"Hempen" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... I fain would sing, And likewise his fair queen; But that the knave, A haughty slave, Must needs step in between: "Good diamond king, With hempen string This haughty knave destroy; Then may your queen, With mind serene, Your ...
— Aunt Kitty's Stories • Various
... our shark-hook," observed Dick, putting on a large bait, and fastening it to the end of a thick rope. "Nothing frightens the fish in these seas; and if we were to lower down a hempen cable with a baited hook, they would bite as freely as they would if we were ...
— Twice Lost • W.H.G. Kingston
... whom I had read in romances. Verily in the tale of my adventures hitherto there had been more cuffs than crowns, more shame than honour; and, as to winning my spurs, I was more in point to win a hempen rope, and in my ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... at the thick tether; nor throw away one ounce of useless energy. Seizing the hempen strands, he ground his teeth deeply and with scientific skill, into their fraying recesses. Thus does a dog, addicted to cutting his leash, attack ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... I've worked out to slarterin' some fer Deacon Cephas Billins, An' in the hardest times there wuz I ollers teched ten shillins), There's sutthin' gits into my throat thet makes it hard to swaller, It comes so nateral to think about a hempen collar; It's glory—but, in spite o' all my tryin' to git callous, I feel a kind o' in a cart, aridin' to the gallus. But wen it comes to bein' killed—I tell ye I felt streaked The fust time ever I found out wy baggonets wuz ...
— Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor - Volume I • Various
... of hempen cloth And I want to spin another— A little sheet for Mary's bed, And an ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... tools are but common ones, Simple shepherds all— My tools are no sight to see: A little hempen string, and a post whereon to swing, Are ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... afraid of the ridicule of the people. Here he raised the kite, made of a large silk handkerchief. The top of the perpendicular stick was pointed with a sharp metallic rod. The string was hemp with the exception of the part held in the hand, which was silk; at the end of the hempen string a common key was suspended. With intense anxiety and no slight apprehension of danger, he held the line. Soon he observed the fibres of the hempen string to rise and separate themselves, as was the case of the hair on the head, when any one was placed on an insulating stool. ...
— Benjamin Franklin, A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago - American Pioneers and Patriots Series • John S. C. Abbott
... Dr. Redman, Who deals with dead men, Once cut up a fellow whose spirit had fled, man, Who (the fellow) perchance Had indulged in that dance Performed at the end of a hempen thread, man; And the cut-up one, (A sort of a gun!) Like Banquo, though he was dead, wasn't done, Insisted in very positive tones That he'd be ground to calcined manure, Or any other evil endure, ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various
... and one of the noble family obtained a charter from Edward III. authorizing his tenants at this place to pass toll-free throughout all England, which grant was confirmed by Elizabeth. But the manufacturing celebrity of Lavenham has dwindled to spinning woollen yarn, and making calimancoes and hempen cloth; the opulent clothiers have shuffled off their mortal coil, and proved that "the web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 335 - Vol. 12, No. 335, October 11, 1828 • Various
... A papal edict was proclaimed threatening death to any one who should utter a loud word while the operation of lifting and settling the obelisk was going on. As the "huge crystallisation of Egyptian sweat" rose on its basis there was a sudden stoppage, the hempen cables refused to do their work, and the hanging mass of stone threatened to fall and destroy itself. Suddenly from out the breathless crowd rose a loud, clear voice, "Wet the ropes." There was inspiration in the suggestion; the ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... perceive his head 190 To be unarmd, and curld uncombed heares Upstaring stiffe, dismayd with uncouth dread; Nor drop of bloud in all his face appeares Nor life in limbe: and to increase his feares In fowle reproch of knighthoods faire degree, 195 About his neck an hempen rope he weares, That with his glistring armes does ill agree; But he of rope or armes has ...
— Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Book I • Edmund Spenser
... ground was no youthful warrior but a man stricken with extreme old age, white-bearded and withered, who stretched out groping hands and moaned with feeble and bitter cries. And his crimson cloak and yellow silken tunic were now but coarse homespun stuff tied with a hempen girdle, and the gold-hilted sword was a rough oaken staff such as a beggar carries who wanders the roads ...
— The High Deeds of Finn and other Bardic Romances of Ancient Ireland • T. W. Rolleston
... me, you would have been home with your father by this time. However I am willing to help you once more. Go into the forest, and you will find the horse with two halters round his neck. One is of gold, the other of hemp. Lead him by the hempen halter, or else the horse will begin to neigh, and will waken the guards. Then ...
