"Straw" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... practice, gloomily to point out at this time the gathering clouds of domestic strife, in order to turn the administration back from war, that poor frightened administration of Mr. Madison, which had for months been clutching frantically at every straw which seemed to ...
— Daniel Webster • Henry Cabot Lodge
... he hadn't even got the agreement done in writin', and hadn't paid for it, when the Divide Railroad passed the legislature, as it never oughter done! For, you see, the blamedest cur'ous thing about the whole affair was that this 'straw' road of a Divide, all pure wildcat, was only gotten up to frighten the Pacific Railroad sharps into buying it up. And the road that nobody ever calculated would ever have a rail of it laid was pushed on as ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte
... the troop. He had no excuse whatever on the score of military duty for remaining at home on that day. But he sat idling his time, thinking of things. All the charm of the adventure was gone. He was sick of the canoe and of Barney Morony. He did not care a straw for the seals or wild gulls. The moaning of the ocean beneath the cliff was no longer pleasurable to him,—and as to the moaning at their summit, to tell the truth, he was afraid of it. The long drive thither and back was tedious to him. He thought now ...
— An Eye for an Eye • Anthony Trollope
... compact soil; sometimes in a vertical, sometimes in a horizontal direction. The spade and pick, wielded by hands more vigorous but less expert than my own, are indispensable; but the conduct of the excavation is anything but satisfactory. At the extremity of the long gallery—it seems as though the straw I use for sounding would never reach the end—we finally discover the cells, egg-shaped cavities with the longer axis horizontal. Their number and ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... spikes, hinges, and every sort of ironmongery, and constructed much of the household furniture. The wife and her daughters manufactured the clothing, from dressing the flax and carding the wool to cutting the cloth; knit the mittens and socks; and during the winter made straw bonnets to sell in the towns in ...
— A School History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... a bird's life will furnish an answer to several of these questions. Two sparrows were seen attempting to take possession of the same straw. Each held firmly to his end of the straw. A regular tug of war ensued. They pulled one another about for some time on the top of an awning, and finally, becoming tired of this, they dropped the straw and furiously attacked each other. They fought with beak and ...
— Bird Day; How to prepare for it • Charles Almanzo Babcock
... kept a pig, and was wont to boast that he possessed the highest pigsty and the lowest barn in the country, because the sty was a structure of his own erection, in the old brick tower, above the level of the surrounding ground; while his straw was stored in an excavation (still existing) several feet below. At that time between the Tower and Bracken Wood there was a stretch of waste land, several acres in extent, consisting of bog, interspersed with tussocks of coarse grass, and straggling ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... her hands with a gesture of utter despair. "It is downright wicked of you, Humphrey—and your poor father not a week in the grave. Sure the end of the world be coming, when the leopard and the kid shall lie down together, and the lion shall eat straw like the ox." ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... so very full! There were twenty-three of them, including Miss Fitch, and Ben, the driver, and how they all got in is a mystery to this day. The big girls held the little ones in their laps, the boys were squeezed into the bottom, which was made soft with straw, and somehow every body did have a place, though how, I can't explain. The road was new to them after the first two or three miles, and a new road is always exciting, especially when, as this did, it winds and turns, now in the woods, and now out, now sunshiny, and now ...
— Eyebright - A Story • Susan Coolidge
... took possession of the country in his master's name, and pushed on. On the western side of the river they visited the home of the Taensas Indians and were amazed at the degree {252} of social advancement which they found among them. There were square dwellings, built of sun-baked mud mixed with straw, and arranged in regular order around an open area; and the King was attended by a council of sixty grave old men wearing white cloaks of the fine inner fibre of mulberry bark. The temple was a large structure, full ...
— French Pathfinders in North America • William Henry Johnson
... clean the grates; and while her sisters occupied carpeted chambers hung with mirrors, where they could see themselves from head to foot, this poor little damsel was sent to sleep in an attic, on an old straw mattress, with only one chair and not a ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)
... understood that something marvellous for France had happened afar off, and how her brothers and her cousins and her betrothed, and she with them, had all gone up to the high slope over the river, and had piled up a great pyramid of pine wood and straw and dried mosses, and had set flame to it, till it had glowed in its scarlet triumph all through that wondrous night of the ...
— Stories By English Authors: France • Various
... and the last unquestionably the book of greatest circulation in the whole world, the Bible only excepted; having, during these same twenty-nine years of troubles and embarrassments without number, introduced into England the manufacture of Straw-plat; also several valuable trees; having introduced, during the same twenty-nine years, the cultivation of the Corn-plant, so manifestly valuable as a source of food; having, during the same period, always (whether in exile or not) sustained a shop of some size, in ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett
... spring-time, when The sun with Taurus rides, Pour forth their populous youth about the hive In clusters; they among fresh dews and flowers Fly to and fro, or on the smoothed plank, The suburb of this straw-built citadel, New-nibb'd with balm, expatiate and confer Their state affairs. So thick the very crowd Swarm'd and were straiten'd."—"Paradise Lost" ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... time that the kitten was a weak little squeaker in a basket of straw with the cat of the house next door—Ethel was given a plant as a present. There had never before been a begonia in her mother's greenhouse; and Ethel knew very little about it, except that any rough treatment would kill it. The begonia grew very fast. It became ...
— Little Folks (December 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... not be tossed about by every wind. The roots also must draw the water and nourishment from the ground. You know when the rain comes, it soaks into the ground and then when the plant needs water the little roots suck it out of the ground just as you could draw lemonade through a straw, for every root is supplied with many hair tubes that serve as straws. These hair tubes often are so small we could not see them without a microscope, but it is through these tiny tubes the plant receives nearly all the water ...
— Confidences - Talks With a Young Girl Concerning Herself • Edith B. Lowry
... which extended to the widest spheres of religion. At the same time he showed a homely anxiety to protect us from the cone-shaped bullets of the Prussian sharpshooters by placing us ingeniously behind a barricade consisting of one of the straw mattresses which he had cajoled out of the warder. The Prussian sharpshooters were posted on the distant tower of the Frauenkirche, and had chosen the height occupied by us as their target. At nightfall I found it impossible to make up my mind to go home and leave my interesting ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... New Year," announced that there was a washout in front of us and a landslide at the back of us. Would everybody please rest their honorable bones in the village while a bridge was built and a river filled in. The passengers trailed into a settlement of straw roofs, bamboo poles and acres of white and yellow lilies. I went to a quaint little inn—that was mostly out!—built over a fussy brook; and a pine tree grew right out of the side of the house. My room was furnished with ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... his Wife told him. He murmured something about the Last Straw and moved swiftly out of doors. Pulling up the Rover Stake from the Croquet Grounds as he ran, he cleared the Dividing Fence without touching his Hands and began to Clean House. In about a Second there was a Sound as if somebody had stubbed his Toe and dropped a Crockery Store. Then Cyrenius was ...
— More Fables • George Ade
... carpet, beneath the shade of ash-trees and elms, he who played Old Winter's part lingered with his few attendants. These were clad in the dull gray garb which becomes the sober season of the year, and were decked with yellow straw, and dead, brown leaves. Out of the wood came the May-king and his followers, clad in the gayest raiment, and decked with evergreens and flowers. With staves and willow-withes they fell upon Old Winter's champions, and tried to drive them from the sward. In friendly fray they fought, and ...
— The Story of Siegfried • James Baldwin
... sprained ancle, yet ever cheery, full of hope and valour. Light Louvet glances hare-eyed, not hare-hearted: only virtuous Petion's serenity 'was but once seen ruffled.' (Meillan, pp. 119-137.) They lie in straw-lofts, in woody brakes; rudest paillasse on the floor of a secret friend is luxury. They are seized in the dead of night by Jacobin mayors and tap of drum; get off by firm countenance, rattle of ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... surroundings. Twenty-four of them, forming two coach parties, had gone to see some celebrated Catskill views, one to the Old Mountain House and the other to East Windham. Some were in the village. Miss Tevkin, wearing her immense straw hat, and with her opera-glass in her hand, was looking at birds in the vicinity ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... no matches, earned not a single penny, and perhaps her father would beat her. Besides her home was almost as cold as the street—it was an attic; and although the larger of the many chinks in the roof were stopped up with straw and rags, the wind and snow often ...
— Favorite Fairy Tales • Logan Marshall
... so far into rapport with the heart of nature herself, that, like a physical prophet, his seeing could outspeed his knowing, and behold a law—dimly, it is true, but yet behold it—long before his intellect, which had to build bridges and find straw to make the bricks, could dare to affirm its approach to the same conclusion. Truth to humanity made him true to fact; and truth to fact made him true ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... appointed order upside down and to get to the top themselves, and involuntarily their glance fell covertly on the poor in the town. But these were going about in their customary half-slumber, working when there was work to be had and contenting themselves with that. "That would be the last straw," said Jeppe, "here, where we ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... paper, old tin roofing, tent-cloth, or sticks, brush, ferns, weeds, or round sticks, to cover it as you did with the Pawnee hogan (Figs. 42 and 43). Then cover it with browse, or thatch it with hay or straw and hold the thatch in place with poles or sticks, as shown in Fig. 146. The barabara may also be covered with earth, sod, ...
— Shelters, Shacks and Shanties • D.C. Beard
... two or four men with very heavy oars made of two pieces of wood working on pins placed on outrigger bars. The men scull standing and use the thigh as a rest for the oar. They all wear a single, wide-sleeved, scanty, blue cotton garment, not fastened or girdled at the waist, straw sandals, kept on by a thong passing between the great toe and the others, and if they wear any head- gear, it is only a wisp of blue cotton tied round the forehead. The one garment is only an apology for clothing, and displays lean concave chests and lean ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... obliterated by the wash of spring freshets. The depression increased as she passed close beside the ramshackle log stable, where her horse sank to his ankles in a filthy brown seepage of mud and rotting straw before the door. Two small, slouchily built stacks of weather-stained hay occupied a fenced-off enclosure, beside which, with no attempt to protect them from the weather, stood a dish-wheeled hay rake, and a rusty mowing machine, its ...
— The Gold Girl • James B. Hendryx
... to-day on this journey thou seest. I am not yet grown used to asking gifts of a stranger, Which he will often unwillingly give, to be rid of the beggar. But necessity drives me to speak; for here, on the straw, lies Newly delivered of child, a rich land-owner's wife, whom I scarcely Have in her pregnancy, safe brought off with the oxen and wagon. Naked, now in her arms the new-born infant is lying, And but little the help ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... I do nothing of this. I am a chisel which cuts the wood; the Carpenter directs it. If I lose my edge, He must sharpen me; if He puts me aside and takes another, it is His own good will. None are indispensable to Him; He will do His work with a straw equally as well." ...
— General Gordon - A Christian Hero • Seton Churchill
... came in sight of the sea-coast, where vessels laden with provisions, sent from Dublin, were awaiting them. So eager were the famished men for food, that "they rushed into the sea as eagerly as they would into their straw." All their money was poured into the hands of the merchants; some of them even fought in the water about a morsel of food, while in their thirst they drank all the wine they could lay hands on. Our guide saw full a thousand men drunk that day on "the wine of Ossey and Spain." The scene ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... lust'st to use her in that kind For which thou whipp'st her. The usurer hangs the cozener. Through tatter'd clothes small vices do appear; Robes and furr'd gowns hide all. Plate sin with gold, And the strong lance of justice hurtless breaks; Arm it in rags, a pigmy's straw does pierce it. None does offend, none, I say, none; I'll able 'em: Take that of me, my friend, who have the power To seal the accuser's lips. Get thee glass eyes; And, like a scurvy politician, seem To see the ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... troublesome pilgrim that ever I met with in all my days. He lay roaring at the Slough of Despond for above a month together. He would not go back neither. The Celestial City, he said he should die if he came not to it, and yet was dejected at every difficulty and stumbled at every straw. He had, I think, a Slough of Despond in his mind, a slough that he carried everywhere with him, or else he could never have been as he was.' Yes, both Mr. Fearing and the laird of Knockbrex were painful Christians. That is to ...
— Samuel Rutherford - and some of his correspondents • Alexander Whyte
... were curiously looking at the Tilden homestead, an old man came walking slowly down the road, a rake over his shoulder, one leg of his patched trousers stuck in a boot-top, a suspender missing, his old straw hat minus a goodly portion of its crown. He stopped, leaned upon his rake, and looked at us inquisitively, ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy
... not he. Why, he was a very ingenious man, and so he had some pairs of green spectacles made, which he used to clap over their eyes, and then when the shavings were chopped up fine, they used to eat them greedily, believing they were grass. He first gave them all the old straw hats he could collect, but that was an ...
— Marmaduke Merry - A Tale of Naval Adventures in Bygone Days • William H. G. Kingston
... welfare and humane treatment of the prisoners at large was a surprise to me.... Separated by nationality, these prisoners are housed in wooden buildings, well built, ventilated and heated.... They sleep upon straw mattresses in well-warmed quarters, and, as far as I could judge, are as well or better housed than labourers upon public works in the United States. The prisoners are fed three times a day. Breakfast consists of coffee and bread. Dinner consists of vegetable and meat, soup and bread, and ...
— The Better Germany in War Time - Being some Facts towards Fellowship • Harold Picton
... once been there before with Mr. Wedderburne, (now Lord Loughborough,) Mr. Murphy, and Mr. Foote; and I had heard Foote give a very entertaining account of Johnson's happening to have his attention arrested by a man who was very furious, and who, while beating his straw[1115], supposed it was William Duke of Cumberland, whom he was punishing for his cruelties in Scotland, in 1746[1116]. There was nothing peculiarly remarkable this day; but the general contemplation of insanity was very affecting. I accompanied ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... than they doubted that the Dee flowed from the mountains to the sea. If report spoke true, he was often heard in conversation with intelligent beings, though to ordinary human eyes no other form but that of his own was seen. After his fame was wide-spread, an old woman, who lived in a little straw-thatched cottage by the roadside near Balmoral, declared that she expected that he would enlighten the world, for she had often seen him with those who could instruct him and tell him of past and future events. One of those persons, ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... The straw rustled when she stepped on it, and she was afraid to risk a movement, so she crouched and made herself small. The air was thick and pungent, freezing draughts played upon her through the cracks of the door, and her foot tingled, but she did not move. ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... green trees M'lama sat tossing her sheep shanks, and a dense throng of solemn men and women squatted or sat or tiptoed about her—leaving her a respectable space for her operations. A bright fire crackled and glowed at her side, and into this, from time to time, she thrust little sticks of plaited straw and drew them forth blazing and spluttering until with a quick breath she extinguished the flame and examined the ...
— The Keepers of the King's Peace • Edgar Wallace
... contrary to O'Connell. Generosity was not the strong point of the Irish orator, and, to the confusion of Littleton and the annoyance of Grey, he insisted on taking the world into his confidence from his place in Parliament. This was the last straw. Lord Althorp would no longer serve, and Lord Grey, harassed to death, determined no longer to lead. After all, 'Johnny' was only one of many who upset the coach, which, in truth, turned over because its wheels were rotten. On the evening of June 29 a meeting of the Cabinet was held, and, ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... the midst of an unusually severe winter in Louisiana, in a season of almost daily rainfalls, when the Kentucky and part of the Tennessee troops reached their destination. They went into camp without tents or blankets or bedding of straw even, on the open and miry alluvial ground, with the temperature at times at freezing point. This destitution and consequent suffering at once enlisted the attention and sympathies of the public. The Legislature of Louisiana, in session, promptly voted ...
— The Battle of New Orleans • Zachary F. Smith
... into stables, and boards were fastened up on the open faces to keep out the cold; others were stalled in sheds and outbuildings; and the great refectory, or dining hall, was also strewn thick with straw, and filled with ...
— The Cornet of Horse - A Tale of Marlborough's Wars • G. A. Henty
... press against the floodgates of the brain, how quickly do they yield to your power! Then Curiosity comes swimming by, making signs to her companions to follow; they plunge into the current. Imagination sits dreaming on the bank. She follows the torrent with her eyes and transforms the fragments of straw and reed into masts and bowsprit. And scarcely has the transformation taken place, before Desire, holding in one hand her skirt drawn up even to her knees, appears, sees the vessel and takes possession of it. O ye drinkers of water, it is by means of that magic ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... disdain batrachian studies, and set no limit to our merriment at their quaint, solemn, half-human pranks. One question still is unresolved,—Why do frogs stay and be tickled? They snap snappishly at the titillating straw; they snatch at it with their weird little hands; they parry it skilfully. They hardly can enjoy being tickled, and yet they endure, paying a dear price for the society of their betters. Frogs the frisky, frogs the spotted, were our comedy that day. Whenever the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... a fine July forenoon, and the cart, filled with clean straw, was at the door by eleven o'clock; so our wife handed us out a pair of blankets to hap round me, and syne little Benjie into my arms, with his big-coatie on, and his leather cappie tied below his chin, and a bit red worsted comforterie round his neck; for, though the sun ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... peace w'atsumever. He can't leave home 'cep' Brer Wolf 'ud make a raid en tote off some er de fambly. Brer Rabbit b'ilt 'im a straw house, en hit wuz tored down; den he made a house out'n pine-tops, en dat went de same way; den he made 'im a bark house, en dat wuz raided on, en eve'y time he los' a house he los' one er his chilluns. Las' Brer Rabbit got mad, he did, en cusst, en den he went ...
— Uncle Remus • Joel Chandler Harris
... thoughtful observation; these were merry as larks, and their white teeth, constantly visible, shone whiter than even the cockatoo's feathers on their brows and chins. Contrasted with our woollen-jacketted, straw- hatted, great-coated race, full of work and care, it seemed as if nature was pleased to join in the laugh, at the expense of the sons of art. Sun never shone upon a merrier group of mortals than these children of nature appeared to be. One amongst them ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell
... with an ominous smile, "that George Caresfoot has made up his mind to marry you, and that I have made up mine to help him to do so, and that your will, strong as it certainly is, is, as compared with our united wills, what a straw is to a gale. The straw cannot travel against the wind, it must go with it, and you must marry George Caresfoot. You will as certainly come to the altar-rails with him as you will to your death-bed. It is written in ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... yourselves, ye oxen, thresh out for yourselves. Thresh out the straw for your food, and the grain for your masters. Do not rest yourselves, ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall
... 12 inches deep in your cellar in a dark place where the temperature is always above freezing. Plant the roots as close as their size will permit and cover the crowns with at least 3 inches of soil. On top of this put straw so that when the crowns come through the soil they will not strike the light. When ready to cut, remove the soil as far back as the original root so that you can intelligently cut the growth to ...
— Three Acres and Liberty • Bolton Hall
... short stay there—the time being principally taken up with chartering boats and providing necessaries for the passage down the river—we all, to the number of about fifty persons, occupying twenty-two boats, which had to be specially fitted up with straw-built houses with sloping roofs, set off on January 10, 1858, under the protection of a guard of Sikhs, and, after what may on the whole be regarded as a pleasant trip, reached Tattah on February 11. Thence ...
— A Narrative Of The Siege Of Delhi - With An Account Of The Mutiny At Ferozepore In 1857 • Charles John Griffiths
... sky, and listened to the splashing of the oars; sitting in the shadow of the sail, the six rowers lifted their oars regularly to make the forward stroke, and when they dipped them into the water and brought them up again, drops of crystal clung to their paddles. Reclining on the straw, or sitting on the benches, with their legs dangling and their chins in their hands, or leaning against the sides of the boat, between the big jambs of the hull, the tar of which was melting in the heat, the silent passengers hung their heads and closed their eyes ...
— Over Strand and Field • Gustave Flaubert
... last plastered deceitfully to his skull as if a mere brush had smoothed it, and with a final survey, to assure himself that he had forgotten none of those niceties of the toilet that Winona would insist upon, he took his new straw hat and went again to the Penniman house. For the moment he was in flawless order, as neat, as compactly and accurately accoutred as the Merle twin, to whom this effect came without effort. But it would be so only ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... ruins. A troop of soldiers came to it one day in time of war, after Mary and her mother had left it, and spent the night there: they spread straw over the floors to sleep upon. In the morning, when they went away, they wantonly set the straw on fire, and left it burning, and thus the palace was destroyed. Some of the lower floors were of stone; but ...
— Mary Queen of Scots, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... grandmother and grandfather had few pretensions. It was a log hut, or cabin, built of clay, wood, and straw. At a distance it resembled—though it was smaller, less commodious and less substantial—the cabins erected in the western states by the first settlers. To my child's eye, however, it was a noble structure, ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... trembling; the shock and then this counter shock were unhinging her. She was horrified at herself that she should not catch at every straw to prove John was alive, instead of feeling some sense of relief when Verisschenzko protested that ...
— The Price of Things • Elinor Glyn
... illimitable indulgence to all predestined bores and nuisances in the way of conversation, was—not the ignorance, not the nonsense, not the contradictoriness of opinion—no! but the false, hypocritical enthusiasm about objects for which in reality they cared not the fraction of a straw. To hear these bores talk of educating the people to an acquaintance with what they call 'high art'! Ah, heavens, mercifully grant that the earth may gape for us before our name is placed on any such committee! 'High art,' indeed! First of all, most excellent bores, would you please to ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... closing in the mound, came Signy along with a bundle of straw in her arms, and this she cast down to Sinfiotli, bidding the men say nothing of this to the king; and they promised, and set the topmost stones, and left the ...
— Told by the Northmen: - Stories from the Eddas and Sagas • E. M. [Ethel Mary] Wilmot-Buxton
... hissing of the thongs. Then the words rang out in a shout of mighty condemnation, "Ye have made my Father's house a den of thieves!" And the thong writhed and hissed and struck and stung and the coin-laden tables were overturned with the ease and fury of an enraged man brushing straw aside. Seeing the uproar about his table, Zador Ben Amon pushed his way through the confusion just in time to see two well filled money bags kicked open by a fellow money-changer trying to escape the scourge. With a shout and a curse he sprang forward. ...
— The Coming of the King • Bernie Babcock
... here and there by palms, or by rocks like this. Standing thus in the early morning light, Rita was a picturesque figure indeed. She was dressed in a blouse and short skirt of black serge, with a white kerchief knotted around her throat, and another twisted carelessly around her broad-brimmed straw hat. Her beautiful face was alight with eager inquiry and determination; her eyes roved over the landscape, as if seeking some familiar figure; but all was strange so far. Manuela, crouching at the foot of the rock, had lost, ...
— Rita • Laura E. Richards
... gone for a little ramble in the lower woods, but they soon appeared, Mr. Potts seating himself limply on the steps and fanning himself with his broad straw hat—a hat that in its very largeness and looseness seemed to express the inflexible ideals of non-conformity—while Mrs. Potts, very firmly busked and bridled, her head very sleek, her smile very tight, took a chair between Mrs. Upton and Sir Basil, and soon showed, ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... slowly through the gates and across the Manorhold to the shore, distant at this point about a quarter of a mile. Two or three stone cottages with picturesque straw-thatched roofs lay near the cliffs, property of the Manor and ...
— The Spanish Chest • Edna A. Brown
... medallions, showing "the seven griefs." The parable of "The mote and the beam" is quaintly depicted by two men standing near together, one with an enormous log of wood, equal in length to a third of his height, projecting unsupported from his own eye, attempting to pull a small bit of straw from ...
— Little Gidding and its inmates in the Time of King Charles I. - with an account of the Harmonies • J. E. Acland
... quarrels, knew the weak side of his friend; and though in his heart he thought the Romans as good-for-nothing a set of turbulent dastards as all Italy might furnish, he merely picked a straw from his mantle, and said, in rather an impatient tone, "Humph! proceed! did ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... kindly is she, Who nurses young rivers and sends them to sea. And, nestled high up on her sheltering lap, Is a little red house, with a little straw cap That bears a blue feather of smoke, curling high, And a bunch of red ...
— A Book for Kids • C. J. (Clarence Michael James) Dennis
... home, and before he slept that night made careful notes of all the Spaniard's suggested military dispositions, both of attackers and attacked, writing underneath them the proverb about the corn and the straw. There existed no real reason why he should have done so, as he was only a civilian engaged in business, but Pieter van de Werff chanced to be a provident young man who knew many things might happen which could not precisely be foreseen. As it fell ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... of the fiord, writes John Yeardley by 12 o'clock, and found but poor accommodation. We three had one room with three beds; Endre Dahl with his willing-hearted and contented men lodged in a barn on straw. There was time enough to arrange for a meeting in the morning, and we applied for a room at the inn; but a little knot of illiberal Haugeans [followers of Hauge], or Saints, as they call themselves, persuaded our landlord ...
— Memoir and Diary of John Yeardley, Minister of the Gospel • John Yeardley
... thou be true: doe not giue dalliance Too much the raigne: the strongest oathes, are straw To th' fire ith' blood: be more abstenious, Or else ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... he was conscientiously uncompromising, but personally he was as simple-mannered as he was simple-hearted. He was a tall lean man in rusty black, with a clerical waistcoat that buttoned high, and scholarly glasses, but with a belated straw hat that had counted more than one summer, and a farmer's tan on his face and hands. He pronounced the church-letter, though quite outside of his own church, a document of the highest respectability, and he listened with patient deference to the ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... period of time, but from the very first young Cowperwood knew how to make money. He took subscriptions for a boys' paper; handled the agency for the sale of a new kind of ice-skate, and once organized a band of neighborhood youths into a union for the purpose of purchasing their summer straw hats at wholesale. It was not his idea that he could get rich by saving. From the first he had the notion that liberal spending was better, and that somehow he ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... you, strangers? whar are you going and whar are you from?" said a fellow, who came trotting up with an old straw hat on his head. He was dressed in the coarsest brown homespun cloth. His face was rather sallow from fever-and-ague, and his tall figure, though strong and sinewy was quite thin, and had besides an angular look, which, together with ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... pepper, cloves, mace, and allspice, in fine powder, and let it lie a fortnight. Then take away the pickle, put the tongue into a small pan, and lay some butter on it. Cover it with brown crust, and bake it slowly till it becomes so tender that a straw would go through it. The thin part of tongues, when hung up to dry, grates like hung beef, and also makes a fine addition to the flavour of omlets.—To boil a tongue. If it is a dried tongue, soak it over night; the next day put it ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... carnage. Blessed be thou, adopt such measures that that tiger among men may not succeed in slaying Jayadratha. Thou art our sole refuge. Like a raging conflagration consuming heaps of dry grass and straw, Dhananjaya-fire, urged by the wind of his wrath, is consuming the grass and straw constituted by my troops. O scorcher of foes, seeing the son of Kunti pass, having pierced through this host, those warriors that are protecting Jayadratha have become doubtful ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... a heat that the perspiration rolls down their naked shoulders, even in the cold of a winter night. The bets are doubled and trebled as the game advances, the mental excitement increases almost to madness, and all the worldly effects of the gamblers are often hazarded upon the position of a straw. ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... succeeded to vast chin. I do not know how many of them there were. They fell away voluminously into the capaciousness of her bosom. She was dressed usually in a pink Mother Hubbard, and she wore all day long a large straw hat. But when she let down her hair, which she did now and then, for she was vain of it, you saw that it was long and dark and curly; and her eyes had remained young and vivacious. Her laughter was the most catching I ever heard; it would begin, a low peal in her ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... burned, and the barn, to the side of which it was built, was only scorched. Some one must have dropped a match in the straw of the pig-pen to start ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue on an Auto Tour • Laura Lee Hope
... Sunday night Dr. Inglis and the party with her arrived at Caramarat. The straw beds and the fairytale dinner, and the cheery voice of Dr. Inglis calling them to partake of it, will never be forgotten ...
— Elsie Inglis - The Woman with the Torch • Eva Shaw McLaren
... I lack; soon in a twinkle we shall separate, And needy and forlorn I'll come and go, with none to care about my fate. Thither shall I a suppliant be for a fog wrapper and rain hat; my warrant I shall roll, And listless with straw shoes and broken bowl, wherever to convert my fate may ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... that they had considerable difficulty in carrying the baron down; but finally they had him comfortably extended upon his mattress and threw over him a few handsful of straw, which ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau
... scribes who dare forget how wild we are How human breasts adore alarum bells. You house us in a hive of prigs and saints Communal, frugal, clean and chaste by law. I'd rather brood in bloody Elsinore Or be Lear's fool, straw-crowned amid the straw. Promise us all our share in Agincourt Say that our clerks shall venture scorns and death, That future ant-hills will not be too good For Henry Fifth, or Hotspur, or Macbeth. Promise that through to-morrow's spirit-war Man's deathless soul will ...
— The Congo and Other Poems • Vachel Lindsay
... fever. It seemed to him that his detested neighbour would set fire to his house at least in revenge for this; and so he gave orders to Gapka to keep a constant lookout, everywhere, and see whether dry straw were laid against it anywhere. Finally, in order to forestall Ivan Nikiforovitch, he determined to enter a complaint against him before the district judge of Mirgorod. In what it consisted can be ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... blockhouse. Arrowhead had also withdrawn from the group of drunkards as soon as he found that they were losing their senses, and had taken possession of a hut, where he had thrown himself on the straw, and sought the rest that two wakeful and watchful nights had rendered necessary. It followed that no one was left among the Indians to care for Mabel, if, indeed, any knew of her existence at all; and the proposal of the drunkard was received with yells of delight by eight or ten ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... of my father that was within his reach, but, having none of that great man's sense or virtues, he could only lay wild hands on lands and houses; and since he has stript Houghton of its glory, I do not care a straw what he does with the stone or ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... a wide, bright space of green painted wood and straw matting. The walls were panelled from floor to ceiling. In the centre of the floor there was an oak table—a table made of sharp slabs of oak laid upon a frame that was evidently of ancient design, probably early German, ...
— A Mere Accident • George Moore
... "And she said well: for cravenhood it were Befitting man of straw, not warrior true, With whom so bright a lady deigned to pair, So wonderous sweet and full of nectarous dew, To clack like a poor cuckow to the fair, Hanging his coward wing, when he should woo, Shaping her speech to this in wary mode, ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... could get away to the drawing-room, to await Mrs. Baxendale's coming. He tried to read in a volume of Boswell which lay out; at other times the book was his delight, now it had the succulence of a piece of straw. He was in that state of mind when five minutes of waiting is intolerable. He had to wait some twenty before Mrs. Baxendale appeared. Only a clinging remnant of common-sense kept him from addressing her sourly. Wilfrid was ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... houses, and inhabit them; and they shall plant vineyards, and eat the fruit of them." "The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, and the lion shall eat straw like the bullock: and dust shall be the serpent's meat. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all My holy mountain, saith ...
— Our Day - In the Light of Prophecy • W. A. Spicer
... were suitable only to act as ancestors. Aside from that, they had no good points. They dwelt in mud huts thatched with straw. They had no currency and no ventilation,—no drafts, in other words. Their boats were made of wicker-work plastered with clay. Their swords were made of tin alloyed with copper, and after a brief skirmish, the entire army had to fall back ...
— Comic History of England • Bill Nye
... tea; while Morris, foraging about the house, was presently delighted by discovering the lid of the water-butt upon the kitchen shelf. Here, then, was the packing-case complete; in the absence of straw, the blankets (which he himself, at least, had not the smallest intention of using for their present purpose) would exactly take the place of packing; and Morris, as the difficulties began to vanish from his path, rose almost to the brink of exultation. There was, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... who seemed out of place amid such great eagerness and curiosity. He was a tall, meager man, who dragged one leg stiffly when he walked, dressed in a wretched brown coat and dirty checkered trousers that fitted his lean, bony limbs tightly. A straw sombrero, artistic in spite of being broken, covered an enormous head and allowed his dirty gray, almost red, hair to straggle out long and kinky at the end like a poet's curls. But the most notable thing about this man was not his clothing or his European features, ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... presence of his superior. The politic wrath of Scaurus was aroused; an enemy had been delivered into his hands, and the people might be given an object-lesson of the way in which the most vehement champion of popular rights was, even when covered with the dignity of a magistracy, but a straw in the iron grasp of the higher Imperium. The consul ordered Decius to rise, his official robe to be rent, the chair of justice to be shattered in pieces, and published a warning that no future litigant should resort to the court of the contumacious praetor.[798] The vulgar mind is impressed, ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... incident that I am now going to speak. A favorite employment of this good man was the care of his garden, and he might be seen any pleasant afternoon in summer, rigged out in a hideous yellow calico robe, or blouse, with a dusty old black straw hat stuck on the back of his head, hoeing and digging in that beloved patch of ground. One day as he was thus occupied, his wife emerged from the house, dressed in a dark brown gingham, and bearing in her hand some "muslins," which she began to spread upon the gooseberry-bushes ...
— Autumn Leaves - Original Pieces in Prose and Verse • Various
... need to know how it works. All we need to know is whether we have to break it apart or if we can carry it down mostly in one piece. First, though, we've got to organize ourselves. Jerry's the boss of this gang, and as Patrol Leader I propose to be straw-boss. Anybody got any objections? No? Well, then, ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Air on Lost Island • Gordon Stuart
... cart drawn by a tiny donkey came providentially to solve the problem. Riviere laid Elaine on the straw of the cart; snatched the reins from the owner; drove home at frantic speed; had her put to bed in his own room by Mme Giras; 'phoned imperatively for a doctor ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... certain village a poor old woman who had collected a mess of beans, and was going to cook them. So she made a fire on her hearth, and, in order to make it burn better, she put in a handful of straw. When the beans began to bubble in the pot, one of them fell out and lay, never noticed, near a straw which was already there; soon a red-hot coal jumped out of the fire and joined the pair. The straw began ...
— Household Stories by the Brothers Grimm • Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm
... forbidden by a policeman to smoke another cigarette, or sit up a quarter of an hour later; hardly a man who would not feel inclined in such a case to raise a rebellion for a caprice for which he did not really care a straw. Unmeaning and muddle-headed tyranny in small things, that is the thing which, if extended over many years, is harder to bear and hope through than the massacres of September. And that was the nightmare of vexatious ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton
... willow trees are favourite nesting places, but a bit dangerous if too near the water's edge. Many birds delight in straw stacks, and if disturbed will simply go up higher, so as to be out of the way ...
— Wild Ducks - How to Rear and Shoot Them • W. Coape Oates
... that swung from the rafters of the stable and lighted it. In a corner he made a bed of fresh straw. The animal leaned over a little against the wall, and they knew she was grateful for the shelter and the support. Then the head began to sway in a weary rhythm from side to side as if the pain drove it on. Her breath ...
— Waysiders • Seumas O'Kelly
... his work most efficiently: he and the chaplain have converted an old gin-house into a comfortable hospital, with ten nice beds and straw pallets. He is now, with a hearty professional faith, looking round for somebody to put into it. I am afraid the regiment will accommodate him; for, although he declares that these men do not sham sickness, ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... down into the river, where by and by the tide rose and searched me out. Then I had to swim for it. That was of less account. Our costume was not elaborate,—a pair of overalls, a woollen shirt, and a straw hat, that was all, and a wetting was rather welcome than otherwise; but they dubbed me Bismarck, and that was not to be borne. My passionate protest only made them laugh the louder. Yet they were not an ill-natured ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... they do occur, and although outward graces are not to be contemned more than other gifts of Providence, yet she who bestows her hand for their sake alone is a victim to folly. Should such be free from impure passion, they still build their hopes on a foundation of straw. In the conflict of life, we need, in our nearest friend, inward charms. Where these are wanting, ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey
... of tobacco. His head was aching. He was heavy with sleep, and this intrusion seemed to him to be a final indignity offered to him by the man whom he now hated. "What business have you to come in here?" he said, leaning on his elbow. "I don't care a straw for the horse. If you have anything to say send my ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... were crowded together with only narrow passage-ways between. They were roofed with bark or thatched with straw. To lessen the danger of fire a wide road was left between the wall and the houses. Besides dwelling houses, there were in the fort the barracks where the soldiers stayed, the church, shops, and the council house, where meetings ...
— Four American Indians - King Philip, Pontiac, Tecumseh, Osceola • Edson L. Whitney
... While the steward was getting ready the captain's arms, I ran round to the berths of the passengers. One had heard me ask for the pistols; thus the report at once went round among them that there was fighting in prospect. In a few minutes, therefore, several gentlemen in straw-hats, with yellow nankeen trousers and ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston
... hence, which at a considerable expense I have brought to this reservoir; therein I throw old lime, ashes, horse- dung, etc., and twice a week I let it run, thus impregnated; I regularly spread on this ground in the fall, old hay, straw, and whatever damaged fodder I have about my barn. By these simple means I mow, one year with another, fifty-three hundreds of excellent hay per acre, from a soil, which scarcely produced five-fingers [a ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
... Perdita at places of public resort and amusement; she, magnificently dressed, driving a splendid equipage which had cost him nine hundred guineas, and surrounded by his friends. We read that: "To-day she was a paysanne, with her straw hat tied at the back of her head. Yesterday she perhaps had been the dressed belle of Hyde Park, trimmed, powdered, patched, painted to the utmost power of rouge and white lead; to-morrow she would be the cravated Amazon of the riding-house; but, be she what she might, the hats of the ...
— Beaux and Belles of England • Mary Robinson
... Mrs. Ames, smoothing her black bombazine impressively and detaching a bit of straw from some tangled fringe, "are, to mention the men first, Wilfred, Horace Penfield and yourself, and my women guests are Marcia Oldham and ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... elections by the popular cry, "No gin, no king." The London taverns were thronged day and night, and in the windows of those frequented by the lowest class placards were exhibited with the tempting announcement, "Drunk for a penny; dead drunk for twopence; clean straw for nothing." On the straw lay men and ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... it was for Ikey the last straw. As Sue unwound the square of linen, he emitted a heart-rending "Ow!" and fell to weeping stormily. "Oh, boo-hoo! Oh! Oh! Oh, dis is wat I gets for singin' in a Christian choir!" With which stinging rebuke, he fled ...
— Apron-Strings • Eleanor Gates
... by the spectacle he beholds from time to time as he peeps into the cab through the window behind him, where the grim Judy is always motionless, and the old gentleman with his cap over one eye is always sliding off the seat into the straw and looking upward at him out of his other eye with a helpless expression of being jolted ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... the frigate hove to, near the land, several canoes came off to welcome the well-known flag. The natives were decently dressed in shirts and trousers, with straw hats; and their manner was particularly quiet and at the same time cheerful. They offered to bring off any provisions which might be required; but the captain wished himself to go on shore, and said that he could then purchase what he wanted. Two whalers were at the time standing ...
— Ben Hadden - or, Do Right Whatever Comes Of It • W.H.G. Kingston
... mopus; no company comes But a rabble of tenants, and rusty dull rums.[5] With parsons what lady can keep herself clean? I'm all over daub'd when I sit by the Dean. But if you will give us a barrack, my dear, The captain I'm sure will always come here; I then shall not value his deanship a straw, For the captain, I warrant, will keep him in awe; Or, should he pretend to be brisk and alert, Will tell him that chaplains should not be so pert; That men of his coat should be minding their prayers, And not among ladies to give themselves airs." Thus argued my lady, but argued ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... testily, "I'm a man of shallow wits and hard blows. If I had been of keener mind, the gods know, I would have been a free chief among the Nervii, instead of making sport for these straw-limbed Romans. If what I propose won't answer, what can ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... innocuous as the baying of dogs at the moon. The legislature refused to indorse it and the pro-slavery resolutions attached to it. They were both ignominiously laid upon the table, and what is more to the purpose as a straw to show the drift of popular opinion on the slavery question in Massachusetts, their author failed of a renomination as Senator at the hands of ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... is often deceptive. Just now they were studying the girl standing before him with very keen interest. A slender girl, not quite sixteen years old, in a loose and broad-sleeved olive- green dress, and yellow scarf at the neck; brown straw hat trimmed with spring flowers; flowers also in her hand, yellow and white, and ferns, in a great loose bunch; and her golden hair hanging in a braid on her back. But the face must be imagined, white and delicate and indescribably lovely in its ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... piercing chillness spread itself through his veins. The frequent groans still engaged him to move forwards. He turned towards them, and by the Lamp's glimmering beams beheld in a corner of this loathsome abode, a Creature stretched upon a bed of straw, so wretched, so emaciated, so pale, that He doubted to think her Woman. She was half-naked: Her long dishevelled hair fell in disorder over her face, and almost entirely concealed it. One wasted Arm hung listlessly upon a tattered rug which covered her convulsed and shivering limbs: ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... long desired—to rear, and Reddin flogged him the rest of the way. So they arrived with a clatter, and were met at the door by Andrew Vessons—knowing of eye as a blackbird, straw in mouth, the poison of asps ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... besides, her limits of patience were probably less than her range of computation. This was hinted at by the highly interesting circumstance that when dealing with numbers above five she very frequently doubled over a straw so as to make it present two ends and thus appear as two straws. The doubling of the straw looked like an intelligent device to save time, and it was persistently resorted to in spite of the fact that her teacher always refused ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... searched high and low, called and cried, but all in vain, and was about to sit down in despair, when Sancho made a bolt into his new kennel and brought out a shoe with a foot in it, while a doleful squeal came from the straw within. ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, October 1878, No. 12 • Various
... butter, cook in it 2 slices of onion until the onion becomes of a pale straw color, then add two tablespoonfuls of flour, 1 tablespoonful of curry powder, 1/4 teaspoonful of salt and a dash of pepper. When blended with the butter, add gradually 1 cup of milk and stir until smooth and boiling. ...
— 365 Luncheon Dishes - A Luncheon Dish for Every Day in the Year • Anonymous
... two houses neither candle nor lamp was to be seen; nor in the whole street; nor in the whole town, so far as eye could reach. The house to the right was a roof rather than a house; nothing could be more mean. The walls were of mud, the roof was of straw, and there was more thatch than wall. A large nettle, springing from the bottom of the wall, reached the roof. The hovel had but one door, which was like that of a dog-kennel; and a window, which was but a hole. All was shut up. At the ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... cared for. There were in the temple two or three priests, who seem to live there; at any rate, one was asleep on the matting, which, as I told you, is in Japanese houses laid on the top of a bed of straw. They are charmingly soft and clean, as all shoes are put off on entering. The natives use neither tables, chairs, nor beds. They lie, sit, and feed on this matting. They have made considerable exertions, however, to fit up our houses on European principles. We landed yesterday at noon. The ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... tools,) which the chamberlain of mortality makes use of, lay scattered about the apartment, and, with a rude stool or two, and a table, where some inexperienced hand had unquestionably supplied the labours of the joiner, were nearly the only furniture, if we include the old man's bed of straw, lying in a corner, and discomposed, as if he had been just raised from it. At the lower end of the apartment, the wall was almost entirely covered by a large escutcheon, such as is usually hung over the graves of men of very high ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... the Noss. We ascended its smooth slopes and pastures, and passed through one or two hamlets, where we observed the construction of the dwellings of the Zetland peasantry. They are built of unhewn stone, with roofs of turf held down by ropes of straw neatly twisted; the floors are of earth; the cow, pony, and pig live under the same roof with the family, and the manure pond, a receptacle for refuse and filth, is close to the door. A little higher up we came upon the uncultivated grounds, abandoned to heath, and only used to supply ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... and wanted all that belongs to them in Italy. All the deep, intense shadows, the sultry air, the sense of immeasurable space and of unending light, the half-naked figures graceful as a plume of maize, the vast projecting roofs, the spouts of tossing water, the brown barefoot straw-plaiter passing in a broad path of sunshine, the old bronze lamp above the painted shrine, the gateway framing the ethereal landscape of amethystine horizons and silvery olive ways—they want all these, do these classic porticoes ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... after, sent an officer on board, to compliment me on my arrival. In the afternoon, I waited upon him in person, accompanied by some of my officers; and, before I returned to my ship, bespoke some corn and straw for the live stock; ordered a quantity of wine from Mr McCarrick, the contractor, and made an agreement with the master of a Spanish boat to supply us with water, as I found that we could not ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... upon burnt straw ten thousand brave fellowes, all starke naked, some leaning upon Crownes, some on Miters, some on bags of gold; Glory in another Corner lay like a feather beaten in the raine; Beauty was turn'd into a watching Candle that went out stinking; Ambition ...
— Old English Plays, Vol. I - A Collection of Old English Plays • Various
... can't see that, Mr. Moyne. You say there's a big crowd of people at our circus—too much of a crowd, in fact. I can't see anything wrong in that. It's just what we're always wanting—a big audience. Let 'em fill the tent, I say, and put out the 'Straw Seats Only' sign. Trouble! Why, I should say this was good luck!" and Joe hastened his preparations, for he wanted to go ...
— Joe Strong The Boy Fire-Eater - The Most Dangerous Performance on Record • Vance Barnum
... leapt from his horse, and was trying to help Jephthah raise poor Kenton's head, but it fell back helplessly, deaf to the screams of "Father, father," with which Patience and Rusha had darted out, as a cloud of smoke began to rise from the straw yard. Poor children, they screamed again at what was before them. Rusha ran wildly away at sight of the soldiers, but Patience, with the baby in her arms, came up. She did not see her father at first, and only cried aloud to ...
— Under the Storm - Steadfast's Charge • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the magnificent and powerful Due de Bouillon, sovereign lord of Sedan and general-in-chief of the armies in Italy, he has just been arrested by his officers in the midst of his soldiers, concealed in a truss of straw. There remain, therefore, only our two young neighbors. They imagine they have the camp wholly at their orders, while they really have only the red troops. All the rest, being Monsieur's men, will not act, and my troops will arrest them. However, I have permitted them to appear to obey. If they ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... him if he can,' returned I: 'but, my son, observe this bed of straw, and unsheltering roof; those mouldering walls, and humid floor; my wretched body thus disabled by fire, and my children weeping round me for bread; you have come home, my child, to all this, yet here, even here, you see a man that would not for a thousand worlds exchange situations. O, my children, ...
— The Vicar of Wakefield • Oliver Goldsmith
... down to me, to secure another trophy, and before he realized his position I successfully snatched the charm from him, and restored it unharmed to its owner. Dohong seemed to regard the episode as a good joke. Without manifesting any resentment he turned a somersault on his straw, then climbed upon his trapeze and began to perform, as if nothing in ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... is now well. May the food become abundant; may the chickens, pigs, and rice fruit heads be large. Bring the battle-ax to guard the door. Bring the winnowing tray to serve the food; and bring the wisp of palay straw to sweep away the ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... be a cold and gloomy attic of medium size, windowless, but provided with a small skylight. A straw pallet, a broken table, two chairs, and a few plain kitchen utensils constituted the sole appointments of this miserable garret. But in spite of the occupant's evident poverty, everything was neat and clean, and to use a forcible expression that fell from ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... expressing suspicious resentment. No warm tongue curled out over Finn's fat back; but, instead, a nose made curiously harsh and unsympathetic pushed him clear away from the place he had selected, after spluttering hurried investigation, and out upon the straw ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... had taken place in the huge boiler-house of the great iron-works, a wall had been hurled down, part of the iron-beamed roof was hanging, one great barrel-shaped boiler had been blown yards away as if it had been a straw, and its fellow, about twenty feet long, was ripped open and torn at the rivets, just as if the huge plates of iron of which it was composed were so many postage-stamps torn off and roughly crumpled ...
— Patience Wins - War in the Works • George Manville Fenn
... timepiece. Over it, however, hung a large and striking picture, a species of cheap photogravure, a lion lying in his cage, looking mildly at the spectator over his shoulder. In front of the picture were real iron bars, with real straw tucked ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... tale of the Council the German Kaiser decreed, To ease the strong of their burden, to help the weak in their need, He sent a word to the peoples, who struggle, and pant, and sweat, That the straw might be counted fairly and the tally of bricks ...
— Departmental Ditties and Barrack Room Ballads • Rudyard Kipling
... stand on her arm and fight, and that then she could see them as they go along. While they are fighting on her arm, down sweeps a kite which carries off "the ganja-eaters; fish and all." They are thrown by a storm in front of a Raja's daughter, who has them swept away thinking they are bits of straw. ...
— Indian Fairy Tales • Anonymous
... dismally, disconsolately, his hands deep in his pockets, his straw hat pulled low over his sleepy eyes, the station agent came up to him with a ...
— The Purple Parasol • George Barr McCutcheon
... against the ground? and, in short, why do not you frighten them by bellowing aloud? Nature has furnished you with means to procure you respect, but you do not make use of them. They bring you sorry beans and bad straw; eat none of them; only smell them, and leave them. If you follow the advice I give you, you will quickly find a change, for which you will thank me. The ox took the ass's advice in very good part, and owned he was very much obliged ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous
... deaths, accidents and illness among the men. Once, owing to transportation difficulties, the rations were short for days, and the men were in rebellious spirit in consequence. Twice whiskey had been smuggled in, to the utter demoralization of the camp; and one morning, as a last straw, "Cookee" had nearly severed his left hand from his arm with a meat axe. Young Wingate, the head engineer, and Mr. Brown, the foreman, took counsel together. For the three meals of that day they tried three different men out of the gang as "cookees." ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson
... story (Bompas, No. CXXIII, "The Jackal and the Leopards") a jackal tricks some leopards. In the second half he outwits a crocodile. Crocodile seizes jackal's leg. Jackal: "What a fool of a crocodile to seize a tree instead of my leg!" Crocodile lets go, and jackal escapes. Crocodile hides in a straw-stack to wait for jackal. Jackal comes along wearing a sheep-bell it has found. Crocodile says, "What a bother! Here comes a sheep, and I am waiting for the jackal." Jackal hears the exclamation, bums the ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... mistakes that were made. Nobler fire, when did it burn in any Army? More perfect soldiers I have not read of. Platt-Teutsch fire—which I liken to anthracite, in contradistinction to Gaelic blaze of kindled straw—is thrice noble, when, by strict stern discipline, you are above it withal; and wield your fire-element, as Jove his thunder, by rule! Otherwise it is but half-admirable: Turk-Janissaries have it otherwise; and it ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle
... in a roomy loose box in the Nuthill stables. Comfortably ensconced in a bed of clean straw, Desdemona was nursing her puppy under the approving gaze of Finn, who sat on his haunches beside the Master, gravely reviewing his mate's ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... said; Heaven had formerly guided her by inward voices, fixing the dates of these expeditions; but journeying was no longer required of her. She had been sent to live with the Abbe that she might rest; but her manner of life had been laid down for her once for all: her bed a straw mattress on wooden planks; her food such rustic and monastic fare as beseemed her, milk, honey and bread, and at seasons of penance she was ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... house was a privet-hedged garden, sheltered all round by the pines, with a stream at the foot. The sun lay very warm on the vegetable beds and orchard trees, and there was a row of hives—not painted cupboards such as one now sees, but big egg-shaped things made of a rope of twisted straw—round which on warm days the humming bees made a low musical note, that rose and fell as the numbers increased or diminished. I suppose my nurse went to buy honey there—we called it The Honey-woman's Cottage. I dimly remember an old, ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... just right to eat. Pare and drop into cold water, to prevent discoloring. Make a syrup of one cupful of sugar and two cupfuls of cold water, and boil the pears in this until you can stick a straw through them. Fill the jars with the fruit, all you can put in, then hold the jar slanting and fill with syrup to the very brim. Use whole pears, if preferred. If cut in halves, ...
— Things Mother Used To Make • Lydia Maria Gurney
... lay in the straw, she crept out of some corner where she slept, and warned him not to remain, if he had gold in the bags, or they would certainly murder him before morning; and she gave him some water, and half her wretched supper, ...
— Elizabeth Visits America • Elinor Glyn
... says she doesn't care a straw about bricks, and hopes you won't spend much time talking about them. She's bound to have a stone house, whether or no, and wants you to give us your notions about inside fixings, especially the kitchen. (Between you and me, she wouldn't have said ...
— Homes And How To Make Them • Eugene Gardner
... capacity with ammunition. Quite a train was collected during the 30th, and a motley train it was. In it could be found fine carriages, loaded nearly to the top with boxes of cartridges that had been pitched in promiscuously, drawn by mules with plough, harness, straw collars, rope-lines, etc.; long-coupled wagons, with racks for carrying cotton bales, drawn by oxen, and everything that could be found in the way of transportation on a plantation, either for use or pleasure. The making out of provision ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... nuts are full of sweet milky matter, and the shell begins to harden. A hazel bough with a good crook is then sought by the men that are thinking of the wheat harvest: they trim it for a 'vagging' stick, with which to pull the straw towards them. True reaping is now never seen: 'vagging' makes the short stubble that forces the partridges into the turnips. Maple boughs, whose bark is so strongly ribbed, are also good for ...
— The Amateur Poacher • Richard Jefferies
... to pieces, a few waggons and some straw, had just been prepared, as nothing better was to be had, for Napoleon and us; when some carriages belonging to Marshal Soult entered the town. These we seized upon. The enemy having already some scouts in the neighbourhood of Philippeville and Marienbourg, ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. II • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... went on. The poor Negroes in the jail, in a state of morbid desperation, turned upon each other the blistering tongue of accusation. They knew that they were accusing each other innocently,—as many confessed afterwards,—but this was the last straw that these sinking people could see to catch at, and this they did involuntarily. "Victims were required; and those who brought them to the altar of Moloch, purchased their own safety, or, at least, ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... on his glittering tin throne in the handsome tin hall of his splendid tin castle in the Winkie Country of the Land of Oz. Beside him, in a chair of woven straw, sat his best friend, the Scarecrow of Oz. At times they spoke to one another of curious things they had seen and strange adventures they had known since first they two had met and become comrades. But at times they were silent, for these things had ...
— The Tin Woodman of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... beautiful bird's nest which I mentioned the other day. It is a perfect piece of architecture, far superior to the huts made in this country. The only apparent deficiency is, that it seems to hang on nothing, or is suspended sometimes on a slender straw, at other times on a thin twig. The nest is built of straw inside and outside, but the inside is of a finer straw. I have not seen the bird who is the architect of this wonderful piece of mechanism. I observed two species of parasitical plants, one of which has a ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 2 • James Richardson
... fifth of the export of silk, and the wine export about a sixth. Other important and characteristic exports are raw hemp and flax, sulphur, eggs, manufactured coral, woods and roots used for dyeing and tanning, rice, marble, and straw-plaiting. The principal import is WHEAT, for agriculture, though generally pursued, is still in a backward state of efficiency, and the average grain crop is only one third what it is in Great Britain. One eighth the total amount ...
— Up To Date Business - Home Study Circle Library Series (Volume II.) • Various
... trap door and took a long look at the pretty doves billing and cooing in their spacious loft. Some on their nests, some bustling in and out, and some sitting at their doors, while many went flying from the sunny housetop to the straw-strewn farmyard, where six ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... are not always as well equipped as our fellows and they may have no advance supply-base; but they know how to campaign. South of us are multitudes who will take a bag of corn, a water-bottle, and a pair of straw sandals and go shuffling over the hill trails for forty or fifty miles a day. And don't think they won't fight. They will. In countries where boys of twelve and thirteen pack a gun and go off with their fathers in the army, ...
— The U-boat hunters • James B. Connolly
... in Sky, instead of being one compacted mass of stones, are often formed by two exterior surfaces of stone, filled up with earth in the middle, which makes them very warm. The roof is generally bad. They are thatched, sometimes with straw, sometimes with heath, sometimes with fern. The thatch is secured by ropes of straw, or of heath; and, to fix the ropes, there is a stone tied to the end of each. These stones hang round the bottom of the roof, and make it look like a lady's hair ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... corn measures, piles of sacks, and spare implements of the finer sort; and the congregation, who had come up a ladder cautiously like hens going to roost—being severally warned about the second highest step—sat on bags stuffed with straw, boards resting on upturned pails, while a few older folk were accommodated with chairs, and some youngsters disdained not the floor. It was pleasanter in the barn, a cool, lofty, not unimpressive place of worship, with its mass of golden straw and its open ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... For what will not fear and phantasy work in an idle body? what distempers will they not cause? when the children of [1553] Israel murmured against Pharaoh in Egypt, he commanded his officers to double their task, and let them get straw themselves, and yet make their full number of bricks; for the sole cause why they mutiny, and are evil at ease, is, "they are idle." When you shall hear and see so many discontented persons in all places where you come, so many several grievances, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... ducats to Rinaldo Corsini. Five ducats to Messer Loredan for the rent of the house. Seventeen lire for the stockings of Antonio (Mini, perhaps). For two stools, a table to eat on, and a coffer, half a ducat. Eight soldi for straw. Forty soldi for the hire of the bed. Ten lire to the man (fante) who came from Florence. Three ducats to Bondino for the journey to Venice with boats. Twenty soldi to Piloto for a pair of shoes. Fourteen days' board in ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... when he committed the fatal error of marrying Draga Mashin, a woman of no position and notorious private character. Two incidents in her tragic story remind us of similar scandals in English history—the fond delusion of Mary Tudor and the legend of Mary of Modena's warming-pan. The last straw was the design, widely attributed to her and the infatuated king, for securing the succession to her brother, who had as little claim to the throne as any other Serbian subject. On June 10, 1903, Alexander and Draga were assassinated by a gang of Serbian officers, under circumstances ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... on his words. His eyes were fixed on mid-air, his nostrils worked, his mouth quivered. Within him a legion of devils seemed to have broken loose, and, sensible of the mastery they were gaining over him, he leaped up and with the wild despair of one who catches at a straw to save him from destruction, it came upon him to rush down and look once more into the face of her whom he had found so ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... himself a hole in the ground, under some straw that was scattered near the barn; and every night, from midsummer on, he came ...
— The Tale of Chirpy Cricket • Arthur Scott Bailey
... absolutely necessary to procure additional forces, and a party of Chinese, of whom there are many on the island, was engaged to help them. These people were much amused at Napoleon's working-dress, which was a jacket and large trousers, with an enormous straw hat to shield him from the sun, and sandals. He pitied those poor fellows who suffered from the heat of the sun, and made each of them a present of a large hat like his own. After much exertion the basin was finished, the pipes laid, and the water began to flow into it. Napoleon stocked his ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... arrived we have left our pleasant home for an old yellow one above John Neal's. Now don't imagine it to be a delicate straw-color, neither the smiling hue of the early dandelion. No, it once shone forth in all the glories of a deep pumpkin; but time's "effacing fingers" have sadly marred its beauty. Mr. Neal's Aunt Ruth, a quiet old Quakeress, occupies a part of it and we Paysons bestow ourselves in the remainder. This ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss |
