, being made to accommodate his taste, both known and traditional, they were somewhat peculiar in cut and adornment. Both coat and trousers were of a dark grey cloth; but the former, which, in its shape, partook of the military, had a straight collar of yellow, and narrow cuffs of the same; while upon both sleeves, about the ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 1 • George MacDonald

... The martial spirit and love of the sea are typical of the nation that has raised her flag in every clime. The chief qualities of the poetry are earnestness, somberness, and strength, rather than delicacy of touch, exuberance of imagination, or artistic adornment. ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck

... and strongly marked features, appears. His countenance beams with a sunny smile, and a perpetual dimple is on his broad, red cheek. He is evidently an opulent elderly gentleman, comfortable in circumstances, and well-to-do in the world. He is not unmindful of the adornment of his person, for he is richly, not to say gaudily, dressed; and that he indulges to a reasonable extent in the pleasures of the table may be inferred from the joyous and oily manner in which he rubs his stomach, by way of informing the audience that he is going home ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens

... blue, emerald green, deep blue in patches and in long irregularly shaped points. Here are Como, Maggiore, Lugano and Windermere all in one, though as yet free from the houses and artificial gardens on the slopes. But Nature such as this needs none of man's adornment to make ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James

... and flower. The banker's purse was ever open for all this renovation, but Martine jealously persisted in his resolve to meet every expense himself. Witnessing his gladness and satisfaction, they let him have his way, he meanwhile exulting over Helen's absorbed interest in the adornment ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe

... in that midst their sportive pennons waved Thousands of angels, in resplendence each Distinct and quaint adornment. At their glee And carol smiled the Lovely One of heaven That joy was in the eyes ...
— Fra Angelico • J. B. Supino

... great shrine standing in the midst of the ruins to inspire one with an idea of its greatness; and, in the museum above, the heroic figures from its two pediments have been restored and set up in such wise as to reproduce the external adornment of ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII - Italy and Greece, Part Two • Various

... literature? Could any thing more forcibly depict the real character of the race, materialized, as it were, in its exterior institutions? We were right in saying that among no other race was what is generally a mere adornment to a nation, raised to the dignity of a social and political instrument as it was among the Celts. Hence it was impossible for persecution and oppression to destroy it, and the Celtic nature to-day ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud

... form of sensuous rather than intellectual pursuits. Her time was devoted not to practising, but to playing; to poetry, and to dreamy musings. She wove words to music at the piano by the hour together, lolled about in languorous attitudes, was more painfully concerned than ever about her personal adornment, delighted in scents and in luxurious imaginings, and altogether fed her feelings to such excess, that if her moral nature were not actually weakened, it was ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand

... came from behind the grub shack a torrent of abusive speech florid with profane language and other adornment and in a ...
— The Major • Ralph Connor

... side she was a constant delight, the last possible refinement, he told himself, of instinct and effect. She was incapable of the least vulgarity; never for an instant did she flag from the necessity of beauty, never had he seen her too weary for an adornment laborious in a hundred difficult conventions. She was, too, a continuous source of entertainment, even as his wife she never ceased to be a spectacle; his consciousness of her as ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer

... ruffles made a sufficiently picturesque attire for Hannah, whose well-silvered hair set off her still sparkling eyes and clear healthy skin. She appeared in this unwonted finery on Thanksgiving morning to her admiring family, having added a last touch of adornment by a quaint old jet necklace, that glittered on the pure lawn neckkerchief with as good effect as a chain of diamonds and much more fitness. Betty, in her striped blue-and-white chintz, a clean dimity petticoat, and a blue ribbon round her short brown curls, ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various

... would go to the ends of the earth, to places the miner never heard of, turning the wheels of industry whose products the miner would never see. It would make precious silks for fine ladies, it would cut precious jewels for their adornment; it would carry long trains of softly upholstered cars across deserts and over mountains; it would drive palatial steamships out of wintry tempests into gleaming tropic seas. And the fine ladies in their precious silks and jewels would eat and sleep and laugh and lie at ease—and ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair

... through the book—the drunk does not come on till the last third, where what I take to be Calvinism and its God begins to show up and shine red and hideous in the glow from the fires of hell, their only right and proper adornment. By God I was ashamed ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... for her time, a bank for all the money she possesses; therefore we find her in the midst of papers covered with figures, containing accounts of ragged schools, which she is labouring to reckon up, in the simplest of morning dresses, without ornament or extraneous adornment. She is somewhat paler and thinner than she used to be amongst the breezy hills of Wales, but her eyes are brighter, and the expression ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale

... important for us to note about this dynamic sexual energy in the constitution that while it is very firmly and organically rooted, and quite indestructible, it assumes very various shapes. On the physical side all the characters of sexual distinction and all the beauties of sexual adornment are wrought by the power furnished by the co-operating furnaces of the glands, and so also, on the psychic side, are emotions and impulses which range from the simplest longings for sensual contact ...
— Little Essays of Love and Virtue • Havelock Ellis

... such a princely hostelry as the "Langham" of London, it would be as a peasant's hut to a palace. Withal, in every way comfortable; and what it may lack in architectural style is made up in natural adornment; a fine effect, produced by trees ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid

... Society, and knowing out of what small seeds of cause are produced great revolutions, and wholly new conditions of intercourse, sees from this simple thought how the carriage of an umbrella came to indicate frugality, judicious regard for bodily welfare, and scorn for mere outward adornment, and, in one word, all those homely and solid virtues implied in the term RESPECTABILITY. Not that the umbrella's costliness has nothing to do with its great influence. Its possession, besides symbolising (as we have already indicated) the change from wild ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... period hath passed they bring it to completion. Yet all the beauty of paintings, all the grace of statues, all the grandeur of cathedrals are as nothing compared to the painting of that inner picture, the chiseling of that inner manhood, the adornment of that inner temple, that is scarcely begun when the physical life ends. How majestic the full disclosure of an ideal manhood! With what patience must man wait for its completion! Here lies the hope of immortality; it does not yet appear ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis

... approaches and Mademoiselle becomes solicitous as to ribbons and personal adornment. She pleads earnestly for long gowns, and the first one is never satisfying unless it drags. If she can do her hair in a twist "just like mamma's," and see the adored one pass the house, while she sits at the window with sewing or book, ...
— The Spinster Book • Myrtle Reed

... beauty of decoration should not be so much in the richness and variety of material as in its comfort, simplicity, and the harmony of its tints—the main features being the fitness of each article to the needs of the room. In these days of so many advantages much can be done in adornment by ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous

... explain how or when I have acted in a manner that was not straightforward," she asked with laborious politeness. "Or do I understand that a monopoly of cutting up chintz curtains for personal adornment has been bestowed on you by ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson

... exterior of the mansion. Interiorly it was richly ornamented and splendidly furnished. The drawing-room was of noble proportions and admirable adornment. The library was well filled with choice books. The proprietor was fond of chemistry, and had an excellent laboratory; he enjoyed astronomy, and possessed a powerful telescope; he had a passion for music, had composed many airs, ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... memoria, and pronuntiatio, and how to manage each; he must know how to apply inventio in each of the six divisions of the speech: exordium, narratio, divisio, confirmatio, confutatio, conclusio. On the subject of adornment of style a relatively small task lay in memorizing illustrations of some sixty figures of speech—and so on ad infinitum. Inane cymbalon juventutis is indeed a fitting commentary on such memory tasks. The end of the poem cited betrays the fact that the poet had not been ...
— Vergil - A Biography • Tenney Frank

... doubt her knowledge of the damning fact. He held it for proved that she was dressed to leave him; and the sight of her, refreshed and rejuvenated, gave the last thrust to his tottering sense. He demanded with such savageness the meaning of her adornment, that the indignant amazement with which she turned on him was real, and ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson

... oak-pannelled background, hung a dress of grey velvet which was the apogee and culmination of Flamby's dreams. For not all the precepts of the Painted Portico can quench in the female bosom woman's innate love of adornment. Assuredly Eve wore flowers in ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer

... Wonder Island, that place attracted immigrants from the north; they brought their families, and began to engage in the business of exporting the fruits and the fibres, as well as the ores and the dyes from the island. From the white women the native women learned the new art of dressing, and of adornment. ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Adventures on Strange Islands • Roger Thompson Finlay

... nor even smile, talked cleverly too, but she picked her words too obviously. Her daughter, the young Princess Sophia, now Grand- Duchess of Saxe-Weimar, was clever too. I was watching her dance at a ball one night, wearing a pretty gown, the chief adornment of which was an eastern scarf, when her father, to whom I was talking, said, "Marmotte (her pet name in the family) looks like a Bayadere to-day." And indeed she had all the grace and ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville

... the Lord. That is the view we want. We gaze contemptuously on the little one-story lodge just inside the park gates, and fail to get a glimpse of the magnificent mansion, with its wealth of adornment and treasure, that lies a mile among the trees. No wonder that men grow discontented or contemptuous when they mistake the porch for the house. If a man would understand himself and discover his resources and put his hand on ...
— The Threshold Grace • Percy C. Ainsworth

... concealment. Amongst the Ja-luo (northeast corner of Lake Victoria) both sexes when unmarried go naked. A man, when he is a father, wears a cape of goatskin "inadequate for decency." Married women wear only a "tail of strings behind."[1476] The Nandi wear clothing "only for warmth or adornment, not for purposes of decency."[1477] The Acholi, in Uganda, think it beneath masculine dignity to wear anything.[1478] The Vanyoro men are generally clothed in skins. The women, until marriage, wear nothing; after marriage, bark cloth. The Bari men never wear anything. They think it womanish ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner

... a dress of the later years of Louis the Fourteenth's reign, magnificent and severe, of embroidered satin and black velvet, without the adornment ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau

... was introduced to Willy Croup, who had been ordered to go and dress herself that she might appear at the meal. He shook hands with her very cordially, and then looked all around the little dining-room, taking in every feature of its furnishing and adornment. When he had finished, he would have been glad to shake his head again, but this would have ...
— Mrs. Cliff's Yacht • Frank R. Stockton

... town, what could she do but hasten to the Pharisee's house, and brave the cruel, scornful eyes of the eminently respectable people that would meet her there? She carries with her part of the spoils and instruments of her sinful adornment, to devote it to His service; but before she can open the cruse, her heart opens, and the hot tears flow on His feet, inflicting an indignity where she had meant an honour. She has nothing at hand to ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... Duomo and the octagon bell-tower of S. Gottardo. The Certosas of Pavia and Chiaravalle, the palace of Pavia, and a host of minor monuments remain in Milan and its neighbourhood to prove how much a single family performed for the adornment of the cities they had subjugated. And what is true of Milan applies to Italy throughout its length and breadth. The Despots held their power at the price of magnificence in schemes of public utility. So much at least of the free spirit of the communes ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds

... vanity and the love of dress appear to have reached their climax. To this passion for personal adornment they sacrifice everything. Formerly, when none but real pearls and diamonds were worn, many a lady was known to have ruined her husband by the purchase of those costly articles; now, however, thanks ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi

... Then it occurred to him that it was the first time she had appeared at dinner since his arrival at Givre, and the first time, consequently, that he had seen her in evening dress. She was still at the age when the least adornment embellishes; and no doubt the mere uncovering of her young throat and neck had given her back her former brightness. But a second glance showed a more precise reason for his impression. Vaguely though he ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton

... the ladies of the province that their fair rival was indebted for much of the irresistible charm of her appearance to a certain article of dress—an embroidered mantle—which had been wrought by the most skilful artist in London, and possessed even magical properties of adornment. On the present occasion, however, she owed nothing to the witchery of dress, being clad in a riding-habit of velvet which would have appeared stiff and ungraceful on any ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... began to write his "Gesta Penguinorum," Johannes Talpa was already old. The good monk has taken care to tell us this in his book: "My head has long since lost," he says, "its adornment of fair hair, and my scalp resembles those convex mirrors of metal which the Penguin ladies consult with so much care and zeal. My stature, naturally small, has with years become diminished and bent. My white beard gives ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France

... Rome, was, with her whole company, met and murdered, by a horde of heathen Huns, when they had reached Cologne, on their return. My readers may be aware that the supposed bones of the virgins and St Ursula form the ghastly adornment of the church founded in her honour at Cologne. It is absolutely filled with bones, built into the walls, stowed under the pavement, ranged in glass cases about the choir. Hans Memling's is a ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler

... glitter on her little flat child's bosom, but also she had made her a wreath for her head of the spring flowers, and another had she done about her loins. She stood there saying nothing a while, and it seemed to him that she was waiting for him to praise this new-wrought adornment. So he said: "Thou art in fairer guise than when first I saw thee; is there any high-tide toward at ...
— The Sundering Flood • William Morris

... weight. Thinking it was time for you to return here, I spoke to the king, who was in high good-humour, for he had been mightily pleased that morning at some of the figures the monks have wrought in stone for the adornment of his Church of St. Peter; therefore he not only consented to your return, but chided me gently for not having called you up to town before. 'The matter had altogether slipped my mind,' he said; 'I told you ...
— Wulf the Saxon - A Story of the Norman Conquest • G. A. Henty

... upon a scale to correspond with this richness of architectural and artistic adornment, and such was its encouragement to the development of thought and art, that poets, artists, and philosophers flocked thither from all quarters, and for many years Athens stood before the world as the focal point of ...
— Historic Tales, vol 10 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... thing else. They cannot have too many rings, pins, bracelets, and jewels. They spend all their surplus money for these things, and even sometimes pinch themselves in comforts and necessaries, to add to their already abundant supplies. This excessive fondness for dress and articles for personal adornment is a mark of a weak mind. It is seen most strongly in savages, and in people of the lowest stages of refinement and cultivation. The opposite error, though far less common, is equally an error; and though it is not the mark of any weakness of the mind, it certainly denotes a degree of perversion ...
— Rollo in Geneva • Jacob Abbott

... her hands, and two or three heavy silver bracelets are quite commonly worn. Feathers, mother-of-pearl buttons, puffin bills, abalone, dentalum and other shells, silver pieces, and deer toes, are among their favorite articles of adornment. ...
— Official report of the exploration of the Queen Charlotte Islands - for the government of British Columbia • Newton H. Chittenden

... apartment which, on a casual survey, conveyed an impression that it was available for almost any purpose save the adornment of the feminine person. In its hours of perfect order nothing pertaining to the toilet was visible; even the inevitable mirrors with their accessories were arranged in a roomy recess not noticeable from the door, lighted by a window of its own, ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy

... Archidei Aggeivitch, a great Tsar indeed. We came to sell, to buy, to exchange; moreover, we have gifts for the king and his princess. We do hope the king will favor us and will accept these trifles; if not for himself, at least for the adornment of his court's ...
— Folk Tales from the Russian • Various

... to the white linen cloth in the fourth paragraph of this rubric, means 'beautiful,' and does not exclude adornment ...
— Ritual Conformity - Interpretations of the Rubrics of the Prayer-Book • Unknown

... early part of this century brought from Greece by Lord Elgin, purchased by the English government, and placed in the British Museum, where, preserved from further dilapidation, they stand as indisputable evidence of the perfection of Greek art. The grandest adornment of the temple was the colossal statue of Minerva in the eastern apartment of the cella, forty feet in height, composed of gold and ivory; the inner walls of the chamber were decorated with paintings, and the whole temple was a repository ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord

... houses of the country, was built of hewn stone and very solid. Stone, too, was its foundation, stone its background. Not a blade of grass sprouted among the broken mineral about the walls, not a flower adorned the windows. Over the door, by way of sole adornment, the Mormon Eye was rudely sculptured; I had been brought up to view that emblem from my childhood; but since the night of our escape, it had acquired a new significance, and set me shrinking. The smoke rolled voluminously from the chimney top, its edges ruddy with the fire; and from the far corner ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson

... look as if I was shod in gold. But the High Street at Low Heath would presently be sparkling with a hundred pairs of such boots, so what mattered an old lady's temporary astonishment? It was the same about the hat—indeed worse. For at the sight of that particularly sporting adornment, she threw up her ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed

... was next produced, and the emeralds, it was explained, had once adorned a crown. Deep green they were, encrusted in their diamond setting; costly, unique; but they left Robinette cold, though like most American women, she loved precious stones as an adornment. One of those emeralds, she was thinking, was worth fifty times more than old Lizzie Prettyman's cottage: the sale of one of them would have averted that other sale which was to cause so much distress to ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... to a philosopher and one that he may glory in. For poverty has long been the handmaid of philosophy; frugal and sober, she is strong in her weakness and is greedy for naught save honour; the possession of her is a prophylactic against wealth, her mien is free from care, and her adornment simple; her counsels are beneficent, she puffs no man up with pride, she corrupts no man with passions beyond his control, she maddens no man with the lust for power, she neither desires nor can indulge in the pleasures of feasting and of love. These sins and their like are usually the ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius

... creeping in and out among the rocks, hunting for tidbits. Here also was the mountain chickadee, found at this season in the heights hard by the alpine zone, singing his dulcet minor strain, "Te-te-re-e-e, te-eet," sometimes adding another "te-eet" by way of special emphasis and adornment. Oh, the sweet little piper piping only for Pan! The loneliness of the place was accentuated by the sad cadenzas of the mountain hermit thrushes. Swallows of some kind—cliff-swallows, no doubt—were silently weaving invisible filigree across ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser

... rapacity of the passionate, clear-minded, Southern races, wanting in the misty idealism of the Northerners, who at the smallest encouragement dream of nothing less than the conquest of the earth. Sotillo was fond of jewels, gold trinkets, of personal adornment. After a moment he turned about, and with a commanding gesture made all his officers fall back. He laid down the watch on the table, then, negligently, pushed his hat ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad

... China; Mackinnon & Mackenzie had one or two small steamers, but the trade of the port was carried on chiefly by sailing vessels. These used to lie three and four abreast in the river from the "Pepper Box" up to where the Eden Gardens now are, and they added considerably to the attraction and adornment of this particular section of the Strand. There were no docks or jetties, and all loading and unloading had to be done over the side into ...
— Recollections of Calcutta for over Half a Century • Montague Massey

... If not above, at least I am beyond All common dangers. No, you shall not come. I have some questions I would ask myself; And in the sullen, melancholy flow O' the unromantic Thames, that has been witness Of many tragical realities, Bare of adornment as its cold stone stairs, I may ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe

... the same general law. Women express beauty in themselves; jewels are for their ornament; and rooms are furnished as a setting for themselves. The lives of millions of workers go to the adornment of women. In painting they sometimes excel, but a Madame Le Brun does her best work when she paints herself and her child, and when Angelica Kauffmann would paint a vestal virgin, she drapes a veil over her own ...
— Woman in Modern Society • Earl Barnes

... togged out in wrappings that were simply out of sight, Tell you what, I was embarrassed, and somehow I couldn't keep From feeling like a burro in a pretty flock of sheep. Every step I made was awkward and I blushed a fiery red Like the principal adornment of a turkey gobbler's head. The ladies said 'twas seldom that they had had the chance To see an old-time ...
— Songs of the Cattle Trail and Cow Camp • Various

... romance, its shears and its labels: in fine, every one of those positive things by whose aid, and by some adroit flourishing of them, the nimbus known as a mysterious halo is produced about a gentleman's head. And a highly alluring adornment it is! We are all given to lose our solidity and fly at it; although the faithful mirror of fiction has been showing us latterly that a too superhuman beauty has disturbed popular belief in the bare beginnings of the existence of heroes: but this, very likely, is nothing more than ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... attaches people to the church as good preaching. But our adversaries preach their people out of the churches; for they teach nothing of the necessary parts of Christian doctrine; they narrate the legends of saints and other fables.] And the true adornment of the churches is godly, useful, and clear doctrine, the devout use of the Sacraments, ardent prayer, and the like. Candles, golden vessels [tapers, altar-cloths, images], and similar adornments are becoming, but they ...
— The Apology of the Augsburg Confession • Philip Melanchthon

... think that the greatest mistake those of us who are interested in the progress of free thought can make is to overlook these limitations, and to deck ourselves with the dogmatic feathers which are the traditional adornment of our opponents. Let us be content with rational certainty, leaving irrational certainties to those who like to muddle their ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley

... even take an airing, however, without some discussion with Miss Granger. That young lady was established in the drawing-room—the vast foreign chamber, which never looked like a home—illuminating a new set of Gothic texts for the adornment of her school. She sorely missed the occupation and importance afforded her by the model village. In Paris there was no one afraid of her; no humble matrons to quail as her severe eyes surveyed wall and ceiling, floor and surbase. And being of a temperament which required perpetual ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon

... they should grow, among dry hill and rock scenery, or on the sea-coast—for they are only to be found growing in moist and shadowed places, and usually in the vicinity of a brook, to which they form a very apposite adornment.—But here we are at home, and there stands Fanny at my door with her load of treasure, George having trotted her home by a shorter cut than that which I had followed; and unless Jack or Sam can honour me with their company the next time I go flower-picking, I shall surely, as the Scotch say, 'ride ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 427 - Volume 17, New Series, March 6, 1852 • Various

... my constitutional governorship is nearly over, and now that I am practically out of harness, I mean to assume autocratic airs, and confess to you that I have sometimes wished for the benefit and adornment of your city to become its dictator with plenary power of raising federal and local taxes for any object which may have seemed best to my despotic will. But I have faith in popular rule, and believe that when I next visit Ottawa ...
— Memories of Canada and Scotland - Speeches and Verses • John Douglas Sutherland Campbell

... Again the sound broke the stillness, as a dim form lifted itself clumsily from the ditch and came towards her. Presently she felt an inquiring touch, and, turning, found herself face to face with a male hedgehog that had followed her path through the undergrowth. Nature had not been lavish in his adornment; like the female, he was a plain little creature, brown and grey, fitted to sleep unnoticed among the wind-blown leaves and ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees

... fate." Passing to the description of a village community of higher civilization, the author continues: "The chief features of such a village are fewer thrashings, a more perceptible tendency to personal adornment on the part of the women, a larger number of bachelors, and the existence even of old maids—i. e., in the sense only of unmarried women. In such villages fetes are held each Sunday, and all the village games, accompanied by much kissing, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various

... as the great Heidelburgh Tun of the Sperm Whale. And as that famous great tierce is mystically carved in front, so the whale's vast plaited forehead forms innumerable strange devices for the emblematical adornment of his wondrous tun. Moreover, as that of Heidelburgh was always replenished with the most excellent of the wines of the Rhenish valleys, so the tun of the whale contains by far the most precious of all his oily vintages; namely, the highly-prized spermaceti, in ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville

... the high arches, soft music whispered plaintive ecstasy. In the center of a throng of recently arrived guests, and positively cropping with broadcloth and Marseilles, beamed the host. Close at his side, radiant in her beauty, faultless in its adornment, stood the daughter. In one, a magnificent swallow-tail, fleecy shirt-frill, and snowy gloves had stamped their wearer with a look of hopeless absurdity; in the other, exquisite taste, gentle dignity, and true courtesy bore the impress ...
— Trifles for the Christmas Holidays • H. S. Armstrong

... closing in, when he returned homeward: laden with flowers which he had culled, with peculiar care, for the adornment of the sick chamber. As he walked briskly along the road, he heard behind him, the noise of some vehicle, approaching at a furious pace. Looking round, he saw that it was a post-chaise, driven at great speed; and as the horses ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens

... beautiful chestnut hair was unfortunately (in compliance with the custom of the country) tinged with a reddish dye. It was combed to the nape of the neck, and a red woolen band was closely twisted round it, so that the most beautiful adornment of a female head was converted into a long, stiff rouleau, which either dangled down her back, or was hidden in the folds of her dress. On her head she wore a small, closely-fitting fez. Her sister, a pretty, smiling ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various

... needed no adornment to emphasize the attractions of her gorgeous self. She was one of those rare women who are rendered more attractive by the absence of all ornament and her dark eyes were more luminous and brilliant than any jewel she might ...
— Princess Zara • Ross Beeckman

... word is already much; three—a whole phrase—is inadmissible. Wed yourself to a clean austerity: that is your force. Wear a linen ephod, splendidly candid. Arrange its folds, but do not fasten it with any brooch. I swear to you, in your talking robes, there should be no patch of adornment; and where the subject forces, let it force you no further than it must; and be ready with a twinkle of your pleasantry. Yours is a fine tool, and I see so well how to hold it; I wonder if you see how to hold mine? But then I am to the neck in prose, and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... kind to her uncle and to her; kind with an infinite delicacy of tact and feeling. He seemed to understand the instinct for beauty and adornment that sent her roving to her mother's trunks. He understood her dreams and her hunger. He understood the spirit that had led her to make the garret a sort of shrine to be swept and dusted, to be kept apart and precious. There ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple

... at seeing True Blue was only surpassed by that of Paul. He received his old friends in his cabin, which, as True Blue glanced round it, showed that a considerable amount of feminine taste had been exercised in its adornment. ...
— True Blue • W.H.G. Kingston

... busy levee scene, with the flag adornment referred to, will agree that there was something picturesque as well as noisy about the old river days, and will be inclined to regret, and almost deplore, the fact that things are not, from a river man's standpoint, what ...
— My Native Land • James Cox

... place apart." So he brought her into the room behind the shop where she stained his hands and decked his wrists and plaited his hair, after which she clad him in a slave-girl's habit and adorned him after the fairest fashion of woman's adornment, till he was as one of the Houris of the Garden of Heaven, and when she saw him thus she exclaimed, "Blessed be Allah, best of Creators! By Allah, thou art handsomer than the damsel.[FN17] Now, walk with thy left shoulder forwards and thy right well behind, and sway thy hips from ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton

... are often repeated in the ballads, just as in the talk of the common man, for the sake of emphasis, but there is neither complexity of plot or characterization nor attempt at decorative literary adornment—the story and the emotion which it calls forth are all in all. It is this simple, direct fervor of feeling, the straightforward outpouring of the authors' hearts, that gives the ballads their power and entitles them to consideration among the ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher

... surprise was great. At first, before entering, at the sight of the humble thatched roof, he imagined that he was about to breakfast like a true anchorite, and began to fear seriously that the marchioness had not displayed much taste in the adornment of her retreat. He entered the court and proceeded straight to the door of the hermitage. At this instant a young peasant girl advanced to meet him; as she was well made, delicate, and pretty looking, the king began to find the hermitage more to his taste. With deep reverence ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various

... early lunch for herself, and a fire in the red room, and fresh flowers for its adornment; and with these last she was busyhumming over them the spell of an old German choralwhen Rollo came in. The air was dainty with fragrance and sweet sounds. He smiled at it, and at Hazel; but after the first ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner

... the cheeks, which is suggestive of cabalistic import. It could not be ascertained, however, whether such is the case. The lines drawn on the chin were exactly like the ones I have seen on Moorish women in Morocco. Another outlandish attempt at adornment was witnessed at Cape Blossom in a woman who wore a bunch of colored beads suspended from the septum of her nose. These habits, however, hardly seem so revolting as the use of the labret by the "Mazinka" men on the American coast, of whom it is related that a sailor seeing ...
— The First Landing on Wrangel Island - With Some Remarks on the Northern Inhabitants • Irving C. Rosse

... our island; since the localities where it has been found in Great Britain are by no means few; and in early times each was richer than at present. In England, from Alston Moor; in Scotland, from the head-waters of the Clyde; and in Ireland, from the Avonmore, gold for the adornment of even the hunters of the bone spear-head, and the woodsmen of the stone-hatchet might have been procured; and the simple art of working it, although it may possibly have been Gallic in origin, may quite as easily have been native. The chief gold ornaments, torcs, armillae, and fibulae have ...
— The Ethnology of the British Islands • Robert Gordon Latham

... monkey god Hanuman. Retreating from Lanka, where the wicked Ravana, having anointed the brave hero's tail with some combustible stuff set it on fire, Hanuman, with a single leap through the air, reached Nassik, his fatherland. And here the noble adornment of the monkey's back, burned almost entirely during the voyage, crumbled into ashes, and from every sacred atom of these ashes, fallen to the ground, there rose a temple.... And, indeed, when seen from the mountain, these numberless ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky

... love, in its pure domestic sense, is an impossibility in their lot; religion in any sense is another impossibility; and their whole intensity of existence, therefore, is concentrated on the question of sensuous enjoyment, and that personal adornment which is necessary to secure it. When the great, ruling country in the world of taste and fashion has fallen into such a state that the virtual leaders of fashion are women of this character, it is not to be supposed that the fashions ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various

... her sister (the Jessamy Bride), in playing loo. This letter, which plays so archly, yet kindly, with some of poor Goldsmith's peculiarities, and bespeaks such real ladylike regard for him, requires a word or two of annotation. The spring-velvet suit alluded to appears to have been a gallant adornment (somewhat in the style of the famous bloom-colored coat) in which Goldsmith had figured in the preceding month of May—the season of blossoms—for, on the 21st of that month we find the following entry in the chronicle of Mr. William ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving

... their pedestals, and breaking their exquisite marble limbs with brutish mallets, it was not, we may be sure, of the danger to their precious souls they were thinking, but of their patrician masters who had worshipped these fair images, and paid great sums to famous sculptors for such adornment of their sanctuaries. Perhaps it was human enough, for to those mobs beauty had long been associated with oppression. Yet how painful to picture those golden marbles, in all their immortal fairness, ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne

... Hillview and Bella Bathgate. Bella is almost like a stage-caricature of a Scotswoman, so dour she is and uncompromising and she positively glories in the drab ugliness of her rooms. Ugliness means to Bella respectability; any attempt at adornment is 'daft-like.' ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)

... between the door into the first court of the inferior class and the steps leading to the sixth, the visitor must observe the first time he goes there a doorway without a door or any architectural adornment, a square hole of the meanest type. Through this the judges and barristers find their way into the passages, into the guardhouse, down into the prison cells, and to ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac

... immaculate gentleman, immaculately dressed, and he was not the only item in the program. Coton Manor would be thrown in, and there were other agreeable accessories. Mrs. Fazakerly's tastes were all of the expensive sort, and her ambition aimed at something vaster than the mere adornment of her own person. In her household she displayed a talent, not to say a genius, for luxurious order. But a little dinner at the cottage opposite the lodge gates had convinced Durant that this elegance of hers was of a fragile and perishable sort. The peculiar genius of Mrs. ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair

... means of ladders that can be drawn up, which are made from two bamboos. Above are their open batalanes [galleries] used for household duties; the parents and [grown] children live together. There is little adornment and finery in the houses, which are called ...
— History of the Philippine Islands Vols 1 and 2 • Antonio de Morga

... it was the most beautiful necklace she had ever seen. But there was a peculiar pendant attached to it—in the shape of a fleur-de-lis—of larger pearls, that would distinguish it among any number of such articles of adornment. ...
— Ruth Fielding and the Gypsies - The Missing Pearl Necklace • Alice B. Emerson

... would under-peep her lids To see the enclosed lights, now canopied Under these windows white and azure, lac'd With blue of heaven's own tinct. But my design, To note the chamber. I will write all down: Such and such pictures; there the window; such The adornment of her bed; the arras; figures, Why, such and such; and the contents o' the story. Ah, but some natural notes about her body, Above ten thousand meaner moveables Would testify, to enrich mine inventory. O sleep, thou ape of death, lie dull upon her! And be her sense ...
— Cymbeline • William Shakespeare [Tudor edition]

... respect among the faithful." A curious custom of the Middle Ages was that of imbedding three hairs from the king's beard in the wax of the seal, in order to give greater solemnity to the document. Another instance of the value placed on this adornment of nature by some nations comes to us in the story of the Eastern potentate to whom the King of England had sent a man without a beard as his ambassador. The Eastern monarch flew into a passion when the beardless visitor was presented. "Had my master measured wisdom by the beard," was the ...
— At the Sign of the Barber's Pole - Studies In Hirsute History • William Andrews

... stated, the exterior parts of the body, in which the female sex organs are located, are covered with hair for their adornment and protection. ...
— Sane Sex Life and Sane Sex Living • H.W. Long

... of progress and unbroken prosperity. His first speech was successful, though florid, but it was on foreign affairs, which permit rhetoric, and in those days demanded at least one Virgilian quotation. In this latter branch of oratorical adornment Ferrars was never deficient. No young man of that time, and scarcely any old one, ventured to address Mr. Speaker without being equipped with a Latin passage. Ferrars, in this respect, was triply armed. Indeed, when he entered ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli









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