— The Grey Fairy Book • Various
... tasseled magnificently. But now the frogs and tassles were gone. In their stead had been patiently stitched (I surmised by some surviving "black mammy") new frogs made of cunningly twisted common hempen twine. This twine was frayed and disheveled. It must have been added to the coat as a substitute for vanished splendors, with tasteless but painstaking devotion, for it followed faithfully the curves of the long-missing frogs. And, to complete the comedy ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... country looks as prosperous as it is beautiful, and one would not think that acute poverty could exist in the steep-roofed village of Nojiri, which nestles at the foot of the hill; but two hempen ropes dangling from a cryptomeria just below tell the sad tale of an elderly man who hanged himself two days ago, because he was too poor to provide for a large family; and the house-mistress and Ito tell me that when a man who ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... my curiosity, observing, that if I persisted in twisting the discourse one way while Donald was twining it another, I should make his objection, like a hempen cord, just so much the tougher. At length the promised turn of the road brought us within fifty paces of the tree which I desired to admire, and I now saw to my surprise, that there was a human habitation among the cliffs which surrounded it. It was ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... enemies supposed nothing but death could have concealed him, gradually relaxed, and then subsided altogether. Foes and friends alike believed him dead, and when he did re-appear in the coarse robe, shrouding cowl, and hempen belt, of a wandering friar, he traversed the most populous towns in safety, unrecognized and unsuspected. It was with some difficulty he found his family, and a matter of no little skill to convey them, without exciting suspicion by their ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar
... women and children remained to tend the breeding cattle in the hamlet. In Nimar they generally rented a little land in the village to give them a footing, and paid also a carrying fee on the number of cattle present. Their spare time was constantly occupied in the manufacture of hempen twine and sacking, which was much superior to that obtainable in towns. Even in Captain Forsyth's [226] time (1866) the construction of railways and roads had seriously interfered with the Banjaras' calling, and they had perforce taken to agriculture. ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... before the overseer. He talked through his nose and, being unaccustomed to talk much and rapidly, stuttered; and, conscious of his defects, he tried to adorn his speech with gesticulations of the hands and head and thin shoulders, and at every movement his hempen shirt crumpled into folds, slipped upwards and displayed his back, black with age and sunburn. He kept pulling it down, but it slipped up again at once. At last, as though driven out of all patience by the rebellious shirt, the old man ...
— The Witch and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... I care," added Sanchica, "whether anybody says when he sees me holding my head up, 'The dog saw himself in hempen breeches,' and the rest ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... A hempen cloth, so loosely woven as to leave interstices between the threads, in little squares. It is used for working in patterns upon it with wools, &c.; by painters for a ground work on which they draw their pictures; for ...
— A Catechism of Familiar Things; Their History, and the Events Which Led to Their Discovery • Benziger Brothers
... sun must rise, the sun must set, Nor ever change in plan may be, Though dawn to stricken wretch may bring The hempen rope and gallows tree, And eventide to happy bride Love's crown of love ...
— Pan and Aeolus: Poems • Charles Hamilton Musgrove
... they treated these worthy persons with such a choking hempen salad. They told us they had only borrowed, alias stolen, the tools of the mass and hid them under the handle of the parish. This is a very allegorical way ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... ounce balls were hastily wrapped in the canvas, and lashed up with the hempen twine. The bag was then rammed down upon the powder, ...
— Left on Labrador - or, The cruise of the Schooner-yacht 'Curlew.' as Recorded by 'Wash.' • Charles Asbury Stephens
... with your fancies, and in them behold Upon the hempen tackle ship-boys climbing; Hear the shrill whistle which doth order give To sounds confused; behold the threaden sails, Borne with the invisible and creeping wind, Draw the huge ...
— The Battaile of Agincourt • Michael Drayton
... o'clock in the evening the wind shifted to east-south-east; and at ten it became what seamen term a hard gale, rendering it necessary to veer out about fifty additional fathoms of the hempen cable. The gale still increasing, the ship rolled and laboured excessively, and at midnight eighty fathoms more were veered out, while the sea continued to strike the vessel with a degree of force that no one ...
— The Lighthouse • R.M. Ballantyne
... thief still at work at the breach; And, being opposed to thieves visiting attics, Combined with those vile anti-ladder fanatics, And sent a projectile which left the thief where Thieves and traitors should all be, suspended in air, Except that he lacked what was due to his calling, A hempen attachment to ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... hempen cord,' said Villiers, 'just as it used to be made for the old trade, the man told me. Not an inch of jute ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen
... in the morning Major Harvey, with a launchful of his soldiers, paid a surprise visit to the Ruffling Harry, with the result that they picked up nothing more solid than a hempen cable floating at the moorings. It had been slipped by the brig, whose owner had scented danger. She had already passed the Palisades, and was beating out against the north-east trades on a course for ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... confession to make, and to his explanation Aoyama turned a deaf ear. "Obstinacy is to be over-ruled." He made a sign. At once Zeisuke was seized. His head drawn downward two stout fellows now began to apply in rhythm the madake—strips of bamboo to the thickness of an inch tightly wound together with hempen cord, and making an exceedingly flexible and painful scourge. The blood quickly was spurting from his shoulders. Aoyama and his chamberlain sat enjoying the scene immensely. At the seventieth blow the peddler fainted. "A wicked knave! Off with him ...
— Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House) - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 2 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... ships, the fisherman's sloop, the king's corvette, and the merchantman, all lay anchored in the basin and harbor, their prows boring into the gale, their crude hulls rising and falling, tossing and plunging, tugging like living things at their hempen cables. The snow fell upon them, changing them into phantoms, all seemingly eager to join in the mad revel of the storm. And the lights at the mastheads, swooping now downward, now upward, now from side to side, dappled the ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... foot-bridges, burrow in between small low cottages and warehouses. Some of these have overhanging upper stories to them, are half-timbered or yellow-washed. Some are built wholly of wood. There is an all-pervading odour of tar and hempen rope. Small industries abound, though without any self-advertisement of plate-glass shop fronts. Chimney-sweeps and cobblers give notice of their presence by swinging signs. Newsvendors make irruption of flaring ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... there smocks hempen wear; Of Holland not an ell in, No, not a rag, whate'er your brag, Is found ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... him to the watergate Hard bound, with hempen span. As though they held a lion there, And not a 'fenceless man: They set him high upon a cart, The hangman rode below, They drew his hands behind his back And bared his noble brow. Then as a hound is slipped from leash They cheered the common throng, And blew the ...
— A Book For The Young • Sarah French
... sudden sunlight, and lived up with them in the heights among the Alpine roses, with only the clouds and the snow-summits near. But he was always thinking, thinking, thinking, for all that; and under his little sheepskin winter coat and his rough hempen summer shirt his heart had as much courage in it as Hofer's ever had—great Hofer, who is a household word in all the Innthal, and whom August always reverently remembered when he went to the city of Innspruck and ran out by the foaming water-mill and under ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... rest!—that this dreadful mechanism, unwinding the endless tapestry of time, embroidered with spectral figures of life and death, could have but one brief holiday! Who can wonder that men swing themselves off from beams in hempen lassos?— that they jump off from parapets into the swift and gurgling waters beneath?—that they take counsel of the grim friend who has but to utter his one peremptory monosyllable and the restless machine is shivered as a vase that is dashed upon a marble floor? Under that building which ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... thought stirred Dan greatly; his eyes wandered back to the silken rope; but now it seemed to him an emblem of voluntary suffering and self-sacrifice, like a devotee's hempen girdle. He perceived that the love of this angelic girl would elevate him and hallow his whole life if he would let it. He answered her, fervently, that he would be guided by her in this as in everything; that he knew he was selfish, and ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... played easily beneath the close bodice, in her arms, and her finely turned ankles and legs, that were bared below the knee. The very simplicity of her costume helped to mark the Greek severity of her figure. She wore a short skirt of some coarse hempen stuff, covered with a thick apron made of sail-cloth, her feet thrust into black sabots, while the upper part of her body was covered with an unbleached chemise, ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... are of 240 H.P., consist of two coupled steam engines of the Collmann system. The one shaft in common runs with a velocity of 60 revolutions per minute. Its motion is transmitted by means of ten hempen cables, 3.5 cm. in diameter. The flywheel, which is 4 m. in diameter, serves at the same time as a driving pulley. As the pulley mounted upon the transmitting shaft is only one meter in diameter, it follows that the shafting ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 458, October 11, 1884 • Various
... obtain the bowstring? Whence a cord to match the weapon? Sinews from the elk of Hiisi, And the hempen cord of Lempo. Thus at length the bow was finished. And the stock was quite completed, 40 And the bow was fair to gaze on, And its value matched its beauty. At its back a horse was standing, On the stock a foal was running, On the curve ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous
... as one sees most fearful things In the crystal of a dream, We saw the greasy hempen rope Hooked to the blackened beam And heard the prayer the hangman's ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... of medical books, a pair of dilapidated trousers filled up one side of the room. A pot of clove-pinks in the window struggled to drown with spicy fragrance the odor of stale tobacco smoke. There was a hempen carpet, inch deep with mud and dust, on the floor. Seated round an empty fireplace, on cane chairs and in solemn circle, were about forty followers of the Inner Light. McCall perceived Maria near the window, the dusky twilight ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... busy deck or their snug hammocks, and, like so many monkeys, jump up the shrouds, lie out on the enormous yards while the frigate was plunging bows under in the tumultuous seas, grasp the writhing canvas in their sinewy paws, and wrap it up close and tight in the hempen gaskets. Man-of-war sailors, for battle, or gale, or ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... him to the Watergate, Hard bound with hempen span, As though they held a lion there, And not a 'fenceless man. They set him high upon a cart— The hangman rode below— They drew his hands behind his back, And bared his noble brow. Then, as a hound is slipped from leash, They cheered the common ...
— Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers and Other Poems • W.E. Aytoun
... have occasion for a 'hell' (which may very well happen to any young man practising authorship), I must not be accused of phantasy if I say that they put their hands into Mr. Swinburne's vocabulary and pick it. These vocabularies are made out of vigorous and blunt language. 'What hempen homespuns have we swaggering here?' Alas, they are homespuns from the factory, machine-made in uncostly quantities. Obviously, power needs to make use of no such storage. The property of power is to use phrases, whether strange or familiar, as though it created them. ...
— The Rhythm of Life • Alice Meynell
... Tyburn Hill," said the master-player, quietly. "I've spent my whole life for a bit of hempen cord. I've taken my last cue. Last night, at twelve o'clock, I heard the bellman under the prison walls call my name with the names of those already condemned. The play is nearly out, Nick, and the people will be going home. It has been a wild ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... lay the matter before Lord Middleton, and thus not only endeavour to make amends for his present guilty silence, but rid himself also of the companionship of this ruffianly Sir Crispin, to whom no doubt a hempen ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... expedition, all the figures were sometimes at once shaped out of woven silk, satin, velvet, linen, or woollen cloth, and sewed upon the grounding of the article.... Sometimes the cut work done in this way is framed, as it were, with an edging either in plain or gilt leather, hempen or silken cord, like the leadings of a stained-glass window." Gold and silver starlike flowers, sewn on applique embroideries, were common to Venice and also southern Germany ...
— Quilts - Their Story and How to Make Them • Marie D. Webster
... shall never forget the sight of her standing on the scaffold with the ruff round her pretty neck, all done up with the yellow starch which I had so often helped her to make, and that was so soon to give place to a rough hempen cord. Such a sight, sweetheart, will make one loath to meddle with matters that are too hot or heavy ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... opening by which its mate could escape. The holy man watched this incident, and as, by virtue of his holiness, he easily comprehended the mystic sense of all occurrences, he knew that the captive bird was no other than Thais, caught in the snares of sin, and that—like the plover that had cut the hempen threads with its beak—he could, by pronouncing the word of power, break the invisible bonds by which Thais was held in sin. Therefore he praised God, and was confirmed in his first resolution. But then seeing the plover caught by the feet, and hampered ...
— Thais • Anatole France
... stag's antler, of ruddy course, I have fled as iron in a glowing fire, I have fled as a spear-head, of woe to such as has a wish for it; I have fled as a fierce hull bitterly fighting, I have fled as a bristly boar seen in a ravine, I have fled as a white grain of pure wheat, On the skirt of a hempen sheet entangled, That seemed of the size of a mare's foal, That is filling like a ship on the waters; Into a dark leathern bag I was thrown, And on a boundless sea I was sent adrift; Which was to me an omen of being ...
— The Mabinogion • Lady Charlotte Guest
... Harden," she said, "when ye hae three ill-favoured daughters to marry?" Sir Willie was one of the handsomest men of his time, and when the men brought the rope to hang him he was given the option of marrying Muckle Mou'd Meg or of being hanged with a "hempen halter." It was said that when he first saw Meg he said he preferred to be hanged, but he found she improved on closer acquaintance, and so in three days' time a clergyman said, "Wilt thou take this woman here present ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... a halter got, Made of the best strong hempen teer, And ere a cat could lick her ear, Had tied it up with as much art, As DUN ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... farrier, the bailiff, even the Sire de Montsoreau, the young varlet whose name is Gauttier and bears my banner, with his men at arms, captains, followers, and beasts—all are yours, and will instantly obey your orders under pain of being incommoded with a hempen collar." ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... thunder, heavy showers fall, together with bounding hailstones; the brothers, sons of Astraeus, arouse both the air and the swelling waves with sudden conflicts, and rush to the battle. The genial Mother, using the strength of one of these, first bursts the hempen cables of the Phrygian fleet, and carries the ships headlong, and buries them beneath the ocean. Their hardness being now softened, and their wood being changed into flesh, the crooked sterns are changed into the features of the head; the oars taper off in fingers and swimming ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... halter got, Made of the best strong hempen tear, And e'er a cat could lick her ear, Had tied it up with as much art, As Dun himself ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 6: Literary Curiosities - Gleanings Chiefly from Old Newspapers of Boston and Salem, Massachusetts • Henry M. Brooks
... afternoon, even though there should be no more than one priest. That authority be given to the missionary fathers to carry some books that are conformable to their profession; and that they be prohibited from wearing hempen garments, especially since the heat of the country is contrary to that harshness. That the ministers learn the language of the Indians within one year; and that, in order to avoid disturbance, they do not receive guests in their ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXI, 1624 • Various
... have been enough, Dunn thought, to place a harsh hempen noose about the soft white throat he watched where the little pulse still fluttered up and down. But now it was burnt and utterly destroyed, and no one would ...
— The Bittermeads Mystery • E. R. Punshon
... the Aragonese. The costume is one of the most picturesque in Spain. The men wear short black velvet breeches, open at the knees and slashed at the sides, adorned with rows of buttons, and showing white drawers underneath; alpargatas, or the plaited hempen sandals, which, with the stockings, are black; a black velvet jacket, with slashed and button-trimmed sleeves, and the gaily-coloured faja, or silk sash, worn over ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street
... forth came two, and each upon her back Bore up with pain a huge half-bursten sack, Which, setting down, they opened on the floor, And from their hempen mouths a stream did pour Of mingled seeds, and grain, peas, pulse, and wheat, Poppies and millet, and coriander sweet, And many another brought from far-off lands, Which mingling more with swift and ready hands They piled into a heap confused and great. And ...
— The Earthly Paradise - A Poem • William Morris
... strength to rise to his feet, he was doomed to be seized by some drummer boy, or other wight of the "bummer" tribe, mounted and rode till his strength again failed. Then the dismounted bummer would coolly remove his hempen bridle, shoulder his drum, and seek for another steed. For two or three days past the weather had been excessively hot, and men could be seen lying all along the roadside, as we marched, ...
— Three Years in the Sixth Corps • George T. Stevens
... my own body with a dozen turns of hay-rope, twisting both the ends in under at the bottom of my breast, and winding the hay on the skew a little, that the hempen thong might not slip between, and so cut me in the drawing. I put a good piece of spare rope in the sledd, and the cross-seat with the back to it, which was stuffed with our own wool, as well as two or three fur coats; ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... But this was only exceptional, sails being the usual motive power. And these were constructed chiefly with a view to strength. Instead of canvas, they were formed of untanned hides. And instead of hempen cables the Veneti were so far ahead of their time as to use iron chains with their anchors; an invention which perished with them, not to come in again till the 19th century. Their broad beam and shallow keel enabled these ships to lie more conveniently in the tidal inlets ...
— Early Britain—Roman Britain • Edward Conybeare
... other employment. As those wanderers may have entered England about the time of the cuckoo's appearance, the idea that the bird was the precursor of the Welsh might thus become prevalent. Also, on the quotation given by "PETIT ANDRE" (No. 18. p. 283.) of Welsh parsley, or hempen halters, it may have derived its origin from the severity practised on the Welsh, in the time of their independence, when captured on the English side of the border,—the death of ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 26. Saturday, April 27, 1850 • Various
... is that seat of grace For which all worldlings try: But who would stand in hempen band Upon a scaffold high, And through a murderer's collar take His ...
— Book of Old Ballads • Selected by Beverly Nichols
... spiteful look? What, you want to be sharper than your mother! It won't take me long, I tell you, to send you into the kitchen to boil the kettles. Shame, shame on you! Ah! Ah! My holy saints! I'll make you a hempen wedding-dress, and pull it on over your head directly. I'll make you live with the pigs, ...
— Plays • Alexander Ostrovsky
... on a day of festival In the capital of Valladolid That their eyes met at a crossing And their two souls rushed together. By the greed of a bought duenna And the interchange of love-notes And the help of a hempen ladder They arranged a ...
— A Legend of Old Persia and Other Poems • A. B. S. Tennyson
... two cross sticks to a silk handkerchief, which would not suffer so much from the rain as paper. To the upright stick was affixed an iron point. The string was, as usual, of hemp, except the lower end, which was silk. Where the hempen string terminated, a key was fastened. With this apparatus, on the appearance of a thundergust approaching, he went out into the commons, accompanied by his son, to whom alone he communicated his intentions, well knowing ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various
... truly Castilian pride. The wearing of a sword being restricted to nobles, it was not unusual to see such zasciankowicze, or peasant nobles, following the plough bare-footed, wearing an old rusty sword hanging at their side by hempen cords."—Naganowski. In this volume hamlet has been arbitrarily chosen as a translation for the name of these villages ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... and Latin cannabis, are both identical with the Sanscrit kanam, as well as with the German hanf, and the English hemp. More directly from cannabis comes canvas, made up of hemp or flax, and canvass, to discuss: i.e., sift a question; metaphorically from the use of hempen sieves or sifters."—BIRDWOOD'S Handbook to ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... even under water. And add to this composition liquid varnish, and bituminous oil, and turpentine and strong vinegar, and mix all together and dry it in the sun, or in an oven when the bread is taken out; and then stick it round hempen or other tow, moulding it into a round form, and studding it all over with very sharp nails. You must leave in this ball an opening to serve as a fusee, and cover it with ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... of roasting a joint of meat or a fowl was by suspending it in front of the fire by a strong hempen string tied to a peg in the ceiling, while some one—usually an unwilling child—occasionally turned the roast around. Sometimes the sole turnspit was the housewife, who, every time she basted the roast, gave ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... it first at the arrival of the Mother of the Incarnation. Its scanty population has swelled to upwards of four thousand. The scattered huts which constituted the town, have been replaced by comfortable dwellings. Churches and convents have sprung up. Manufactures of serge and of hempen cloth have been introduced. A market, a brewery, and a tannery have been opened. The ground has been considerably cleared, and the agricultural resources of the country have been developed; three-fourths of the inhabitants can now live on the produce ...
— The Life of the Venerable Mother Mary of the Incarnation • "A Religious of the Ursuline Community"
... . . Fair. The present one was a fellow about half-a-foot taller than the other. He had a long, haggard, wild face, and was dressed in a kind of jacket, something like that of a soldier, with dirty hempen trousers, and with a foreign-looking peaked hat on his head. He spoke with an accent evidently Irish, and occasionally changed the usual thimble formula into "them that finds, wins; and them that can't—och, sure!—they loses;" saying also frequently "your honour," instead of "my lord." I observed, ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... her hands from the yellow meal and dusted them on a hempen towel, and was ready to go forth ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... he knew Greek. For some alleged slight offered against the rules of the convent, they wreaked their vengeance upon him by condemning him to the prison cell, and to a diet of bread and water. They also applied their hempen cords thoroughly, and this course of treatment soon reduced Rabelais to a very weak condition. His friends were by this time powerful and they obtained his release, and a license from the Pope for him to pass from this convent to another. ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett
... hempen rope, and how I watched it there, With all around a hell of sound, and darkness and despair; A little strand of hempen rope, I watched it all alone, And somewhere in the dark behind I heard a woman moan; And somewhere in the dark ahead I heard a man cry out, Then silence, silence, ...
— Rhymes of a Rolling Stone • Robert W. Service
... not so shy as his brother, and rather relies on keeping his nest out of sight than himself out of mind. His home is a sort of hempen hammock, only deeper and more pocket-shaped, to keep the babies from falling out, as Nat and Dodo both did out ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues
... Professor Langley has been following these experiments with great interest, and has furnished Mr. Eddy with a special quality of silk cord which, it is believed, will give better results in meteorological observation than the ordinary hempen twine or rope. The great difficulty that Mr. Eddy finds in the way of making his kites reach great altitudes, is the pull on the cord, which increases greatly as the kites rise higher. It is probable that a tandem of fifteen or twenty big kites, reaching to a mile above the earth's surface, ...
— McClure's Magazine, March, 1896, Vol. VI., No. 4. • Various
... river Newry navigable; a thousand pounds a year for two years, for the encouragement of English protestant schools; several sums, to be distributed in premiums, for the encouragement of the cambric, hempen, and flaxen manufactures; and three hundred thousand pounds to his majesty, towards supporting the several branches of the establishment, and for defraying the expenses of the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... different strain, and did not desist from expressing his opinion, to Heinz, and assuring him that his place was on a battle charger, with his sword in its sheath or in his hand, rather than in a monastery with a rosary hanging from a hempen girdle. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... pull on the hammock almost landed Sary out in the grass, but she clung like a vise to the hempen ropes. ...
— Polly and Eleanor • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... I thought. Couldn't you trust me to see that my future brother-in-law comes to no harm without ramming your own head down the lion's throat? Faith, I think Craven has the right of it: the hempen noose is yawning for such fools ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... few minutes of anxious suspense, Taki Zenzaburo, a stalwart man thirty-two years of age, with a noble air, walked into the hall attired in his dress of ceremony, with the peculiar hempen-cloth wings which are worn on great occasions. He was accompanied by a kaishaku and three officers, who wore the jimbaori or war surcoat with gold tissue facings. The word kaishaku it should be observed, is one to which our word executioner is no equivalent term. The office ...
— Bushido, the Soul of Japan • Inazo Nitobe
... careful to ascertain that none would be occupied except by myself. I would sooner have slept on a bundle of hay in the loft than have had an unknown person snoring in the same room with me. One has always some prejudice to overcome. The bed was not soft, and the hempen sheets were as coarse as canvas, but these trifles did not trouble me. I listened to the song of the crickets on the hearth downstairs until drowsiness beckoned sleep and consciousness of the present lost its way in sylvan labyrinths ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... doom'd to hempen death, Savage, by royal grace, prolong'd his breath. Well might you think he spent his future years In pray'r, and fasting, and repentant tears. —But, O vain hope!—the truly Savage cries, "Priests, and their slavish doctrines, I despise. ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... piece of hempen cloth, And I want to spin another— A little sheet for Mary's bed And an apron for ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... great; the means were infantile. A thunder shower came over, and in an interval between sprinklings he took with him his son, and went by back ways and alleys to a shed in an open field. The two raised the kite as boys did then and do now, and stood within the shelter. There was a hempen string, and on this, next his hand, he had tied a bit of ribbon and an ordinary iron key. A cloud passed over without any indications of anything whatever. But it began to rain, and as the string became wet he noticed that the loose filaments ...
— Steam Steel and Electricity • James W. Steele
... the very beginning," he said. "Pliny tells us how the Romans used hemp for their sails at the end of the first century. Is not the English word 'canvas' only 'cannabis' over again? Herodotus speaks of the hempen robes of the Thracians as equal to linen in fineness. And as for cordage, the ships of Syracuse in ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... release the missing spirit or umagdd, and to punish the offending demons. Well pleased with the tokens of good will offered by the priest and by his earthly friends, the friendly deities are said to hasten to their home and gird themselves for the pursuit. With lance and shield and hempen coat[3] they start off on the raid. They are described as having their hair bound up in small wooden hemispheres, their heads turbaned with the red kerchief, and their necks adorned with a wealth of charms, much ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... large stone, broke the cover of the coffin, and bent over to look more closely. And there in the coffin lay a youth. His face was as white as paper, he wore a mourning turban on his head, his body was wrapped in hempen garments, and he wore straw sandals on his feet. The teacher was greatly frightened and turned to go away. But the corpse had already raised itself to a sitting posture. Then the teacher's fear got ...
— The Chinese Fairy Book • Various
... which no young man on a diminishing salary should tell. She said little at the moment, but she did considerable thinking, and she got busy on her 'phone early the next morning. The first number she called was the Santa Fe's. When she had finished talking with Miss Dunlap that hempen-haired sentimentalist was dabbing her eyes with her handkerchief and blowing her nose, assuring Miss Monon, at the same time, that she was a dear and that it was all right now that she knew the truth. Miss Monon blushed prettily, thanked her, and confessed that she had felt it coming on for some ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... that she was collecting leaves for the silkworms. Again in 519, a century later, there was a dispute on the Ts'u-Wu frontier (North An Hwei province), about the possession of certain mulberry trees. Cotton (Gossypium) was unknown in China, and the poorer classes wore garments of hempen materials; the cotton tree (Bombyx) was known in the south, but then (as now) the catkins could not be woven into cloth. It was never the custom of officers in China to wear swords, until in 409 B.C. Ts'in introduced the practice; but it probably ...
— Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker
... he insulated a wire two miles long with hempen threads saturated with pitch-tar and surrounded with india-rubber. On October 18, during bright moonlight, he submerged this wire in New York Harbour, between Castle Garden and Governor's Island, by unreeling it from ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... moves to the grave in the midst of the mighty crowd of human destinies; for the destiny of the sage holds not aloof from that of the wicked and frivolous. All destinies are for ever commingling; and the adventure is rare in whose web the hempen thread blends not with the golden. There are misfortunes more gradual, less frightful of aspect, than those that befell Oedipus and the prince of Elsinore; misfortunes that quail not beneath the gaze of truth or justice or love. Those who speak of the profit of wisdom are never ...
— Wisdom and Destiny • Maurice Maeterlinck
... whose nature is to make strange apparitions on the earth, in meadows or on mountains, being like men and women, soldiers, kings, and ladies, children and horsemen, clothed in green, to which purpose they do in the night steal hempen stalks from the fields where they grow, to convert them into horses, as the story goes.... Such jocund and facetious spirits are said to sport themselves in the night by tumbling and fooling with servants and shepherds in country houses, pinching them black and blue, and leaving ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick
... the road was the truck with its great coil of hempen rope and its big pulleys, accompanied by two men in overalls. Pee-wee could not repress his exuberance as the trio clambered up on the cabin roof and waved to ...
— Tom Slade at Temple Camp • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... so need not be anxious as to the location of the fire escapes before retiring. The Casa Nova is a stone building with stone stairways and floors. In our room there was nothing inflammable but the mosquito nettings and lace draperies over the iron bedsteads. Two candles furnished us with light, hempen rugs covered portions of the black and white marble floor, a gilded crucifix hung on the painted stone wall, and two chairs, a small table, and ...
— A Trip to the Orient - The Story of a Mediterranean Cruise • Robert Urie Jacob
... potent plant! so rare a taste Has never Turk or Gentoo gotten; The hempen Haschish of the East Is powerless ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... bare and whitewashed. Fra Pacifico, of the Capuchin Order, with his shaven head, his brown habit tied around the waist with a hempen rope, and his well-worn sandals, had long been my friend. Of his past I could never ascertain anything. He had called humbly upon my father when we first went to live at old-world Signa, years before, and he had asked his charity for the poor ...
— The Golden Face - A Great 'Crook' Romance • William Le Queux
... the colourless water. The men stopped dressing-down without a word. Long Jack and Uncle Salters slipped the windlass brakes into their sockets, and began to heave up the anchor; the windlass jarring as the wet hempen cable strained on the barrel. Manuel and Tom Platt gave a hand at the last. The anchor came up with a sob, and the riding-sail bellied as Troop steadied her at the wheel. "Up jib and foresail," ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling
... how in ancient days three warriors came from Green Ierne, to dwell in the wild glens of Cowal and Lochow,—how one of them, the swart Breachdan, all for the love of blue-eyed Eila, swam the Gulf, once with a clew of thread, then with a hempen rope, last with an iron chain, but this time, alas! the returning tide sucks down the over-tasked hero into its swirling vortex,—how Diarmid O' Duin, i.e. son of "the Brown," slew with his own hand the mighty boar, whose head ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... duration of apprenticeships. The term is different in different corporations. Where it is long, a part of it may generally be redeemed by paying a small fine. In most towns, too, a very small fine is sufficient to purchase the freedom of any corporation. The weavers of linen and hempen cloth, the principal manufactures of the country, as well as all other artificers subservient to them, wheel-makers, reel-makers, etc. may exercise their trades in any town-corporate without paying any fine. In all towns-corporate, all persons are free to ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... briskly replied the shikaree, at the same time drawing a roll of hempen twist out of the breast of his cotton shirt, and holding it out ...
— The Cliff Climbers - A Sequel to "The Plant Hunters" • Captain Mayne Reid
... troops had been repeatedly repulsed. They were ranged in a line for a breastwork, and, when rolled before the men as they advanced, formed a moving rampart which was proof against shot, and only to be overcome by a sortie in force, which the enemy did not dare to make. On came the hempen breastworks, while Price's artillery continued an effective fire. In the afternoon of the 20th the enemy hung out a white flag, upon which General Price ordered a cessation of firing, and sent to ascertain the object of the signal. The Federal forces surrendered as prisoners of war, to the number ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... way for him to pass as they tugged against rather a swift current, for the tide was setting toward the opening in the reef; and the next minute he was examining a nondescript affair made of two ship's fenders—the great balls of hempen network used to prevent injury to a vessel's sides when lying in dock or going up to a wharf or pier. These were placed, one inside an old pea-jacket, the other in a pair of oilskin trousers, and all well lashed together so as to have some semblance ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn
... for silence and rest!—that this dreadful mechanism, unwinding the endless tapestry of time, embroidered with spectral figures of life and death, could have but one brief holiday! Who can wonder that men swing themselves off from beams in hempen lassos?—that they jump off from parapets into the swift and gurgling waters beneath?—that they take counsel of the grim friend who has but to utter his one peremptory monosyllable and the restless machine is shivered ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... swift the happy days in Atri sped, What wrongs were righted, need not here be said. Suffice it that, as all things must decay, The hempen rope at length was worn away, Unravelled at the end, and, strand by strand, Loosened and wasted in the ringer's hand, Till one, who noted this in passing by, Mended the rope with braids of briony, So that the leaves and tendrils of ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... through the labyrinthic intricacies of which their bodies are introduced by some unknown process. It is fastened together by a multiplex combination of buttons, thrums and skewers; to which frequently is added a girdle of leather, of hempen or even of straw rope, round the loins. To straw rope, indeed, they seem partial, and often wear it by way of sandals. In head-dress they affect a certain freedom: hats with partial brim, without crown, or with only a loose, hinged, or valve crown; in ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... this hempen caudle o'er thy head. See downward yonder is thy master's walk; And like a Judas, on some rotten tree, Hang up this rotten trunk of misery, That goers-by thy wretched end may see. Stirr'st thou not, villain? get thee from my door; A plague upon thee, haste ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... picture of what he might have been, of the tranquil and happy home that might have been his, rose up before him in such living colors that he felt himself giving way. In vain he disciplined himself with his hempen girdle until the blood came; the vision ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... morning, when the Harvester had completed his work at the cabin and barn and breakfasted, he took a mattock and a big hempen bag, and followed the path to the top of the hill. As it ran along the lake bank he descended on the other side to several acres of cleared land, where he raised corn for his stock, potatoes, and coarser garden truck, for which there was not space in the smaller enclosure ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter |
