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Button   Listen
verb
Button  v. i.  To be fastened by a button or buttons; as, the coat will not button.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Button" Quotes from Famous Books



... have to button my overcoat around my stove, and feed it with coal in a teaspoon, to keep ...
— The Dozen from Lakerim • Rupert Hughes

... of the boys, the captain lumbered towards them, waving a dirty piece of paper. "Read that," he roared, "just brought in by that copper-faced, shoe-button-eyed son of a ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely

... things that ought to, and should, have been; are not those the most melancholy?" She pressed a button and flooded ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath

... up and tried on the coat. It fitted admirably; the waistcoat could be made to button by ripping up the back, and the trousers were perfect; but below were the ragged boots. The German was not disconcerted. Going to the beam where a pair of top-boots hung, he took them off, dusted them carefully, and ...
— The Story of an African Farm • (AKA Ralph Iron) Olive Schreiner

... railway journey. Orchid in your button-hole of course, and a pair of straw-coloured kid gloves, I suppose? I have observed that those are ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn

... to get away from me! I am your garland, Chevalier, and you shall wear me to-day. As for the tall Swede, he has no idea of a fair flower of our sex except to wear it in his button-hole,—this way!" added she, pulling a rose out of a vase and archly adorning the Chevalier's vest ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... twenty thousand men and women, equally divided. The product is twenty million pairs of gloves annually. Much of the work is taken home for execution. The shop is well lighted and the sanitary conditions seem to be all of the very best. We visited the Raymond button factory and the candy factory of Davin & Company. This was a very interesting experience. At the close, or rather before leaving the factory, we were permitted to witness the decoration of a workman who had been in the employment of the company for thirty-five years. It was really an ...
— A Journey Through France in War Time • Joseph G. Butler, Jr.

... logic as irresistible; the musical swing of the stately sentences as harmonious. For two hours and a quarter, unfaltering, unfailing, Mr. G. held the unrivalled audience entranced, and sat down amid a storm of cheering, looking almost as fresh as the posy in his button-hole. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, February 25, 1893 • Various

... a peculiar thrill when he put up his thumb, pressed a button, and wondered what next would happen. Who answered doors down here,—the maid—the cook—the laundress? He felt himself to be very indistinct and vague standing there in the shadow, and tried to ...
— A Man and His Money • Frederic Stewart Isham

... then, and faster than you ever did since you were foaled—confound ye!" With this he spurred his mare furiously up the bank, and went crushing through the dead hedge that surmounted it. He struck his hat, at the same moment, fiercely from his head (it was fast by a black ribbon to his button-hole), and as they lighted by a descent of some two feet on the edge of a grass-field he again drove his spurs into his great fiery mare, all vein and bone. Black Rachel snorted with amazement at the spur, and with warlike delight at finding ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade

... to the side of the lift and pressed a button. The doors closed, and there was a grunting click of heavy machinery settling ...
— Arsene Lupin • Edgar Jepson

... incandescent sheet of flame and the guide may be made as short as desired, and the motion of the gaseous mass be directed by a simple button placed in the center of the burner; thus giving the form shown by Fig. 5, which, however, differs from the previous figure in the fact that the inverted flame is ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 561, October 2, 1886 • Various

... unnecessarily. There are too many necessary chances that have to be taken, in this work." Verkan Vall pressed the button on the hand battery. The globe on the floor flashed and vanished. "Yesterday, five paratimers were arrested. Any or all of them could have had door-activators with them. Stranor Sleth says they were ...
— Temple Trouble • Henry Beam Piper

... has columns of figures, columns of reports and columns of phrases in his head. Press a button and they will pop out. "Have a cigar?" the financier asks. Cigars are lighted. "A rotten day," he says. "Doesn't look as if it will clear up, either, does it?" Then he says, "I guess this is an off day for me. No energy at all. I swear I can't think of ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht

... The timber found here is pitch-pine, shrub oaks, cedar, etcetera, indicative of the poverty of the soil; in the uplands of the rest of the state, hickory, post-oak, and white oaks, etcetera, are the prevailing growth; and in river-bottoms, the cotton tree, sycamore or button-wood, maple, ash, walnut, etcetera, predominate. The south-eastern corner of the state, below Cape Girardeau, and east of the Black River, is a portion of the immense inundated region which borders the Arkansas. A considerable part of this tract is indeed ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat

... to leave, according to my plan? Wrap the muffler well around the lower part of your face, button this second overcoat closely about your neck, and enter the private carriage which I ordered for 'Mr. Lee,' waiting now at the Forty-fifth Street Side. Then drive leisurely to the West Forty-second Street Ferry, where you can catch the late afternoon ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball

... for the twentieth time in the hour, looking, seeking—and suddenly they fell on something—a crushed and rumpled hat of her own, a milliner's masterpiece, laden with florid plumage, lying almost behind him on a couch end where some prying detective had dropped it, with a big, round black button shining dully from the midst of its damaged tulle crown. She knew that button well. It was the imitation-jet head of a hatpin—a steel hatpin—that was ten inches long and ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb

... hat rather wide in the brim; a high stiff checked cravat; a white vest; and lacquered military boots, over which his tightly-strapped trousers fell without a crease. He had white buckskin gloves, a stout silver-headed malacca cane, and carried a choice geranium in his button-hole. ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 2, February, 1891 • Various

... a button on top of the desk, and in response to the summons, a side door opened, and a main in ...
— The Case and The Girl • Randall Parrish

... on the instrument board to assist in starting. Pulling out this button closes a butterfly choker valve (see cut) in the air intake passage of carbureter which restricts the air opening of the carbureter, and consequently produces ...
— Marvel Carbureter and Heat Control - As Used on Series 691 Nash Sixes Booklet S • Anonymous

... with Press and two or three of the other boys to the surgeon's tent. Press kept in the background until the other cases were disposed of, and then stepped forward. His breeches were unbuttoned down to nearly the last button, he was holding them up with his hands, and his stomach protruded like the belly of a brood-sow. "Well, Allender," inquired Dr. Anthony, "egad, what's the matter with you?" Press was careful to put on all the military frills at such a ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell

... understand long before that he had the rating of a second-class able seaman (matelot leger) in the fleet which sailed from Toulon for the conquest of Algeria in the year of grace 1830. And, indeed, I had seen and examined one of the buttons of his old brown, patched coat, the only brass button of the miscellaneous lot, flat and thin, with the words Equipages de ligne engraved on it. That sort of button, I believe, went out with the ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad

... wear a long greatcoat winter and summer, which is very handy, as I never put my arms into the sleeves; they are as good as new, though come Holantide next I've had it these seven years: it holds on by a single button round my neck, cloak fashion. To look at me, you would hardly think "Poor Thady" was the father of Attorney Quirk; he is a high gentleman, and never minds what poor Thady says, and having better than fifteen hundred a year landed estate, ...
— Castle Rackrent • Maria Edgeworth

... for the fairy table that comes at the pressing of a button? It is invariably laden with the most tempting viands, satisfies beyond words, and disappears when the meal is over, leaving behind no problem of leftovers or planning for the next meal! No money, no work, ...
— Everyday Foods in War Time • Mary Swartz Rose

... was, only the slits needed to be a little longer, because the glass was thicker. This was a one-inch eyeglass; that is, it must be an inch from the object or image at which you are looking. He then cut in a piece of paper a round hole about as big as a shirt button, and pasted this over the eyeglass, and covered the end of the tube around, so that no light could come in there except through this small opening in the paper, which was so put on that the eye must look through the middle of the glass. He also pasted ...
— Harper's Young People, November 4, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... is placed in a second larger crucible of refractory clay, and the intervening space filled with lampblack tightly packed. The whole is then heated to white heat for an hour and a half in a good wind furnace. After cooling, the platinum is generally found to have been fused into a button, with a marked increase in weight due to taking up silicon, which has penetrated in the form of vapor through the walls of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 365, December 30, 1882 • Various

... awfully tired," he said with a friendly abruptness, turning away without even waiting to see her pass into her room. He unlocked his door, and stumbling over the threshold groped in the darkness for the electric button. The light showed him a telegram on the table, and he forgot everything else as he ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton

... with a wedding-favor in his button-hole opened to her, and, while he went to deliver her urgent message, she peered in wistfully from the dreary world without, catching glimpses of home-love and happiness that made her heart ache for very pity of its own loneliness. A wedding was evidently afoot, for hall and staircase ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott

... The grass is found covering barren boggy land in Tasmania, but is not peculiar to Tasmania. So called from the round shaped flower (capitate inflorescence), on a thin stalk four or five feet long, like a button on ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris

... snakes, and when it seemed I could not force myself to take another step, and I was clinging to a button bush while the water arose above my low shoes, the moth lowered its wings flat against the bark. From the size of the abdomen I could see that it was a female heavily weighted with eggs. Possibly she had mated the previous night, and if I could secure ...
— Moths of the Limberlost • Gene Stratton-Porter

... ordinary run of village contrivers, caucus packers, and municipal aspirants, of a man who never pulled a wire, rolled a log, laid a pipe, listened in a lobby, whispered in the ear what might not be proclaimed on the house-top, held a man by the button, or blew any trumpet but of the public good, however in his magnificent self-respect he might be falsely accused of wishing to blow only ...
— Senatorial Character - A Sermon in West Church, Boston, Sunday, 15th of March, - After the Decease of Charles Sumner. • C. A. Bartol

... successful arrival. 'Here am I, good people, hurrah! hurrah! hurrah!' cried the waving hand. Then as the slit in the shawl widened Frank saw that behind the energetic fist there was a huge open mouth, a little button of a nose, and two eyes which were so resolutely screwed up that it seemed as if the owner had made a resolution never under any circumstances to take the least notice of this new world into which it ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle

... composed, and name the author, who was no other than the famous Mr. Swan, so well known for his talent at quibbling, and was as virulent a Jacobite as any in England. Neither could he deny the fact, when he was taxed for it in my presence by Sir Harry Button-Colt, and Colonel Davenport, at the Smyrna coffee-house, on the 10th of June, 1701. Thus it appears to a demonstration, that those verses were only a blind to conceal the most dangerous designs of that party, who from ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift

... hung up a birchen-rod at Button's. Pope, in one of his letters, congratulates himself that he never attempted to use it. [His half-sister, Mrs. Rackett, testifies to Pope's courage; she says, "My brother ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli

... till we struck you, I never laid eyes on one of you fellows all day long, and my eyesight's pretty good, too. Don't you think it is? I nailed you right under the nipple, there, within a hair of the button I sighted on. I leave it to you if that ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic

... at the rest]. "Willingly." [Takes Poiret by the button of his frock-coat.] "Before you leave this office forever perhaps you would be glad to know ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac

... talked over the General, who was already somewhat ashamed of his vivacity; and Harry was transferred to the feminine department, where his life was little short of heavenly. He was always dressed with uncommon nicety, wore delicate flowers in his button-hole, and could entertain a visitor with tact and pleasantry. He took a pride in servility to a beautiful woman; received Lady Vandeleur's commands as so many marks of favour; and was pleased to exhibit himself before other men, who derided and despised him, in his character of male lady's-maid ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... (which is wound upon a spool, A) to move forward and wind around a receiving spool, B. After the apparatus has been made accurately to embrace the trunk of the tree to be measured, it is removed and a pressure given to the lever, H, which applies the paper to the type wheel, D. A special button permits, in addition, of making a dot alongside of the numbers, if it be desired to attract attention to one of the measurements, either for distinguishing one kind of a tree from another or for any ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1157, March 5, 1898 • Various

... brooks, treatment of, broom, brussels sprouts, buckthorn, budding, bud-moth, buffalo berry, Buist, mentioned, bulbocodium, bulbs, culture of, bulbs in window-garden, burdock, ornamental, Burnette, F. H., quoted, burning bush, button-bush, buttercups, tuberous, ...
— Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) • L. H. Bailey

... conducted to his presence and was received by him and his aide-de-camp, who stood beside him. Something in the appearance of the latter attracted her attention—she looked again and again—did her eyes deceive her, or was that figure in a Russian uniform, with an order at his button-hole and his face partly concealed by heavy moustachios, indeed her husband? Another look converted her doubts into certainty, and she was in her husband's arms. He had directed his course towards the Russian army, been of great service to the ...
— The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope v. I. • A. M. W. Stirling (compiler)

... so shook and trembled; As the good and gallant stripling shook and trembled; A linen shirt so fine his frame invested, O'er the shirt was drawn a bright pelisse of scarlet The sleeves of that pelisse depended backward, The lappets of its front were button'd backward, And were spotted with the blood of unbelievers; See the good and gallant stripling reeling goeth, From his eyeballs hot and briny tears distilling; On his bended bow his figure he supporteth, Till his bended bow has lost its ...
— The Talisman • George Borrow

... laughing side of you, this time," said his reverence, promptly, and took snuff. "Tut, tut, woman—down with your fists, button up your bodice, and take disappointment with a better grace. Come, no nonsense, or you'll start me asking what's become of the last man I married ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine

... to become the very button on Fortune's cap. No wonder that the Abbe Raynal pronounced it to be the boulevard of the New World, or that the Spanish historian called it the fairest emerald in the crown of Ferdinand and Isabella. Under any other government ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou

... others followed in quick succession. There were "Pillow," "Roll the Cover," "Button, Button, Who's Got the Button?" "Copenhagen," and finally "Post Office." From all of these games Alice begged to be excused. She told the Professor that she was not bashful nor diffident, but that her ...
— Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks - A Picture of New England Home Life • Charles Felton Pidgin

... Mary, we must make the toilet of our rooms just as a pretty woman makes hers when money runs low, and she sorts and freshens her ribbons, and matches them to her hair and eyes, and, with a bow here, and a bit of fringe there, and a button somewhere else, dazzles us into thinking that she has an infinity of beautiful attire. Our rooms are new and pretty of themselves, to begin with; the tint of the paper, and the rich coloring of the border, corresponding with the furniture and carpets, will make them seem prettier. And now for ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various

... When customers were rude, when Mr. John or Mr. Robert was overbearing, this idea enabled David to rise above their ill-temper, and he would smile and say to himself: "If they knew the meaning of the blue rosette in my button-hole, how differently they would treat me! How easily with a word could ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis

... certain extent took my place in Therese's favour was the old father of the dancing girls inhabiting the ground floor. In a tall hat and a well-to-do dark blue overcoat he allowed himself to be button-holed in the hall by Therese who would talk to him interminably with downcast eyes. He smiled gravely down at her, and meanwhile tried to edge towards the front door. I imagine he didn't put a great value on Therese's ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad

... digging tools, and also to buy a pair of heavy boots, since his shoes were falling to pieces, and a flannel shirt, since the one he had worn all summer was in shreds. He spent a week meditating whether or not he should also buy an overcoat. There was one belonging to a Hebrew collar button peddler, who had died in the room next to him, and which the landlady was holding for her rent; in the end, however, Jurgis decided to do without it, as he was to be underground by day ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair

... the hill to the lady's little house, where they had left the carpet on the veranda, and they spread it out and said 'Home,' and no one saw them disappear, except little Henri, who had flattened his nose into a white button against the window-glass, and when he tried to tell his aunt she thought he had been dreaming. So that was ...
— The Phoenix and the Carpet • E. Nesbit

... remove them; who pride themselves on their familiarity with the latest slang; who proclaim their independence by showing the least possible consideration for others; who laugh long and loud at their own wit; who wear a profusion of cheap finery, such as outlandish watch-chains hooked in the lowest button-hole of their vests, Brazilian diamonds in their shirt-bosoms, and big seal-rings on their little fingers; who use bad grammar and interlard their conversation with big oaths. In business correspondence Smith is addressed as Sir, while Smith & Brown are often addressed ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)

... to reconnoitre. In case of his being discovered outside his room, he would explain his electric bell was out of order, that when he rang no servant had answered, and that he had sallied forth in search of one. To make this plausible, he unscrewed the cap of the electric button in the wall, and with his knife cut off enough of the wire to prevent a proper connection. He then replaced the cap and, opening the door, ...
— The Lost House • Richard Harding Davis

... flower-girls must be frightful little wretches. The flower-girls of New York cluster about St. Paul's churchyard and the Astor House, and can be found scattered up Broadway as high as Twenty- third street. They sell magnolias, hand bouquets and button-hole bouquets for gentlemen's coats. They appear on the streets with the earliest spring violets, and only disappear with 'the last rose of summer.' A rainy day is a very good one for the flowers, and they sell better ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin

... a wabster guid, [weaver good] Cou'd stown a clue wi' ony body. [have stolen] He had a wife was dour and din, [stubborn, sallow] O, Tinkler Madgie was her mither; [Tinker] Sic a wife as Willie had, [Such] I wad na gie a button ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson

... rooms and the pictures with all the vivacity and rapidity of a Frenchman, and with pretty little turns of wit.... Donald asked him if a cabinet in one of the rooms had not been given by the Empress of Russia to Buonaparte? He instantly seized him by the button with an air of triumph. "Tenez, Monsieur, quand l'Empereur de Russie etait ici, il a vu ce Cabinet et a dit; otez cette Volaille la" (pointing to the compartment in which the Imperial Eagles had ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley

... was, therefore, impelled upwards with the force of 490 lbs. Two men sufficed to raise it and to fill it with gas, but it took eight to hold it down till the signal was given. The different pieces of the covering were fastened together with buttons and button-holes. It remained ten minutes in the air, but the loss of gas by the button-holes, and by other imperfections, did not permit it to continue longer. The wind at the moment of the ascent was from the north. The machine came down so lightly that ...
— Wonderful Balloon Ascents - or, the Conquest of the Skies • Fulgence Marion

... to the first level and arranged blasting charges. Awhile after he reappeared with his companions, looking somewhat pale and anxious, and shouted to us to get back. Following our retreat to a certain distance, unwinding a wire as he came, presently he stopped and pressed the button of a battery which he held in his hand. There was a muffled explosion and a tremor of the soil like to that of an earthquake, while from the mouth of the shaft stones leapt into ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard

... up to her (it is difficult to flutter in a gymnasium suit, and only Viola's supremely butterfly quality enabled her to do it), a charming vision of pale blue, with a profusion of tiny brass buttons twinkling wherever a button could ...
— Peggy • Laura E. Richards

... Boer Republics sprang to arms as quickly, as well prepared, and with incomparably more zeal than the best trained conscripts of Europe. Not urged to the front like slaves by the whips of innumerable penalties, their needs not considered to the provision of a button, or a ration of salt, shabby even to squalor in their appointments, they gathered in response to a call which it was easy for the laggard to disobey, and almost uncared for by the ...
— History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902 v. 1 (of 4) - Compiled by Direction of His Majesty's Government • Frederick Maurice

... on the road about three-fourths of a mile southeast of Spring Hill. While in these woods, occurred a bit of exciting personal experience. A bullet, coming from the right, passed through my overcoat, buttoned up to my chin, in a way to take along the top button of my blouse underneath the coat. That big brass button struck me a stinging blow on the point of the left collar-bone, and, clasping both hands to the spot, I commenced feeling for the hole with my finger tips, fully convinced that a bullet coming from the front had gone through me ...
— The Battle of Spring Hill, Tennessee - read after the stated meeting held February 2d, 1907 • John K. Shellenberger

... us, but when, notwithstanding their menaces, we approached them, they left all their goods, and with their weapons only hurried up the rocks with wonderful agility. Three koolimans (vessels of stringy bark) were full of honey water, from one of which I took a hearty draught, and left a brass button for payment. Dillis, fish spears, a roasted bandicoot, a species of potatoe, wax, a bundle of tea-tree bark with dry shavings; several flints fastened with human hair to the ends of sticks, and which ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt

... ready to be put into operation by any method that Germany could suggest if mine were not acceptable. In fact, mediation was ready to come into operation by any method that Germany thought possible, if only Germany would 'press the button' in the ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various

... had progressed rapidly before, they went like lightning then. It was as if he had touched a spring or pressed a button, setting vast machinery in motion. Even as he reeled back stunned at his audacity, the room became suddenly full of Coppins of every variety known to science. Through a mist he was aware of Mrs. Coppin crying in a corner, of Mr. Coppin drinking his health in the remains ...
— A Man of Means • P. G. Wodehouse and C. H. Bovill

... so to speak, to run wild, and start up the coast on their tangled course of a hundred miles of deserted loveliness, and it was in the very heart of this delightful confusion that we pitched our tents for a summer holiday. A veritable wilderness of islands lay about us: from the mere round button of a rock that bore a single fir, to the mountainous stretch of a square mile, densely wooded, and bounded by precipitous cliffs; so close together often that a strip of water ran between no wider than a country lane, or, again, so far that an expanse stretched ...
— Three More John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood

... tiniest white studs, and the boys in great triumph brought in the first blue thrush's eggs. Nature would go on though under the thumb of the north wind. Poor folk came out of the towns to gather ivy leaves for sale in the streets to make button-holes. Many people think the ivy leaf has a pleasant shape; it was used of old time among the Greeks and Romans to decorate the person at joyous festivals. The ivy is frequently mentioned in the classic poets. Not so with the countrywomen in ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies

... He pressed the button. Instantly, without the slightest sound or anything else to betray just how the thing had been accomplished, the table was covered with golden dishes, heaped with food, and two flagon-like goblets, full to the brim with a ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint

... of thy mighty chines Invites to supper him who dines, Where laden spits, warp'd with large ribs of beef, Not represent but give relief To the lank stranger and the sour swain, Where both may feed and come again; For no black-bearded vigil from thy door Beats with a button'd-staff the poor; But from thy warm love-hatching gates each may Take friendly morsels and there stay To sun his thin-clad members if he likes, For thou no porter keep'st who strikes. No comer to thy roof his guest-rite ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick

... have known that the steel box was in that satchel this story might never have been told. But it never entered their heads that the pallid little waif had sense enough to conceal a button to her own profit. ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers

... the day of Mr. Farraday's expected call, and Miss Mason had hardly departed when the bell rang. Mary hastily put away her sewing and pressed the electric button which opened the downstairs door to visitors. She wished Stefan were back again to help her entertain the editor, and greeted him with apologies for her husband's absence. She was anxious that this man, whom she instinctively liked and trusted, should see her husband at his best. ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale

... "I now declare the Parliament of the Commonwealth of Australia open," the Duchess touched an electric button which gave the signal outside for the hoisting of the Union Jack on all the State schools of the Colony, and for the sending of a message to England declaring the object of the journey of the Royal envoys accomplished. Trumpets rang out the ...
— A Source Book Of Australian History • Compiled by Gwendolen H. Swinburne

... at St. James' Coffee House, they were attributed by the general voice to be the productions of a lady of quality. When I produced them at Button's, the poetical jury there brought in a different verdict; and the foreman strenuously insisted upon it that Mr. Gay was the man. Not content with these two decisions, I was resolved to call in an umpire, and accordingly chose a gentleman of distinguished ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville

... turn on the electric light. The stimulus that sets this series of acts going is the dim light; the first, inner response is a need for light. This need tends, by force of habit, to make me turn the button, but it does not make me execute this movement in the air. I only make this movement when the button is in reaching distance. My first {82} reaction, rising from my chair, is preparatory and brings the button close enough to act as ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth

... passing Neptune close, I would avoid his trident's point, and fell, Thus sitting, plump, right in the Scales! My weight Is marked, still registered, up there in heaven! (Hurriedly preventing De Guiche from passing, and detaining him by the button of his doublet): I swear to you that if you squeezed my nose ...
— Cyrano de Bergerac • Edmond Rostand

... very likely, it may substitute something more real and genuine, instead of the many shams on which men have heretofore founded their claims to public regard; but it behooves civilians to consider their wretched prospects in the future, and assume the military button before ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... shall wring the vulture's neck? Ai, it is good! Umballa, the toad, who swells and swells as the days go by. Siva has guarded him well. The king picks him out of the gutter for a pretty bit of impudence, sends him afar to Umballa, where he learns to speak English, where he learns to wear shoes that button and stiff linen bands round the neck. He has gone on, gone on! The higher up, the harder ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath

... Hear thy suppliant's call, Great Queen, and common mother of us all! Fair from its humble bed I rear'd this flow'r, Suckl'd, and cheer'd with air, and sun, and show'r, Soft on the paper ruff its leaves I spread, Bright with the gilded button tipt its head. Then thron'd in glass, and nam'd it Caroline: Each maid cry'd, Charming; and each youth, Divine! Did Nature's pencil ever blend such rays, Such vary'd light in one promiscuous blaze? Now prostrate! dead! behold that Caroline: ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various

... klatsch is an afternoon affair where ladies meet and chat as they sew and are served a luncheon of German dishes—cold meats, salads, coffee-cake, pickles, coffee, etc. Each guest is given a bit of needlework, button-holes to work, or a small doily to embroider and a prize is given for the ...
— Breakfasts and Teas - Novel Suggestions for Social Occasions • Paul Pierce

... attire than an ordinary day habit. A close-fitting black frock surtout coat, well open at the front, with rolling collar, showing velvet vest and a good display of shirt-front; a fine gold chain hung about his neck, looped at the first button-hole of the vest and attached to a watch carried in the fob of the vest. Usually light-colored, well-fitting trousers, light-colored kid gloves, and a beaver hat completed the dress. To this add a well-built military figure, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various

... Lauderdale, who was one of his kinsmen, "why did he, as a private man, meddle with politics? What had a private man to do with government?" His answer was: "My lord, there is not any public person, nor any magistrate, that has written on politics, worth a button. All they that have been excellent in this way have been private men, as private men, my lord, as myself. There is Plato, there is Aristotle, there is Livy, there is Machiavel. My lord, I can sum up Aristotle's 'Politics' in a very few words: he says, ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington

... Peck nor Mrs. Bolton smiled, and with some vague intention of showing him that she could meet the poor on common ground by sharing their labours, she knelt down and helped Mrs. Bolton tie on and button on Idella's things. ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells

... are very old friends." The girl rose also, and gave him her hand. "Perhaps that's the worst of it. If I should lose your esteem I should go into a convent." She dropped his hand, and snatching a bunch of violets from the table, fixed them in his button-hole, looking up in his face with vestal sweetness. "You are ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... coatee, which soldiers wear Button'd up high about the throat, But easy, flowing, debonair— In short a ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 487 - Vol. 17, No. 487. Saturday, April 30, 1831 • Various

... the conquerors of Regos, prepared his finest and most savory dishes for them, which Rinkitink ate with much appetite and found so delicious that he ordered the royal chef brought into the banquet hall and presented him with a gilt button which the King cut from his ...
— Rinkitink in Oz • L. Frank Baum

... all the while she kept right on renovating the Little Girl's personal appearance, smoothing a wrinkled stocking, tucking up obstreperous white ruffles, tugging down parsimonious purple hems, loosening a pinchy hook, tightening a wobbly button. Very slowly, very complacently the Little Girl drowsed off to sleep with her weazened little iron-cased legs stretched stiffly out before her. "Poor little legs! Poor little legs! Poor little legs!" crooned the White ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott

... began to strike matches and peer into the darkness, and at last David groped his way over to a corner of the hall where he remembered he had seen the switch. As he felt for the electric button his hand encountered another hand, that grasped his with an iron grip, gave his wrist a vicious twist, pushed him violently away and was gone. David gave an involuntary cry of pain as he felt for the switch again. In another moment he had found it and the hall was again flooded ...
— Grace Harlowe's Senior Year at High School - or The Parting of the Ways • Jessie Graham Flower

... another boy went to catch a horse in a certain field, full of boulders and bushes of hazel and creeping juniper and rock-roses, that is where the lake side is for a little clear of the woods. He said to the boy that was with him, "I bet a button that if I fling a pebble on to that bush it will stay on it," meaning that the bush was so matted the pebble would not be able to go through it. So he took up "a pebble of cow-dung, and as soon as it hit the bush there came out of it the most beautiful music that ever was heard." ...
— The Celtic Twilight • W. B. Yeats

... along, an' he walked along, an' he walked along, an' he met a tiger. An' e tiger eat 'em up. Evly bit of 'em. Escept hims feet. An' he walked along, an' he walked along, an' he walked along, an' he met a horsh. An' e horsh ate 'em all up. Evly bit of 'em. An' nofing was left. Ony hims button. An' hims mover had no dear ittle boy ...
— In the Mist of the Mountains • Ethel Turner

... mild, resigned expression upon a kindly face that years and care had lined before its time: old-fashioned rather, with soft, grey whiskers belonging to an earlier day. A black tail-coat adorned it, and the neck-tie was crooked in the turned-down collar. The watch-chain went from the waist-coat button to one pocket only, instead of right across, and one finger wore a heavy signet-ring that bore the family crest. It was obviously the figure of an overworked official in the Civil Service who had returned from its daily routine in London to the evening routine of ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood

... said the Colonel, descending from the ladder and sticking his long scissors like a dagger through the bottom button-hole of his coat. "Then we must play the part of surgeon, my boy. Not the first time, Joe. Clap ...
— Sappers and Miners - The Flood beneath the Sea • George Manville Fenn

... travellers, I had been led to fear horrible things of custom-houses. This over, we took a stroll about the city. I was first struck by seeing so many people walking in the middle of the streets, and so many gentlemen going about with pinks stuck in their button-holes. Then, the houses being all built of brown granite or dark brick, gives the town a sombre appearance, which the sunshine (when there is any) cannot dispel. Of Liverpool we saw little. Before the twilight had wholly faded, we were again tossing on the rough ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor

... a button. A lock-door opened. He put the container inside it. The door closed. It could be sterilized before the door on the other side would open, but now it was arranged to sterilize itself to prevent contagion ...
— The Hate Disease • William Fitzgerald Jenkins

... herself so very homely, as to occupy but little of our attention. The man was seated at the door of a cottage, making a straw sandal: on our entering his inclosure, he looked up for an instant, and immediately resumed his work, with as much composure as if we had been a party of the villagers. A button was offered to him, which he accepted without scruple: he agreed, with equal readiness, to exchange his unfinished sandal for another button, which having carelessly put away, in a bag lying near him, he took some straw and ...
— Account of a Voyage of Discovery - to the West Coast of Corea, and the Great Loo-Choo Island • Captain Basil Hall

... character as to admit of many variations, which should embody the substantial characteristics and be entirely consistent with a substantial identity of form. Thus, if the invention were of a design for an ornamental button, the face of which was grooved with radial rays, it would seem that the first designer of such a button might properly describe a button of five rays, and, having stated that a greater number of rays might be used, might ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various

... Homiletic Review at a dollar and a half a year; we can subscribe for that, get the up-to-datest sermons by the most distinguished divines, get some gent that's afflicted with elocution to say 'em into a record, and on Sunday our friend and pastor here will reel 'em off fine. You press the button—he does the rest, as the ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume III. (of X.) • Various

... Pensioner might have lived very comfortably in such a cheap place, if his daughters had not been possessed with the silly fancy of preferring the hats of Madrid to those that were made by the milliner of the Calle de Joaquin, and eight-button gloves to four-button ones. Such superior tastes gave rise in the Pensioner's house to many an upset, with all its accompanying tears, hysterics, regrets, disinclination for food, &c. In these terrible conflicts it must be confessed that Don Cristobal did not always comport himself with ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds

... the officers stared, the squire looked a degree or two less stupid, and hastened to button his dressing-gown; the restless eyes of the convict fell on Helen's beautiful face, and were restless no longer; while little Guzzy assumed a dignified pose, which did not seem at all consistent with ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton

... painted gray, set at the side of one of the stones of the wall, which looked unreal. She struck the stone with her knuckles and it gave out the sound of hollow wood, which was followed, as an echo, by a little laugh from Lanstron. Pressing the button, a panel door flew open, revealing a telephone mouthpiece and receiver set in the recess. Without giving him time to refuse permission, her thought all submissive to the prompting spirit of adventure, she took down ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer

... iron, that, before our navigators quitted the place, scarcely a bit of it was left in the ships, excepting what belonged to the necessary instruments. Whole suits of clothes were stripped of every button: bureaus were deprived of their furniture; copper kettles, tin canisters, candlesticks, and whatever of the like kind could be found, all went to wreck; so that these Americans became possessors of a greater medley and variety of things from ...
— Narrative of the Voyages Round The World, • A. Kippis

... Piutes are smart or bold enough to steal nowadays; their intercourse with the whites along the railroad has, in a measure, relieved them of those aboriginal traits of character that would incite them to steal a brass button off their pale-faced brother's coat, or screw a nut off his bicycle; but they have learned to beg; the noble Piute of to-day is an incorrigible mendicant. Gathering up my tools from among them, the monkey-wrench seems to have found favor in the eyes ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens

... until I wuz near grown, jes one garment dat we called et dat time, going out in your shirt tail. In de winter we had cotton shirt with a string to tie de collar, instead of a button and tie. We war den same on Sunday, excepting dat mudder would wash and iron dem ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: The Ohio Narratives • Works Projects Administration

... the road that led to Mana. The professor sat down opposite, facing the town, with his back to the country; but he seemed rather nervous about the evening air, for he shivered every now and then, and took care to button up his overcoat ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Polish • Various

... into his house and across the room to where in state, surrounded by all kinds of chieftain's gear, Chilcat blankets, totemic carvings and paintings, chieftain's hats and cunningly woven baskets, there lay the body of a stalwart young man wrapped in a button-embroidered blanket. The chief silently removed the blanket from the face of the dead. The skull was completely crushed on one side as by a heavy blow. Then the ...
— Alaska Days with John Muir • Samual Hall Young

... to see you, Nostromo," she said. The Capataz did not move. Decoud, with his back to the table, began to button up ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad

... nothing he could do—neither reproaches, nor exile—nor could he even show the annoyance he felt. To manifest vexation would have been to admit that he had been touched, like Hamlet, by a sword from which the button had been removed—the sword of ridicule. To show animosity against women—humiliation! especially when the women in question have laughter on their side, as a means of vengeance. If, instead of leaving all the responsibility of the affair to these women, one of the courtiers had had anything ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... rim of the sun was just appearing over the edge of the trees as Jacques pressed the button which set the self-starter whirring. The engine roared and the pilot listened intently for any sound of defect to come to his well-trained ear. An aviator must know by the sound just what is wrong with his motor; there is no chance to search for the cause of the trouble when you are a mile ...
— Fighting in France • Ross Kay

... bear my clothes on my back, and never made any fire but without doors, for my necessity, in dressing my food, &c. Now I made me three good vests, with large robes or gowns over them, to hang down to the feet, and button close to the wrists, and all these lined with furs, to make them ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe

... Annouschka's room, and both began to pull aside a bundle of linen, thrown down, as if by accident, into the embrasure of a window. Under the linen was a large chest with a spring lock. Annouschka pressed a button, Vaninka raised the lid. The two women uttered a loud cry: the chest was now a coffin; the young officer, stifled for want ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... the Saint and his two proteges. It was known generally that the adherents of the Liberal party would muster, as usual, on the Porta Pia road, and that the more courageous partizans of the popular cause would be distinguished by wearing a violet in their button-holes. ...
— Rome in 1860 • Edward Dicey

... policeman, talking to her down the area. Punch is independent and original in this respect. His strange creed seems to be, that human nature is human nature,—whether, in its feminine department, you robe it in silk or calico, and, in its male department, button a red coat over the breast of an officer of the Guards, or put the coarse jerkin on the broad back of the industrious toilsman. And according to this whimsical belief, he writes and talks jocosely, but with ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various

... do? It was as impossible to walk along the beach as to fight back against the current. Presence of mind, Kate, is the salient point of the heroic character; the door of a machine was open, and I popped in. My dear, there were all his clothes, his hair-brush, his button-hook, his wig, and, would you believe it? an instrument for curling his whiskers! I put everything on except the wig, crowned myself with his broad-brimmed white hat, felt in his pockets, which were full of gold and silver, and, to my credit be it said, only selected one ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville

... intelligent assistant to relieve our distress. With his help I swiftly selected an outfit that was not half bad for ready-to-wear garments. There was a black morning-coat, snug at the waist, moderately broad at the shoulders, closing with two buttons, its skirt sharply cut away from the lower button and reaching to the bend of the knee. The lapels were, of course, soft-rolled and joined the collar with a triangular notch. It is a coat of immense character when properly worn, and I was delighted to observe in the trying on that Cousin Egbert filled it rather smartly. ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson

... one saw in Stella's eyes unutterable happiness and fear, but her voice was tranquil. I found time to wonder at its steadiness, even though, just about this time, I resonantly burst a button off one of my new gloves. I fancy they must ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al

... circus. The owners hire performers to do stunts, and break their necks, while we manage them and take in the shekels from the Reubens who come into town on circus day. We proprietors touch the button, and the actors and animals do the rest. I shall be a director who directs, a man who sets a dignified and pious example to the men and women who adorn the profession, coming as they do from all climes, and your pa will be the guide, philosopher and ...
— Peck's Bad Boy at the Circus • George W. Peck

... respective place and going to the Lyceum at hours of lecture or recitation. All these establishments were, under Napoleon, to a certain degree military. The roll of the drum roused the scholar to his daily work; a uniform with the imperial button was the only dress allowed to be worn; and the physical as well as the intellectual training was such, that very little additional preparation was required to qualify the inmate of the Lyceum for the duties ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various

... ground. In winter and spring they are necessary causeways above seas of mud, but in dry weather every one abandons them, to walk straight to his destination over the uninterrupted flats. Bannon set down his hand bag to button has ulster, for the wind was driving clouds of smoke and stinging dust and an occasional grimy snowflake out of the northwest. Then he sprang down from the sidewalk and made his way through the intervening bogs and, heedless of the shouts of the brakemen, over ...
— Calumet 'K' • Samuel Merwin

... suddenly very much worried about the second button of his coat. Having satisfied himself of its stability, ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... recognition, but hardly fame. That he obtained by his next poem, the 'Essay on Criticism', which appeared in 1711. It was applauded in the 'Spectator', and Pope seems about this time to have made the acquaintance of Addison and the little senate which met in Button's coffee house. His poem the 'Messiah' appeared in the 'Spectator' in May 1712; the first draft of 'The Rape of the Lock' in a poetical miscellany in the same year, and Addison's request, in 1713, that he compose a prologue for the tragedy of 'Cato' set the ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope

... pen down to tell it. He was talking with half-shut lips, with eyes that shifted back and forth alert for a glance of disfavour. His rusty black derby sat on the back of his head: his white pique tie had slipped away from a bright brass collar button.... ...
— Stubble • George Looms

... the sergeant. "We'll send the Technical Squad around in any case." He paused, and Sam could see that he'd pressed an alarm button. There was more interest in his manner, too. "Any signs that it might ...
— Damned If You Don't • Gordon Randall Garrett

... he, in the squeaky tones of a eunuch, shaking the young fellow by a button of his coat which he had laid hold of. "Do you want to know my opinion? Well, all your newspapers are of no use whatsoever. Come now, let us put a supposititious case. I am the father of a family, am I not? Good. I go to the cafe for a game at ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger

... was touched by his gallantry; for, as the carriage of the two friends passed her, she threw a bunch of violets. Albert seized it, and as Franz had no reason to suppose it was meant for him, he suffered Albert to retain it. Albert placed it in his button-hole, and the carriage ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... Marilou looked down her button nose as she picked a brown spot from the apple. "Hmmph, I'll tell 'im he's wrong," she said. "He thinks he knows so ...
— One Martian Afternoon • Tom Leahy

... bullaces, hips of roses, elderberries, beechmast, and other wild berries and fruit. (9/8. Prof. O. Heer 'Die Pflanzen der Pfahlbauten' 1866 aus dem Neujahr. Naturforsch. Geselschaft' 1866; and Dr. H. Christ in Rutimeyer's 'Die Fauna der Pfahlbauten' 1861 s. 226.) Jemmy Button, a Fuegian on board the 'Beagle,' remarked to me that the poor and acid black-currants of Tierra del Fuego were too sweet for ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin

... to accomplish, and, taking the four little ones dear to her heart, went back to the little room on the top floor of the tenement in Plymouth Court. G. got work in a sweatshop and made button-holes at $2.50 a week. She worked hard to keep up, but the baby sickened and died. The other children began to get thin and wan. They grew hungry before her eyes and the mother's heart frightened and sank within her. A fiend in human form, J. F——, came by and ...
— Chicago's Black Traffic in White Girls • Jean Turner-Zimmermann

... telephone at unreasonable hours and saying tiresome things. We cannot claim to be civilised until we have some weapon for legitimate self defence attached to every telephone, something which could be operated easily and swiftly by pressing a button at the side of the receiver. It is not necessary that the man at the other end of the wire should be struck dead, but he ought to suffer severe physical pain. If Tim Gorman would turn his inventive genius in that direction, ...
— Gossamer - 1915 • George A. Birmingham

... she was handling my prick in the gentlest and most exciting manner, indeed she very quickly produced the spasmodic joys of heaven thus brought down to mortal man, of course with only the nervous result. This was all that was attempted the first time, when she told me to button up, saying that it was a very bad thing to encourage that habit, and I must be prudent and not let others know of its being improperly hard ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous

... Third of England was a button-maker, and therefore no wonder need be excited at the information which was sent to the Landers from the king of Boossa, announcing to them that his majesty was a tailor, and that he would thank them ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish

... his windbreaker," she warned in an almost grownup manner. Trying to button her jacket and hold on to her red patent leather handbag at the same time, she dropped the bag and its contents ...
— Jerry's Charge Account • Hazel Hutchins Wilson

... studied it carefully. Then he pressed a button on his desk and bade the clerk who came bring all the letters they had received from Lord Loudwater during the last three months of his life and ...
— The Loudwater Mystery • Edgar Jepson

... you that he is sure on our side; and Sir Henry Dudley hath spoken with all the gentlemen that be soldiers, that be about the town, and they be all sure ours, so that we have left the queen never a man of war that is worth a button."[555] ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude

... offers to its members ideas already molded, rules of conduct already approved; it relieves them, in short, of the fatigue of thinking with their own brains. When the caste to which an individual belongs is known, all that is necessary is to press a button of his mental mechanism to release a series of opinions and of phrases already made which are identical in every individual of ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park

... however, gave the pictures only a hasty glance and proceeded, in a business-like manner, to carry a straight chair to the cabinet. On the top shelf sat the old cloth dog. Its shoe-button eyes looked glazed with sleep, but its ears were quite alert. Very cautiously the Crown Prince unlocked the door, stepped precariously to the lower shelf of the cabinet, hung there by one royal hand, and lifted the ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... another five minutes before the other thirty-nine old sea-dogs knew all about every body, and where they were bound, and so on. They did not care a brass button for the thousand silver dollars they were to have from the tall gentleman—not they! They wanted merely to lay their eyes along that Long Tom amidships, and to have a cutlass flashing over their shoulders—so fashion! ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise

... me? Well, then. I will make my last will. In case I fall go instantly to my quarters, open my writing-desk, and press upon a small button you will see on the left side; there you will find letters and papers; tie them carefully, and send them in the usual way to Countess Bernis. As to my heritage, you know I have no gold; I leave nothing but debts My clothes you can give ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach

... children's choir, the Choral Society of Roubaix, the Franco-Belgian Choral Society, and many others. Twenty thousand persons took part in this procession, the men wearing red neckties and a red flower in their button-holes, the forty-seven groups of the workmen's federation bearing banners, all singing, bands playing, drums beating, cannons firing ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards

... gentleman enter, who, at the distance at which they sat, looked like a very young man. His complexion was brilliantly fair, his beard jet black, and his curly hair most carefully arranged. He had his opera-hat under his arm, a camellia in his button-hole; and his light-yellow kid gloves were so tight, that it looked as if they must inevitably burst the instant he used ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau

... him proceeded from interested motives. When Monsieur, misled by his favourites, did something which was neither just nor expedient, I used to say to him, "Out of complaisance to the Chevalier de Lorraine, you put your good sense into your pocket, and button it up so tight that it cannot ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... Mathews, Arthur Gouldsmith, Robert Williams, Morice Loyd, Aron Conway, William Sutton, Richard Greene, Mathew Haman, Samuell Davies, John Thomas, John Docker, Abram Wood, Michaell Lupworth, John Davies, Lewis Baly, James Daries, Alice Holmes, Henry Barlow, Thomas Button, Edmond Whitt, Zacharia Crispe, John Burland, Thomas Hawkins, Thomas Phillips, Paul Reinolds, Nicholas Smith, Elizabeth Williams, Hugh Cruder, Edward Hudson, Robert Sheppard, Thomas Ottawell, Thomas Crouth, Robert Bew, John Russell, Robert Chantry, ...
— Colonial Records of Virginia • Various

... The scale was gigantic. Even poor men seemed to have acquired a familiarity with the sound of great sums that made them take themselves as somehow richer and bigger. Voices shook with eagerness and avidity; hands worked constantly at button-holes, or at lapels, or with watch-guards. When acquaintances passed on the street they did not say "how-do-you-do"; they looked at each other's bulging pockets and said, "lemme see your rock." What Steering and the girl heard as they waited in the road-cart was fragmentary but significant: ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young

... deal like a night-gownd; but your father he bought it for the color. He traded off some shells for it in some o' them furrin places. You wouldn't think it now, but it used to be jest the color o' a robin's egg or a light-blue 'bachelor's button;' and your father he used to stick one o' them in my belt whenever they was in blossom, when I hed the gownd on. He hed a heap o' notions about things matchin'. He brought me that gownd the v'yage he made jest afore Caleb was born; and I never hed a chance ...
— Mercy Philbrick's Choice • Helen Hunt Jackson

... surprise (Which competition still defies) - Our celebrated "Sir!!!" Then all the crowd take down our looks In pocket memorandum books. To diagnose, Our modest pose The kodaks do their best: If evidence you would possess Of what is maiden bashfulness, You only need a button press - And WE do ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert

... tell you," he said cheerfully, "that the young lady's wound is not at all dangerous. It looks worse than it is. Most fortunately, the bullet first struck a large bone button on her coat. This, combined with the thick woollen material, and some small amount of padding placed beneath the collar by the maker, offered such resistance that the bullet lodged itself against the collar bone without ...
— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy

... property qualification should be exacted. Require, if you will, that each woman voter shall possess a gold watch, and keep it wound and up to time—a clothes wringer and a sewing machine; that she shall be able to concoct a pudding, sew on a button, and, at a pinch, keep a boarding-house ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... stood an elderly man and a girl. The old fellow was a fine type of manhood; perhaps in the sixties, white-haired, and the ruddy enamel on his cheeks spoke eloquently of sea changes and many angles of the sun. There was a button in the lapel of his coat, and from this Fitzgerald assumed that he was a naval ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath

... his violin case, the younger man seemed tall and well-made; but when he stood up, though he was tall, his bent shoulders became apparent, and the light fell on a stern, pale face that seemed older than its thirty years. He began to button his cloak ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 6, June, 1891 • Various

... humming-tops; but though these pleased by their noise, they were not much esteemed, and could make no head against the good old turnip-shaped tops, solid and weighty, that you could wind up with a stout cotton cord, and launch with perfect aim from the flat button held between your fore finger and middle finger. Some of the boys had a very pretty art in the twirl they gave the top, and could control its course, somewhat as a skilful pitcher can govern that ...
— A Boy's Town • W. D. Howells

... during the night, when he would be on duty, and secure it. He accordingly provided himself with a ladder, and when the guard was changed, was found lying lifeless at the bottom, the coveted piece in his hand, which proved to be nothing but a large button. No marks of violence were to be seen upon his body, but the contusions on his head seemed to tell that he had fallen from the ladder when near the top, and so met his death. Whether he had been frightened, or seized with giddiness, or whether ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee

... the kitchen, and directly after took leave of the little Frenchman, who said, with a kind of moral button-holing, as if trying to adopt ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... button on his shirt, he pulled back a strip of plastic cloth just below his rib cage and took out a small flat pistol. He held it in the palm of his hand. He knew now why ...
— Monkey On His Back • Charles V. De Vet

... begun to move as he uttered the words He had gripped her hand painfully and released it. As he drew his arm sharply away, a button, hanging loosely by a thread or two, became detached from his coat-cuff, and fell upon the rubber matting of the corridor. She was conscious of the button as Saxham and the crowded, grimy platform receded from ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves

... found any. Why, your honest business man who goes to church or chapel each Sunday, and is a model of all the virtues, is, in the City, the very man who'll drive a hard bargain, pay a starvation wage, and button his pockets against the widow! Who are your successful men in business? Why, for the most part, the men who, by dint of sharp practice or unscrupulousness, have been able to get in front of their competitors. Therefore, after all, am I very much worse than the successful City man? I live on my brains—and ...
— The Count's Chauffeur • William Le Queux

... it had fallen on to the hearth; but looking nearer I saw a blob or button of lead upon the bar of the grate. There was no resisting the conviction which forced itself upon me: my flat iron ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... pictures. The first subject he selected was a serious-faced little baby, innocent of any clothing, that sat playing with a ragged dog at, the entrance of one of the beehive huts. He had just clicked the button ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton

... was a proposition for you! And me just a plain, every-day mitt juggler that don't take thinkin' exercises reg'lar. "Guess you've pushed the wrong button this time, Sadie," says I. "But I'll stay in your corner till the lights go out. Is ...
— Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford

... regaining his breath and blinking the water from his eyes, when something caught to a sleeve button on his tunic made him stare. It was a short piece of black-and-white striped ribbon—the Order of the Iron Cross—which the German had worn in a ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris

... Phases of Woman's Work, as exhibited in the Labors of Amy Button and Agnes E. Jones. Boston: American Tract Society; ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various

... paints better, and makes friends worth making; much to the joy of poor Bessie, who asks no greater privilege than to stand humbly by, gazing fondly while he puts on his white cravat, and sallies forth radiant, with a hot-house flower in his button-hole, to ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon

... were awful good, and he wished he had some of 'em," Rachel answered. She didn't dare take her mouth away from the cap-frill, and her feet ached dreadfully from standing still so long. But Grandma was as bright as a button, and hungry for every scrap ...
— Five Little Peppers and their Friends • Margaret Sidney

... of course. It is a club to which I belong. We are supposed to wear faded roses in our button-holes when we meet, and to have a sort of cult for Domitian. I am afraid you are not eligible. You are too fond ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde

... with a party of his colleagues—Mulgrave, Ben Stanley, Poulett Thompson, and one or two more—were at the play just opposite to me; the piece was the 'Regent,' and it was full of jokes about dismissing Ministers and other things very applicable, at which Melbourne at least (who does not care a button about office, whatever he may do about power) was heartily amused. To-day the King came to town to receive the resignations, for he is resolved to finish off the whole affair at once and make maison nette; they have been ordered therefore to attend ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville

... survive the winter and hatch in the spring, as soon as the food supply of gnats, flies, and mosquitoes appear. The different forms of spiders' nests are very interesting objects of study. Some are those close-spun, flat, button-shaped objects, about half an inch in diameter, which are so common in winter on the under side of bark, chunks and flat rocks. Others are balloon-shaped and attached to weeds. Within the latter the young spiders often hatch in early winter, ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various

... visit here; let me see, fifteen years ago was the last time, I think. Well, they are going to take the empty house near us for the summer. She was a Robinson; not really Ashurst people, you know, not born here, but quite respectable. Her father was a button manufacturer, and he left her a great deal of money. She married a person called Forsythe, who has since died. She has one boy, about your age, who'll be immensely rich one of these days; he is not married. Heaven knows ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland



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