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More "Bolster" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... my feet at that. His derision cut me like a whip. If what I did was the act of a braggart, yet it almost seems I could do no less to bolster up my former boasting—or what ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... truth, we are as likely as the holiest of 'em to refresh ourselves all night on a stone bolster," pettishly replied the unthankful youth, as he seated himself ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... the British General. Some of the most sanguinary battles of the Revolution were those in which the combatants on both sides were chiefly natives of the soil, upon which a portion of them but too freely shed their blood in a sincere desire to bolster up that foreign tyranny that mocked the ...
— The Life of Francis Marion • William Gilmore Simms
... how he could stand up on end to write for very long, even with such a magnificent philosophy to bolster him." ...
— Droozle • Frank Banta
... his theories not as a scholar through the study of books, but as an artist through the experience of life. When life had impressed upon him what seemed to him a truth, he then applied his intellect to it to bolster up that truth. Hence it is that, however opinionated Strindberg may at times seem, his writings carry that conviction which we receive only when the author reproduces' truths he has obtained first-hand from life. ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... was her next astounding statement, "but I wanted some one else's opinion to bolster mine up. I can't decide even on my own appearance. Just as soon as I've decided that I'm pretty I begin to feel miserably that I'm not. Besides, have a horrible old great-aunt who is always saying to me, with ...
— Anne Of The Island • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... reason why every man will, at sacrifice of his comfort and his last five dollars, exercise his right to wear them whenever he can do so. But your idea of a beautiful costume, Mr. Grey, seems to be a blue, red, or yellow bag, or bolster-case, drawn over the head, mouth downwards, with a hole in the middle of the bottom for the neck and two at the corners for the arms, and bound about the waist with a cord; for I observe that you insist upon ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... drinking below. Though we could have very well dispensed with his company, we were glad to submit to this disposition, as there was not another bed empty in the house; and accordingly went to rest, after having secured our baggage under the bolster. About two or three o'clock in the morning I was awaked out of a very profound sleep by a dreadful noise in the chamber, which did not fail to throw me into an agony of consternation, when I heard these ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... seven or nine Times, I know not which; but I was so disturb'd at it, that I began to wake, and with my Eyes but half open was preparing to rise; when I fancy'd I felt a cold Hand take me by the Hand, and force me on my hard Bolster again, with these Words, take thy Rest, Miles! This I confess did somewhat surprize me; but I concluded, 'twas the Effect of my Melancholy, which, indeed, has held me ever since I last left England: I therefore resolutely started up, and jump'd out of Bed, designing to leave you, and sit ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... there now appeared, amid palms and chrysanthemums, a long, rotund man like a bolster. He held a paper in his hand and wore a platform smile. His attitude was that of one who hesitated to demand silence from so well-bred a throng. His high, narrow forehead shone in the light of the candelabra. ...
— Roden's Corner • Henry Seton Merriman
... his arms in imitation of a rooster, and crowed, to bolster up his courage, and leaped. He regained consciousness after a short interval, and feebly sat up on the pavement. He ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... set of five poles is tied above, and to these the roof is affixed. On the platform, is placed the bedding belonging to the deceased, the undercloth, counterpane, etc., and at the head are laid the pillows, bolster-shaped and stuffed with cotton-tree fluff, or shredded palm-leaves, and covered with some gaily-coloured cotton cloth. In every case I have seen— and they amount to hundreds, for you cannot take an hour's walk even from Duke Town without coming ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... and are quite independent. You would be surprised at their impertinence. I kicked one of them in the hotel yesterday, and he asked me what the devil I was doing, so I knocked the insolent scoundrel down. He says that he will sue me, but I cannot believe that the law is so servile as to bolster up a black man against ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... animal. Then came incipient madness and fever—tearing everything to pieces that came in his way—or he would weep and moan, declaring that no one loved him, that he was a burden to his wife. One evening when his wife and daughter came in he was not in his bed; in his place lay the bolster carefully tucked in. They found him at last crouched on the floor under the bed, with his teeth chattering with cold and fear. He told them he had been attacked ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... nail. He ate and ate till school began, and after school was over he ate again; at night, too, it was the same thing till bedtime—nay, a little fellow that Henry had for a playmate told me that he put the cake upon his bolster when he went to bed, and waked and waked a dozen times, that he might take a bit. I cannot so easily believe this last particular; but, then, it is very true, at least, that on the morrow, when the day was hardly broke, he set about his favourite ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... you may be obliged to have the beds made without airing, turn the clothes half way down, and leave them for several hours. Some persons have cheap calico covers, to spread over beds, while the room is swept, this is a good plan, on account of the dust. Bolster and pillow tucks wear better, if you have a check case basted on, this should be changed, washed and starched occasionally. It is a good plan also to have check covers for matresses and feather beds, but the ...
— Domestic Cookery, Useful Receipts, and Hints to Young Housekeepers • Elizabeth E. Lea
... He did not take the lady gay To bolster nor no bed, But down upon her chamber-floor Full ...
— Ballads of Romance and Chivalry - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - First Series • Frank Sidgwick
... public opinion was adverse to it, she kept her use of it profoundly secret. Amelia alone saw and knew it—Amelia alone was a witness to all the little secrets and artifices by which Josephine, the woman of thirty-three years, had to bolster up her beauty. But only the head stood in need of some artificial assistance. The body was as yet youthful, prepossessing, and remarkable for its attractiveness and luxuriant forms, and when Josephine now had finished her task, she was truly a woman of enchanting beauty and loveliness. ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... reverence that fears to speak plainly of God. It seeks by holding back some things, and speaking of others with very carefully thought-out phrase, to bolster up God's side. True love has two marked traits: it is always plain-spoken in telling all the truth when it should be known; and it is always reverential. It can't be otherwise. The bluntest words on the lips combine with the deepest reverence of spirit. God doesn't need to be defended. The plain ...
— Quiet Talks with World Winners • S. D. Gordon
... found his employer an exact man—one who required service by the card. This the young man could not, or rather would not render. He blundered in his work on more than one occasion, and resorted to tricks to bolster up his carelessness or inefficiency. The result was that after a few weeks' service he was discharged. He was chagrined, mortified, angry. But he "cheeked it through," as the young men of his class would say. It ...
— The Evolution of Dodd • William Hawley Smith
... more cramping than that of the gunner who skulks on one knee behind his canoe, pushing it with one hand, and dragging himself along by the aid of the other. Then, it is disagreeable to have to use a gun so heavy that the stock is fitted with a horsehair pillow, or even with a small bolster. The whistle of widgeon and the shrill-sounding pinions of wild geese may be attractive noises, and no doubt all shooting is exciting; and a form of shooting which stakes all on one shot must offer some thrilling moments of expectation. ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... an important piece of proof through gross carelessness. All he has to do is to solve a problem and to place his answer before a magistrate, and then a judge and jury to decide whether he's right or wrong. No one but a fool would attempt to bolster up a wrong answer. In this case, too, you must remember that there are finger-prints. They cannot lie. If we get the right man—Grell or any one else—there will be no question ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest
... to argue with the infatuated old boy, who was evidently very uneasy about Major Lund, and suspected also that Miss Nightingale had not reported fair, in order to prevent him coming. He made himself into a perfect bolster with wraps, and put on a respirator. This damned thing, however, he took off again, as it impeded respiration, and then went out into the all but solid fog, gasping and choking frightfully, to feel his way to Hill Street ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... but any that has been used externally has decayed. The abaci of the Early English capitals in the main arcade are of Barnack stone, which is harder than clunch and so more suitable for bearing a weight. The Norman stonework was cut with an axe, the Transition with a chisel. The Early English is bolster-tooled; the Decorated ashlar (including the bays on the south side of the nave) is claw-tooled, the mouldings being scraped; the Perpendicular ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Saint Albans - With an Account of the Fabric & a Short History of the Abbey • Thomas Perkins
... liberty, but more than once he had had to stand for a frame-up against a guilty one. According to his cop-psychology, if his side partner saw something it was practically the same as if he had seen it himself. That phantasmagorical scintilla of evidence needed to bolster up a weak or doubtful case could always be counted on if Delany was the officer who had made the arrest. None of his cases were ever thrown out of court for lack of evidence, but then, Delany never arrested ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... McShane was summoned, and soon returned, saying, "There's a little fellow that wants to speak with you, and won't give his message. He's a queer little body, and not so bad-looking either, with a bolster on the top of his head, and himself not higher than a pillow; a pigeon could sit upon his shoulder and peck up peas out of his shoes; he struts like a grenadier, and, by the powers! a grenadier's cap would ...
— The Poacher - Joseph Rushbrook • Frederick Marryat
... bed-linen will depend upon the size of her house and the style in which she lives. Six sheets and six pillow and bolster slips are allowed to each bed, and twelve towels, half of them bath towels, to each bedroom. She should have dinner and lunch cloths, with napkins to match; it is usual to allow a dozen napkins to each ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... he tried to bolster his courage with the argument which had seemed so potent at the time he used it, namely, that they were all in too deep to refuse aid at this crisis. Symes imagined that he could almost see himself growing old in the ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... enforcing the Treaty, and that then France might join if she pleased. Guizot replied that this was out of the question, that France was now ready to join in a transaction fair and honourable to both parties, but she would not stand by, see the question settled without her, and then come in to bolster up an arrangement made by others, and with which she had no concern. In the evening he went to Holland House, where he told Melbourne what he had communicated to Palmerston; found him in a satisfactory disposition, but Melbourne said that there was a danger greatly to be feared, ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... etc., were borrowed from Italy and were very popular. Another shape often used for chair legs was the X that shows Flemish influence. The lit-de-repos, or chaise-longue, was a seat about six feet long, sometimes with arms and sometimes not, and with a mattress and bolster. The beds were very elaborate and very important in the scheme of decoration, as the ladies of the time held receptions in their bedrooms and the king and nobles gave audiences to their subjects while in bed. These latter ...
— Furnishing the Home of Good Taste • Lucy Abbot Throop
... hall of small dimensions, with a stair-case at one end and a door at the other, which, upon opening I found myself in a large, square room whose immense four-post bedstead entirely denuded of its usual accompaniments of bed and bolster at once struck my eye and for a moment held it enchained. There were other articles in the room; a disused bureau, a rocking chair, even a table, but nothing had such a ghostly look as that antique bedstead with its curtains of calico tied back ...
— A Strange Disappearance • Anna Katharine Green
... inn-keeper's daughter, and this is my sister." There was another girl beside her, whom I had not seen, as her head was under the bolster. ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... being again irritated by another stroke on his chops, he gave her such a remembrance in the guts, that she began to roar loud enough to be heard all over the house. Adams then, seizing her by the hair (for her double-clout had fallen off in the scuffle), pinned her head down to the bolster, and then both called for lights together. The Lady Booby, who was as wakeful as any of her guests, had been alarmed from the beginning; and, being a woman of a bold spirit, she slipt on a nightgown, petticoat, and slippers, and taking a ...
— Joseph Andrews, Vol. 2 • Henry Fielding
... her passionate lips curled in scorn. "I might marry the sort of man you could be," she said, "but I never could marry a man so weak that, without me to bolster him ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips
... fact that the men who saw the evils and who tried to remedy them attempted to work in two wholly different ways, and the great majority of them in a way that offered little promise of real betterment. They tried (by the Sherman law method) to bolster up an individualism already proved to be both futile and mischievous; to remedy by more individualism the concentration that was the inevitable result of the already existing individualism. They saw the ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... oh think! What a surprise it must be to the sun, Rising, to find the vanish'd world away. What less can be the wretched wife's surprise When, stretching out her arms to fold thee fast, She found her useless bolster in her arms. [1] Think, think, on that.—Oh! think, think well on that. I do remember also to have read [2] In Dryden's Ovid's Metamorphoses, That Jove in form inanimate did lie With beauteous Danae: and, trust me, love, ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... is put into a skin bag or tin can whilst warm and soft. The grease ought not to be very warm, when poured on the dry meat. Wild berries are sometimes added. The skin bags for the pemmican should be shaped like pillow (not bolster) cases, for the convenience of packing on horseback. The pemmican is chopped out ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... am incoherent. If a great old family can only bolster up its greatness by alliances with the daughters of oil-strikers, then let the family perish ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... To bolster business and industry and to create new jobs, I propose a 1-year tax reduction of $16 billion. Three-quarters would go to individuals and one-quarter ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Gerald R. Ford • Gerald R. Ford
... part of the picture is only, "My lord, I fear, has forgot Britain." Her readiness to pardon Iachimo's false imputations and his designs against herself, is a good lesson to prudes; and may shew that where there is a real attachment to virtue, it has no need to bolster itself up with an outrageous or affected antipathy to vice. The scene in which Pisanio gives Imogen his master's letter, accusing-her of incontinency on the treacherous suggestions of Iachimo, is as touching as it is possible ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... talk and walk. Not being very great at the latter accomplishment, he rides home on the bullock, which is a necessary part of the stock and trade of every prosperous dhobi. The bullock carries the clothes, which are formed into a sort of huge bolster, which, when put on the back of the bullock, nearly touches the ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin
... Railway-lines were twisted or bent in many places, the total length demolished being more than ten miles. In cuttings, twenty feet or more in depth, both rails and sleepers were unmoved; it was on the plains that the effects of the earthquake were most marked. The ground appeared as if piled up into bolster-like ridges between the sleepers, and in many places the sleepers had moved end-ways. When the line crossed a small depression in the general level of the plain, the whole of the track was bowed, as if the ground were permanently compressed ...
— A Study of Recent Earthquakes • Charles Davison
... silent, with clasped hands. The bitterness of disappointment wore away slowly, and as the uneventful hours left them in the same helpless condition, they fell again into fitful conversation, merely to thus bolster up courage, and lead their minds to other thoughts. It was maddening to sit there motionless and stare off across the desolate water, seeing nothing but those white-crested surges sweeping constantly toward them, and to feel the continuous ...
— The Case and The Girl • Randall Parrish
... obliged to take care of themselves. Many of the articles of furniture left them had been disposed of to supply the calls of urgent want. In the room was an old four post bedstead, with curtains almost worn out, one mattrass with two small pillows, a bolster that was almost flat, three old blankets and cotton sheets, of coarse description, three rush-bottom chairs, an old claw table, a chest of draws, with a few battered band-boxes on the top of it, a miserable ...
— The Pearl Box - Containing One Hundred Beautiful Stories for Young People • "A Pastor"
... one side on the bolster with contracted eyebrows and dilated nostrils. His pale little face had become whiter than the sheets; and there escaped from his larynx a wheezing caused by his oppressed breathing, which became gradually shorter, dryer, and more metallic. His cough resembled the noise made by ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert
... the close of school Gyp and Pat, with Jerry and Peggy Lee close at their heels, to bolster their courage, walked briskly downtown to the Morse Building. If any doubts as to the propriety of their action crept into any one of the four minds, they were quickly dispelled—for the sake of sentiment. It, of course, would not be pleasant, facing this stranger, but any ...
— Highacres • Jane Abbott
... you dear old boy!" said Bessie, laughing and blushing, "though I sha'n't scold you, Charlie, for that!" in a whisper in my ear. "It's Dr. Bolster of Lee. Hiram has been riding all over the country for him ...
— On the Church Steps • Sarah C. Hallowell
... said David, absently. She went over to his bed and beat up the bolster and made everything ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen
... crucified savior, who would take upon himself the sins of poor, weak human nature. By simply believing on this crucified redeemer, man would be saved, not from sin itself, but from the penalty of sin. To bolster up the belief in original sin and the necessity for an atonement, the allegory of the fruit tree and the serpent ...
— The God-Idea of the Ancients - or Sex in Religion • Eliza Burt Gamble
... room. And he pictured it to himself, this little room, religiously clean, with its walnut bureau, and its monastic bed furnished with white hangings. No doubt the servant had thrown herself across this bed, in which she had slept alone all her woman's life, and was burying her face in the bolster to stifle her sobs. ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... solid cube of gunpowder. The cartridge which holds this powder is a pillow, an absolute bolster, of some three feet in length and twelve inches in diameter. It had need be, for the shell which it is meant to propel is the size of a small boy and the weight of an average ox, namely 814 lbs. The length of each 38-ton gun is nineteen feet, and ...
— In the Track of the Troops • R.M. Ballantyne
... accompanies forlorn hopes took possession of Ridgley School and penetrated not merely to the recitation halls, but even, it was said, to the office of Doctor Wells, the head. In such times there were mighty efforts to bolster up the spirit of the team, to feed it concentrated football knowledge and to ward off by Herculean effort the black shadow of defeat that raised its ugly head like a thunder cloud pushing itself higher and higher over the white buildings ...
— The Mark of the Knife • Clayton H. Ernst
... right and urgent duty of the other signatory powers to endeavour to strengthen the corner-stone. Germany absolutely refused to relax in any way the pressure which her "potential energy" was exercising at this point, therefore it was necessary above all for France and Great Britain to bolster up the threatened corner. ...
— What Germany Thinks - The War as Germans see it • Thomas F. A. Smith
... them from the pharmacy, or castor oil from the medicine room. I had to sit beside their beds when they heard the truth; I had to see the women crumple up and go limp; I had to tell the blind child's father that he did it, to bolster up the weak girl, to rebuild the wife's broken ideals, to suppress the rowdy and the roysterer, to hear the vows of the boy who was paying for his first mistake, and listen to the stories of the pimp and the seducer. What made syphilis terrible to the many really ...
— The Third Great Plague - A Discussion of Syphilis for Everyday People • John H. Stokes
... that he had not wasted energy during the morning in idle speculation as to what he would find. In fact, he attached but little importance to Braceway's message. He had dismissed it the night before as a queer dodge on the other's part to bolster up his view ...
— The Winning Clue • James Hay, Jr.
... and went to her mother near Oxford: he sent for her after some time, and I think his servant was evilly entreated,"—such are Aubrey's brief notes of the facts; after which come his own reflections on the rupture: "Two opinions do not well on the same bolster;" and "What man, especially contemplative, would like to have a young wife environed and stormed by the sons of Mars, and those of the enemy party?" Finally Wood, in his Fasti, does little more than repeat ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... he was in was almost bare of furniture. Even part of the carpet had been taken up. The windows were wide open; a stale odour of drugs pervaded the air, while upon the bed nothing remained but the mattress and bolster. For a moment Bennett looked about him bewildered, then he started sharply. This was—had been—the sick-room. Here, upon that bed, Ferriss had died; here had been enacted one scene in the terrible drama wherein he, Bennett, had played so ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris
... wants but peace and quiet: why hast thou disturbed her rest? How with silly dreams of freedom dost thou dare to fill thy breast? If thou rise against thy rulers, Hellas, thou must fight alone, E'en the bolster of a Sultan, loyal Europe ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... replied he, "and in defiance of your laughter, I lay behind her bolster, and supported her in my arms; and, upon my soul, I believe I felt more pain in my mind than she underwent in her body. And now answer me as honestly: Do you really think it a proper time of mirth, when the creature one loves to distraction is undergoing the most ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... the more readily because of the narrow way in which most professional Taxidermists bolster up their art in a secret and entirely unnecessary manner—unnecessary because amateur can, but by the severest application, possibly compete with the experience of the technical or professional worker. No pictorial artist ever pretends he has a special brush or colours with which he ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... Hence the frequent warnings to turn our attention from it, as a subject lying beyond the range of all sober speculation, and as unsuited to the investigation of our finite minds. If this be a wise conclusion, it would be well to leave it to support itself, instead of attempting to bolster it up with the ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe
... feathery dames, 'T would be some solace yet, some little cheering, In this close dungeon of innumerous boughs. But, oh, that hapless virgin, our lost sister! Where may she wander now, whither betake her From the chill dew, amongst rude burs and thistles Perhaps some cold bank is her bolster now, Or 'gainst the rugged bark of some broad elm Leans her unpillowed head, fraught with sad fears. What if in wild amazement and affright, Or, while we speak, within the direful grasp Of savage hunger, or of savage heat! ELD. BRO. ...
— L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, Comus, and Lycidas • John Milton
... she whispers the porter sleeping in his arm-chair: she glides up the staircase, and lies down between the king and queen in their bed-royal: this very night I daresay she will perch upon poor old Goody Twoshoes' meagre bolster, and whisper, "Will the gentleman and those ladies ask me again! No, no; they will forget poor old Twoshoes." Goody! For shame of yourself! Do not be cynical. Do not mistrust your fellow-creatures. What? Has the Christmas ...
— Some Roundabout Papers • W. M. Thackeray
... the genius of its government, which is that of following precedents. It is from the enterprise and industry of the individuals, and their numerous associations, in which, tritely speaking, government is neither pillow nor bolster, that these improvements have proceeded. No man thought about government, or who was in, or who was out, when he was planning or executing those things; and all he had to hope, with respect to government, was, that it would let ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... me them lines when I wasn't more'n eleven, and I've never forgot 'em. Next you spreads the sheet just so, and you must be careful not to leave any creases in it. Then you beat up the bolster and pillow, and lay them like that," suiting the action to the words. "Then comes the top sheet, and the blankets. You must tuck each one in at the bottom first, and then at the sides, and leave the top end loose, so that when you've got the blankets ...
— The Carroll Girls • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... better than me what a sick man wants. Get along with you, and be back sharp. Stay! where are your matches? Ah! Any coals? Good, now away with you and fetch a doctor too, else I'll fetch a policeman, you bolster of bones." ...
— The Battery and the Boiler - Adventures in Laying of Submarine Electric Cables • R.M. Ballantyne
... leue manerly, & [d]go to the chyrche or chapell to your soueraynes closet, & laye carpentes & cuysshens, & lay downe his boke of prayers / than drawe the curtynes, and take your leue goodly, & go to youre soueraynes chambre, & cast all the clothes of his bedde, & bete the feder bedde & the bolster / but loke ye waste no feders; than shall the blankettes, & se the shetes be fayre & swete, or elles loke ye haue clene shetes / than [e]make vp his bedde manerly, than lay the hed shetes & the pyllowes / than take vp the towel ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... complexion or reducing the color, but to prevent perspiration by closing the pores of the skin."[50] Baumann says of the African Bakongo that many of their peculiar ways of arranging the hair "seem to be intended less as ornamental head-dresses than as a bolster for the burdens they carry on their heads;"[51] and Squier says that the reason given by the Nicaraguans for flattening the heads of their children is that they may be better fitted in adult life to ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... worker. Allowed to lie waste, the product will be only noxious weeds and vicious growths of all kinds. One of the minor uses of steady employment is, that it keeps one out of mischief, for truly an idle brain is the devil's workshop, and a lazy man the devil's bolster. To be occupied is to be possessed as by a tenant, whereas to be idle is to be empty; and when the doors of the imagination are opened, temptation finds a ready access, and evil thoughts come trooping ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... embarrassment, and he only smiled in answer. He moved forward and forced Olivier backward, and entered the one room in which he both slept and worked. An iron bedstead stood against the wall near the window; Christophe noticed the pillows heaped up on the bolster. There were three chairs, a black-painted table, a small piano, bookshelves and books, and that was all. The room was cramped, low, ill-lighted: and yet there was in it a ray of the pure light that shone in the eyes of its owner. Everything was clean and tidy, as though ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... people drink palm-wine at different hours of the day, according to taste. The beverage is mild as milk in the morning; after noon it becomes heady, and rough as the sourest cider. The useful palm bears a huge bolster-like roll of fruit, which should be tried for oil: Cameron brought home a fine specimen for Kew. Here the land is evidently most fertile, and will form good farms for the Company. Leaving Arabo, we forded the double stream called the Bila, which runs a few ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... where the little boys, Archie and Jamie, lay tossed about in a tangle of bare limbs and blankets. Elizabeth brushed back her hair from her sleepy eyes, and peered into the dim room. The green paper blinds were partly raised, and she could discern through the gloom John's black head on the bolster beside Malcolm's fair one. The black head was hanging half out of bed and its mouth was wide open. Elizabeth giggled softly. She longed to stuff something into that yawning cavity; but she knew ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... I am sure you have done all that could be done with the very ineffective clues which unfortunately are our only possession, but you are quite wrong in thinking it was the Princess herself who attended the ball, and I don't blame your assistant for refusing to bolster up an impossible case. We will consider the search ended, and if you will kindly let me have your bill at the Diplomatic Club before six o'clock to-night, I will send you a cheque. Good afternoon, ...
— Jennie Baxter, Journalist • Robert Barr
... and bolsters, front view: 1, Axletree. 2, Bolster, showing wear plates. 3, Upper bolster, actually part of the wagon bed. 4, Axle, ...
— Conestoga Wagons in Braddock's Campaign, 1755 • Don H. Berkebile
... for us never resolves itself into a dull, neutral gray. He is a Baptist and I am a Vegetarian. Occasionally he refers to me as "callow," and we have daily resorts to logic to prove prejudices, and history is searched to bolster the preconceived, but on the following important points we stand together, ...
— Love, Life & Work • Elbert Hubbard
... on, often looking back at the servant, whose horse was close upon his heels, and glancing with a leer at his bolster case of pistols, by which he seemed to set great store. He was a square-built, strong-made, bull-necked fellow, of the true English breed; and as Hugh measured him with his eye, he measured Hugh, regarding him meanwhile with a look ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... Lady Bernard, "this is a serious matter you suggest. The man may be honest, and yet it may be of no use trying to help him. I don't want to bolster him up for a few months in order to see my money go after his. That's not what I've got to do with it. No doubt I could lose as much as you mention, without being crippled by it, for I hope it's no disgrace in me to be ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... money enough," he was accustomed to say, when the adventurous petitioned him to bolster new projects for swift returns, "all in gilt-edged securities. That's why I don't propose to lay awake an hour in my life, muddling over stocks. Why, it's destruction, man! it's death. It eats up your tissues faster than old age." ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... and passed a resolution demanding the elimination of Othello from the educational curriculum. The proposer declared with some heat that "no coloured gentleman would spifflicate his missus wid a bolster on de word of a mean white thief like dat Iago." The mere suggestion was dam foolishness and an insult to the most prominent section of the freeborn citizens of the U.S.A. "If dey gwine whitewash de Scotchman, why not de ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 21st, 1920 • Various
... but Russia will make no separate peace, and nothing will happen. Russia's as safe as houses, and as steady as a rock. Don't talk nonsense, old man, and don't conjure up impossible contingencies to bolster ...
— "The Pomp of Yesterday" • Joseph Hocking
... carried on in quiet tones in his neighbourhood, have the power to waken him. When he wakes, he does so gradually, perhaps yawning and stretching himself. The nervous child may move at the slightest sound, or with a sudden start or cry is wide awake at once. A hard mattress should be chosen without a bolster, and with only a low pillow. Flannel pyjamas, which cannot be thrown off in the restless movements of the child, should be worn. The temperature of the room should be cool, and the air from the open window should circulate freely, ...
— The Nervous Child • Hector Charles Cameron
... different fashions of spelling in England and America. The rage excited in otherwise rational human beings by the dropping of the "u" in "favor," or the final "me" in "program," is one of the strangest of psychological phenomena. The baselessness of the reasonings used to bolster up the British clinging to superfluous letters is very ably shown in Professor Matthews' Americanisms and Briticisms. Let me only put in a plea for the retention of such abnormal spellings as serve ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... to bolster each other up till Mr. Tom comes down with modern science in full force. That boy will do great things—he has as clear a head as I ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... funny face: he sees the lines of pain in it. We hear Romeo wish to be "a glove upon that hand that he might touch that cheek:" three minutes afterwards he beholds Romeo refresh himself with a pot of porter. We see the Moor, who "loved not wisely, but too well," smother Desdemona with the nuptial bolster: he sees them sit down to a hot supper. We always think of the actor as on the stage: he always thinks of us as in the boxes. In justice to the poets of the present day, it may be noticed that they have improved on their brethren in Johnson's time, who were, according to Lord Macaulay, ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... Clarissa's misfortune, through sickness, to lose much of her hair. It had now begun to grow again and resume its former luxuriant abundance, but by removing several switches—of her own hair—and the bolster commonly called a rat, and sleeking her hair down hard with oil, she appeared as a boy might who was badly in need of a haircut. After a light supper, she set out alone for the residence of Asbury Fuller and at the end of her journey found herself ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis
... floor along the very low large window, with two rugs and cushions, and a holdall for a bolster, is as comfortable as any bed, and you don't miss sheets after a day or two. There is one bathroom for 120 or more people, but I get a cold bath every morning early. S—— gets our early morning tea, and M. sweeps our room, and I wash up and ...
— Diary of a Nursing Sister on the Western Front, 1914-1915 • Anonymous
... Wilcox, the mother of the little fellow who occupied the wide bed. He lay there in lugubrious state, the rosy face stained with much crying, just showing above the edge of the counterpane; his tangle of yellow curls crushed upon the bolster. Below these was a white mound, stretched along the middle of the bed, just the length of Robby, aged seven and a half, the youngling of the Wilcox family. Two big blue eyes, glazed with tears, wandered from one to another of the two faces gazing ...
— Choice Readings for the Home Circle • Anonymous
... too much of it invented to prove a theory—much like the stuff they put between the covers of school history books—so Ali Baba's lecture, although gorgeous fiction in its way, hardly enriched knowledge. Not that he was free from the latterday craving for accuracy whenever it might serve to bolster up the rest of ...
— The Lion of Petra • Talbot Mundy
... cushion, whose ends are rolled under to form the VOLUTES. The part connecting the volutes is slightly hollowed, and the channel thus formed is continued into the volutes. As seen from the side (Fig. 63), the end of the spiral roll is called a BOLSTER; it has the appearance of being drawn together by a number of encircling bands. On the front, the angles formed by the spiral roll are filled by a conventionalized floral ornament (the so-called PALMETTE). Above the spiral roll is a low abacus, oblong or square in plan. In Fig. 62 the profile of ...
— A History Of Greek Art • F. B. Tarbell
... the monarchists, to associate General Washington with their principles. But that may have happened in this case which has been often seen in ordinary cases, that, by often repeating an untruth, men come to believe it themselves. It is a mere artifice in this party, to bolster themselves up on the revered name of that first of our worthies. If I have dwelt longer on this subject than was necessary, it proves the estimation in which I hold your ultimate opinions, and my desire of placing the subject truly ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... leaped Volodarsky, shouting harshly that the Tsay-ee-kah, on the eve of the Congress, had no right to assume the functions of the Congress. The Tsay-ee-kah was practically dead, he said, and the resolution was simply a trick to bolster ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed
... and powerful men, the masters of the poor devils aforesaid, submitted to live amidst sights and sounds and smells which it is in the very nature of man to abhor and flee from, in order that their riches might bolster up this supreme folly. The whole community, in fact, was cast into the jaws of this ravening monster, 'the cheap production' forced upon it ...
— News from Nowhere - or An Epoch of Rest, being some chapters from A Utopian Romance • William Morris
... hard little paths, crossed the road and disappeared under the thick spruces and balsams; here and there, the sly, single track of the fox, or the deep hoof-mark of the deer, led off into unknown depths on either side. Hughie, sitting up on the bolster of the front bob beside Billy Jack, for even the big boys recognized his right, as Thomas' guest, to that coveted place, listened with eager face and wide-open eyes to Billy Jack's remarks upon the forest ...
— Glengarry Schooldays • Ralph Connor
... enlightenment, from the few who have educated themselves in social science, who are convinced that the time has come when it is not only practicable but right, who realize that a new era has dawned; to others who still believe in the old system, who are trying to bolster it up by granting concessions, by establishing committees of conference, by giving a voice and often a financial interest, but not a vote, in the conduct of the corporation concerned. These are the counterpart, in industry, of sovereigns whose away has been absolute, whose ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... before I make up my mind." Jack complied, and Sedgwick read it carefully through. The statement of the mine, the description of its development, and of the value of the ore, had been prepared by an expert so eminent that he could not afford to sell his name to bolster up ...
— The Wedge of Gold • C. C. Goodwin
... the Earl at last, still looking steadily at him, "because this afternoon came a letter to my hand which thou hadst written to my niece, the Lady Alice. I have it here," said he, thrusting his hand under the bolster, "and have just now finished reading it." Then, after a moment's pause, whilst he opened the parchment and scanned it again, "I find no matter of harm in it, but hereafter write no more such." He spoke entirely without ...
— Men of Iron • Ernie Howard Pyle
... which their several theories work across the ocean—not one of them having resided long enough beneath the stars and stripes to be able to judge of the truth of what they allege, as they are quite contented to take for gospel the hearsay with which they bolster up ...
— She and I, Volume 2 - A Love Story. A Life History. • John Conroy Hutcheson
... finances, my son?" he asked, turning to Daniel with an air of marked affability. "Would you not like to bolster up your income by taking a position in the conservatory? You would have time for it; your work as organist at St. AEgydius does not take up all your time. Herold is going to be retired, you know. He is seventy-five and no longer able to meet the requirements. ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... be nothing very bad after all. But let's suppose it is; suppose he has slid back into the worst of his old ways, is it going to pay to go on and break things all up for yourself, for the purpose of trying to bolster him up? It seems to me you would let your enthusiasm get away with your common sense. But it's your business, Jimmie. Only the thing that gets me is the blooming uselessness of it all. What can ...
— Stanford Stories - Tales of a Young University • Charles K. Field
... his men slept soundly. No prowling robber came to disturb them, and, as they were distributed in separate rooms, they did not even have a bolster ...
— Hans Brinker - or The Silver Skates • Mary Mapes Dodge
... injustice and corruption in high places is possible only when society as a whole is corrupt or indifferent to corruption. This prejudging of a case from hatred of the accused as a destroyer of sacred tradition, and this hunting for evidence to bolster up a foregone conclusion, are preeminently the vices of ecclesiastical tribunals and not of Jewish Sanhedrim or Papal Inquisition only. Where judges look for witnesses for the prosecution, plenty will be found, ready to curry favour by lies. The eagerness to ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... think you could leave something in your bed that looked vaguely like you in the dark? A bolster with a pyjama-coat round it, and one arm outside the blanket, and a pair of socks or something for the head. You know the kind of thing. I think it would please him to feel that you ...
— The Red House Mystery • A. A. Milne
... achieving an estimated 5.5% growth in 1996. The government is continuing its economic reforms to enable the Philippines to move closer to the development of the newly industrialized countries of East Asia. The strategy includes improving infrastructure, overhauling the tax system to bolster government revenues, and moving toward further deregulation and ...
— The 1997 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... the first topmast-shroud, on each side, to the cap-shore amidships, but it was breast high, and of course afforded no security to a man who was lying down. My head was pillowed upon Old Cuff's side, the midshipman's head was on my breast, and the rest of my earthly tabernacle was occupied as a bolster by as many of the quarter watch as could get near me. About two o'clock, I was suddenly awoke by the abduction of my living pillow, and the consequent collision of my head against one of the top burton-blocks. At the same time I heard a whizzing noise, like a rope running ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... South, or some elements in the South, had rather the advantage of us in political firmness and fidelity; but it does not follow that that fidelity will stand every shock. And at this moment, and in this matter, of all things in the world, our political propagandists must try to bolster British Imperialism up, by kicking Southern Secession when it is down. The English politicians eagerly point out that we shall be justified in crushing Ireland exactly as Sumner and Stevens crushed ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... as he is one of those unfortunates who want every pretty thing they see and are miserable for a week if they can't get it. His idea was to run over to Homerton. Did I know old Jumbo? Fat old Jumbo. Jumbo, who kept Jumbo's, under the arches, where you got cut from the joint, two veg., buggy-bolster, and cheese-roll. I did. So to Jumbo's we went by the Stoke Newington 'bus, whose conductor shouted imperatively throughout the journey: "Aw fez pliz!" though we were the only passengers; and on the way I made a little, soft song, the burden of which was: "I do love my table ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... effort, spearheaded by the IMF, was underway to shore up reserves and stabilize the economy. Growth in 1998 will be sharply cut. Long-term growth will depend on how successfully South Korea implements planned economic reforms that would bolster the financial sector, improve corporate management, and open the economy further to ...
— The 1998 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... his little hatchet with him, and it pulled on his belt so that he had to be continually hoisting it up and tightening his belt so that before the expeditionary forces had gone far he looked not unlike a bolster tied ...
— Roy Blakeley in the Haunted Camp • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... a bedlam; trunks and chests were locked and tied round with ropes; and a general washing and rinsing of faces and hands was beheld. While this was going on, forth came an order from the quarter-deck, for every bed, blanket, bolster, and bundle of straw in the steerage to be committed to the deep.—A command that was received by the emigrants with dismay, and then with wrath. But they were assured, that this was indispensable to the ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... weather and a dimpled bay adorned this lost seigniory. It was better than any dukedom in France to these first exiled Acadians. Pierre Doucett's widow and another bereaved woman knelt to cry once more over the trench by the powder-house. Her baby, hid in a case like a bolster, hung across her shoulder. Lady Dorinda's belongings, numbered among the goods of the household, were also placed near the gate. She sat within the hall, wrapped for her journey, composed and silent. For when the evil day actually ...
— The Lady of Fort St. John • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... boys, please. Tell me if you can see a small tin box anywhere. Of course I must have dropped it when I fell in that faint," Mr. Clausin was saying; but Paul fancied it was more to bolster up his own courage, than because he ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts on a Tour - The Mystery of Rattlesnake Mountain • George A. Warren
... from his excitement he was suddenly fatigued to the point of no longer being able to speak at all or even keep his eyes open, she asked nothing more, but with a practised hand straightened his bolster, smoothed his pillow and drew the covers evenly and snugly ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... is a tremendous bedstead. Now, a Javan bedstead is quite sui generis, and requires a ground plan. The ordinary size is six feet square. It is completely covered with mosquito curtains, and has no clothes, the broad expanse being broken by two pillows for the head and a long bolster (called a Dutch wife) which lies at right angles to the pillows. This latter is one of the numerous contrivances for securing coolness. The ordinary routine of hotel life is much the same as elsewhere in the island. At half-past ...
— A Visit to Java - With an Account of the Founding of Singapore • W. Basil Worsfold
... things. Hence my frame is brittle—yours strong as brass. I never knew any ailment you had. You can go out at night in all weathers, sit up all hours. Well, I don't want to moralise. I only wish to say that if you are enclined to a game at Doubly Dumby, I would try and bolster up myself in a chair for a rubber or so. My days are tedious, but less so and less painful than my nights. May you never know the pain and difficulty I have in writing so much. Mary, who is most kind, ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... definitively that the great rebellion was over. On the other hand, there were not wanting some foreigners who would have liked to see the Manchus overthrown, and who severely blamed the British Government for helping to bolster up a dynasty already in the last stage of decay; for it seems to be an indubitable fact that but for British intervention, the rebellion would ultimately have succeeded ...
— China and the Manchus • Herbert A. Giles
... finding you . . ." he began, and suddenly broke off. Then, as if to bolster up his courage, he attempted to shove aside a chair that interfered with his actions but pushed it so hard ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont
... covers my haid up wid de blanket—an' de bolster—an' de piller when hit's astormin'," said Hattie, in an awed undertone. "An' Ah squeals lak a pig ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... lurid and ghastly fashion. With a snakelike movement, the evil thing slithered out of the wardrobe, and, gliding past Letty, approached the bed. Letty was obliged to follow every proceeding. She saw the thing deftly snatch the bolster from under the sleeping head; noted the gleam of hellish satisfaction in its eyes as it pressed the bolster down; and watched the murdered creature's contortions grow fainter, and fainter, until they finally ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... momentous as was the question to be decided, the mode of decision was simple in the extreme. Le Gros held in his hand a canvas bag, of oblong bolster shape,—such as sailors use to carry their spare suit of "Sunday go-ashores." In the bottom of this bag,—already carefully counted into it,—were twenty-six buttons: the exact number of those who were to take part ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... congratulation, and the embraces of the crowd. I perceived an elderly gentleman come forward; I knew it was my father, and I threw myself into his arms. I awoke, and found myself rolling on the floor, embracing the bolster with all my might. Such was the vivid impression of this dream, that I could not turn my thoughts away from it, and at last I considered that it was a divine interposition. All my scruples vanished, ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... not what we are out for, then I do not understand what we are out for; there is dishonesty and trickery and diplomacy and foolery in the struggle, and I am no longer whole-hearted for such a half-hearted war. If after a complete victory we are to bolster up the Hohenzollerns, Hapsburgs, and their relations, set up a constellation of more cheating little subordinate kings, and reinstate that system of diplomacies and secret treaties and secret understandings, ...
— In The Fourth Year - Anticipations of a World Peace (1918) • H.G. Wells
... supreme advantage that the rank and file of her mighty host really believe what she teaches; they do not have to listen to table-rappings and flounder through swamps of automatic writings in order to bolster their hope of the ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... violently draw her by the haire of the head, and layd her on the toppe of a Hay-mowe." This delightfully absurd charge was coupled with some testimony about the appearances of the accused in animal form. Three men attempted to bolster up the story; but no "matter of witchcraft" was proved, says the for once incredulous Mr. Potts. The women seized the decisive moment. They kneeled before the judge and requested him to examine Grace Sowerbutts as to who set ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein
... said definitively that the great rebellion was over. On the other hand, there were not wanting some foreigners who would have liked to see the Manchus overthrown, and who severely blamed the British Government for helping to bolster up a dynasty already in the last stage of decay; for it seems to be an indubitable fact that but for British intervention, the rebellion would ultimately have succeeded in ...
— China and the Manchus • Herbert A. Giles
... show itself. Douglas's violent denunciation of "abolitionists" and "abolitionismn" appealed with singular power to Whigs from slave States. The party was without a national leader; Clay had died two years before, and Douglas made skillful quotations from the great statesman's speeches to bolster up his new propagandism. In Congress only a little handful of Southern Whigs opposed the repeal, and even these did not dare place their opposition on antislavery grounds. And especially the familiar voice and example ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... years. The membership had increased to one hundred six men and seventy women. I suppose it will not be denied as an actual fact that women bolster the steeples so that they stay on the churches. From the time women held the rope and let Saint Paul down in safety from the wall in a basket, women have maintained the faith. But Beecher was a man's preacher from first to last. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... which bears his name. It mattered not that Bertillon had never appeared in a handwriting case before, or that his skill in this line was unknown. He was a man of science, of great renown in other lines, and the government relied on these facts to bolster up its claim that Dreyfus wrote the incriminating papers Bertillon reported in favor of the government's contention, and it was an easy matter to get some alleged experts—weak as to will and ability—and one or two honest but misguided men to ...
— Disputed Handwriting • Jerome B. Lavay
... somewhat like a bedstead. Wherefore, willing to make sure of that, I gathered up a good armful of the rushes wherewith the floor was covered, and spreading them under the table, crept in upon them in my clothes, and keeping on my hat, laid my head upon one end of the table's frame, instead of a bolster. ...
— The History of Thomas Ellwood Written by Himself • Thomas Ellwood
... aroused the other denizens of the raft. The tow heads of the six little Cavendishes rose promptly from a long bolster in the smaller of the two shanties, and as promptly six little Cavendishes, each draped in a single non-committal garment, apparently cut by one pattern and not at all according to the wearer's years or length of limb, tumbled forth ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... whether we boldly embrace this scheme or not, it will force itself upon us or else entail some great disaster. It is more to our interest to reward the army with Southern land-grants than it is even for theirs to accept them. The longer we bolster up in its possessions an insolent enemy, so much the longer shall we have to support an army and pay taxes. The sooner we weaken the enemy by introducing industrial rivals into his country, the better it will be ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... arrangement; the men were kept well off the ground, and the hair-felt not only preserved their bodily heat from escaping, but it prevented the damp of the earth from ascending. This mattress was ten feet long, therefore it could be rolled up to form a bolster at one end; and, during a hot sun, it was intended for a cover to the roof ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... for a crucified savior, who would take upon himself the sins of poor, weak human nature. By simply believing on this crucified redeemer, man would be saved, not from sin itself, but from the penalty of sin. To bolster up the belief in original sin and the necessity for an atonement, the allegory of the fruit tree and the serpent in Genesis ...
— The God-Idea of the Ancients - or Sex in Religion • Eliza Burt Gamble
... to my knowledge, that's taken up by three lodgers already. (After a pause, in which the rest seem disconcerted.) I have hit it. Don't you think, Stingo, our landlady could accommodate the gentlemen by the fire-side, with——three chairs and a bolster? ...
— She Stoops to Conquer - or, The Mistakes of a Night. A Comedy. • Oliver Goldsmith
... it easy to understand their plight. If we know ourselves we are strengthened that much, because we can bolster up our weaknesses. We will know enough to combat timidity. We can then know what we are capable of, and thus become conscious of our innate powers that only need to be called into action in order to become useful. We cannot imagine for an instant a great violinist going out on the concert ...
— Laugh and Live • Douglas Fairbanks
... too rich," she used to say to her old-fashioned bolster, set up like a grim idol by the bedside; "and the poor feller can't sleep. I mustn't put so much shortenin' in the next ones. My, but that was an awful scrooch! I wish he'd shut his windows a little mite tighter, and not pester the ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray
... was rifled. Two men went to the sideboard, quietly gathering up the few silver spoons, forks, ladles, etc., not hidden, wrapped them up and put them in their pockets. Others stripped off the pillow-and bolster-cases, stuffing them with clothing, pictures, etc., tied them together, and placed them ready to be slung over the backs of their horses. Bayonets wore thrust through portraits; the sofas, beds, and lounges were pierced in search of concealed valuables; bureau-drawers ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers
... reserves. Inflation fell sharply in subsequent years. In 1995, the Mexican peso crisis produced capital flight, the loss of banking system deposits, and a severe, but short-lived, recession; a series of reforms to bolster the domestic banking system followed. Real GDP growth recovered strongly, reaching 8% in 1997. In 1998, international financial turmoil caused by Russia's problems and increasing investor anxiety over Brazil produced the highest domestic interest rates in more than three years, ...
— The 2002 CIA World Factbook • US Government
... nearly kicked over the washstand, making such a clatter that the Squire knocked angrily at the wall; when off the noisy ones ran back into Fred's room, Harry this time being the pursuer, armed with his bolster, "Bang, crash—crash, bang—whiz—wuz—rush." Fred went backwards upon his bed, hors de combat, from a well-directed blow from Harry's bolster; and then at it went Harry and Phil—the latter being armed with a pillow, down whose front a ghastly slit soon showed itself; but Philip fought well, ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn
... was in was almost bare of furniture. Even part of the carpet had been taken up. The windows were wide open; a stale odour of drugs pervaded the air, while upon the bed nothing remained but the mattress and bolster. For a moment Bennett looked about him bewildered, then he started sharply. This was—had been—the sick-room. Here, upon that bed, Ferriss had died; here had been enacted one scene in the terrible drama wherein ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris
... servants; into each of whose care the articles are to be entrusted, with a list, the same as is done with plate. Tickets of parchment with the family name, numbered, and specifying what bed it belongs to, should be sewed on each feather bed, bolster, pillow, and blanket. Knives, forks, and house cloths are often deficient: these accidents might be obviated, if an article at the head of every list required the former to be produced whole or broken, and the marked part of the linen, though all the others should be worn out. Glass is another ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... I've got a hunch that we will," chirped his cousin, with a sublime confidence that quite won Andy's heart; if he could not see any good reason for hope himself, the fact that his chum pinned his faith on it was enough to bolster up his ...
— The Aeroplane Boys Flight - A Hydroplane Roundup • John Luther Langworthy
... Shadow stalks out of the South. The brilliant eye of the Sun is blotted over, and with a remorseless mantle of mist the silvery cusp of the new moon is enfolded. Follow fast the stars, the little brethren of the sky; and like a huge bolster of fog the Shadow scales the ramparts of the dawn. We are lost in the blur of doom, and the long sleep of the missing months is heavy upon our eyelids. We rail not at the coward Sun-God who fled fearing the Shadow, but creep noiselessly to ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... son?" he asked, turning to Daniel with an air of marked affability. "Would you not like to bolster up your income by taking a position in the conservatory? You would have time for it; your work as organist at St. AEgydius does not take up all your time. Herold is going to be retired, you know. He is seventy-five and no longer able to meet the requirements. ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... poverty-stricken little bed, low down near the ground, behind the loom, huddled deep on his bolster under a dirty blanket: a thin little black chap, leaning against a pillow in the dancing twilight of the lantern. His eyes were closed and his bony face half-hidden in the blue night-cap. His breath rustled; and each puff from his hoarse throat, ...
— The Path of Life • Stijn Streuvels
... left hand alone, you might have thought it a very simple and easy thing to do, until you tried to do it yourself. Mr. Bernard looked at himself with the eye of an expert. "Pretty well!" he said;—"not so much fallen off as I expected." Then he set up his bolster in a very knowing sort of way, and delivered two or three blows straight as rulers and swift as winks. "That will do," he said. Then, as if determined to make a certainty of his condition, he took a dynamometer ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... nervous, depressed. Of course, all this was attributable to the dread of discovery and capture when she was once outside the great walls of Schloss Rothhoefen. I could understand her feelings, and rather lamely attempted to bolster up her courage by making light ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... could work miracles, and he willed to do so; but his religious thought was too pure to permit him to consider miracles otherwise than as an entirely exceptional means of relieving the sufferings of men. Not once do we see him resorting to miracle to prove his apostolate or to bolster up his ideas. His tact taught him that souls are worthy of being won by better means. This almost complete absence of the marvellous[10] is by so much the more remarkable that it is in absolute contradiction with the ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... contents—these and other details of that eventful day I shall not weary the reader with now. Enough, that when Dick Sylvester returned, I was pretty well fagged out, and the baby was rolled up, an immense bolster at the foot ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... the hour come, not for encouragement, but for sympathy, his face, his voice, his manner all showed it, because his heart felt it. So gentle was he, so thoughtful, so calm, so absorbed in the case before him, not to turn round and look for a tribute to his sagacity, not to bolster himself in a favorite theory, but to find out all he could, and to weigh gravely and cautiously all that he found, that to follow him in his morning visit was not only to take a lesson in the healing art, ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... continuing its economic reforms to enable the Philippines to move closer to the development of the newly industrialized countries of East Asia. The strategy includes improving infrastructure and plans to overhaul the tax system to bolster government revenues. ...
— The 1996 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... he, "and in defiance of your laughter, I lay behind her bolster, and supported her in my arms; and, upon my soul, I believe I felt more pain in my mind than she underwent in her body. And now answer me as honestly: Do you really think it a proper time of mirth, when the creature one loves to distraction is undergoing the most racking ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... and he's built like a glass-house—when they part, you wonder to see the steeple separate from the chancel, and were they to embrace, he must hang round her neck like a skein of thread on a lace-maker's bolster—to sing her praise you should choose a rondeau, and to celebrate him you ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... bed three pairs of sheets, three pairs of pillow cases, three bolster cases, one or two pairs of blankets, two ...
— The Etiquette of To-day • Edith B. Ordway
... judges, an attorney-general being appointed for the crown and counsel for the prisoner. The crimes charged against the Inca were chiefly of a kind with which the Spaniards had nothing to do, among them the assassination of Huascar and the guilt of idolatry. These were simply to bolster up the only real charge, that of exciting an insurrection against the Spaniards. The whole affair was the merest show of a trial, and was hurried through without waiting for the return of De Soto, who could have given useful evidence about the insurrection. The ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume III • Charles Morris
... greater—a nation[778]. The chronology of shifts in opinion would, at first glance, indicate that Gladstone made this speech with the intention of forcing Palmerston and Russell to continue in the line earlier adopted, thus hoping to bolster up a cause now losing ground. His declaration, coming from a leading member of of the Cabinet, was certain to be accepted by the public as a foreshadowing of governmental action. If Jefferson Davis had in truth created a nation then early recognition must be given it. But this surmise of intentional ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... of them was aware of the theft, and said to the other, "Get up, and run after the man that has stolen our coverlet." "You blockhead," replied his companion, "wait till he comes back to steal the bolster, and we two will master him." And has "Joe" got this one?—A pedant's little boy having died, many friends came to the funeral, on seeing whom he said, "I am ashamed to bring out so small a boy ...
— The Book of Noodles - Stories Of Simpletons; Or, Fools And Their Follies • W. A. Clouston
... I suppose you'll enlighten me as to what 'it' means?" hinted Jack, trying hard to bolster up a courage that, none the ...
— The Submarine Boys for the Flag - Deeding Their Lives to Uncle Sam • Victor G. Durham
... the covers of school history books—so Ali Baba's lecture, although gorgeous fiction in its way, hardly enriched knowledge. Not that he was free from the latterday craving for accuracy whenever it might serve to bolster up the rest of ...
— The Lion of Petra • Talbot Mundy
... us that national wellbeing increases proportionally with the increase in the consumption of commodities. The principle is unsound. Its outcome is that it inoculates people with artificial needs. But it is this artificially excited greed which, in the last resort, continues to bolster up slavery in the shape of exploitation and war. Property created war, and property maintains war. For the weak only, is property a source of virtue, since the weak will not make efforts without the stimulus afforded by the desire for possession. ...
— The Forerunners • Romain Rolland
... "Bolster," said Uncle Paul. "No: pillow," and he turned involuntarily towards the bed, where, unperceived before, a scrap of something red peered from beneath the clean white pillow-case. "Under the pillow," said Uncle Paul, and stepping to the side of the bed he snatched ...
— The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise • George Manville Fenn
... and the two that preceded it. We know of no book that offers a parallel to them, except Arthur Young's "Travels in France." To discuss the question of Slavery without passion or even sentiment seemed an impossibility; yet Mr. Olmsted has shown that it can be done, and, having no theory to bolster, has contrived to tell us what he saw, and not what he went to see,—the rarest achievement among travellers. Without the charm of style, he has ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... of the White River fiasco reached Curtis Gordon in Seattle, whither he had gone in a final attempt to bolster up the tottering fortunes of the Cortez Home Railway. His disappointment was keen, yet O'Neil from the beginning had met his attacks with such uniform success that new failure did not really surprise him; it had been a forlorn hope at ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... form a comfortable sloping back inside in the cabin, while it supports a large soft pillow, the whole being used as a sofa to recline on while reading or writing, or finally being converted into a bolster by lowering it when the crew is piped to bed for the night, or at least such hours of it as the tide and wind may ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... probably hurt a little less, now. No—-don't try it," as Dick started to bolster himself up. "You want that knee in shape at the earliest ...
— The High School Pitcher - Dick & Co. on the Gridley Diamond • H. Irving Hancock
... gentleman being at these times a mere clothes-bag with a black skull-cap on the top of it, does not present a very animated appearance until he has undergone the two operations at the hands of his granddaughter of being shaken up like a great bottle and poked and punched like a great bolster. Some indication of a neck being developed in him by these means, he and the sharer of his life's evening again fronting one another in their two porter's chairs, like a couple of sentinels long forgotten on their post by the Black ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... word, had folded up all her clothes, and put them under the bolster, had taken off her chemise, that her husband should not recognise it, had twisted her head up in a sheet, and had brought to light the carnal convexities which commenced where ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 3 • Honore de Balzac
... the last faint vestige of smoke vanished, neither said a word, but sat there silent, with clasped hands. The bitterness of disappointment wore away slowly, and as the uneventful hours left them in the same helpless condition, they fell again into fitful conversation, merely to thus bolster up courage, and lead their minds to other thoughts. It was maddening to sit there motionless and stare off across the desolate water, seeing nothing but those white-crested surges sweeping constantly toward them, and to feel the continuous leap and drop of the frail raft, ...
— The Case and The Girl • Randall Parrish
... pounded dry meat to four-ninths of melted or boiled grease; it is put into a skin bag or tin can whilst warm and soft. The grease ought not to be very warm, when poured on the dry meat. Wild berries are sometimes added. The skin bags for the pemmican should be shaped like pillow (not bolster) cases, for the convenience of packing on horseback. The pemmican is chopped out with an ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... tried to bolster up his slipping courage, as he fell in behind the two men, and marched out of the shanty prison. Larry trotted along in the rear; for Phil purposely refrained from slipping his arm in that of his chum; wishing to make it appear that Larry at least was ...
— Chums in Dixie - or The Strange Cruise of a Motorboat • St. George Rathborne
... dainty furnished bedroom. The electric lights were governed by two switches. A pair of lamps occupied the usual place in front of a dressing table; a third was suspended from a canopy over the bed, and was controlled also by an alternate switch behind the bolster. Winter turned on all three lights, so ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... immediately. This attitude is particularly favourable to hallucinations. It is sometimes enough to lie down with one's head thrown back to see and to hear imaginary shapes and sounds. That is why I advise you, my child, to sleep with a bolster and a fat pillow." ...
— A Mummer's Tale • Anatole France
... this scaffolding has been raised some feet, a paillasse is placed over it, then the feather-bed, so that it literally requires a ladder to ascend to the top of this mountain of bedding, and then it is difficult to crawl into it. There were a bolster and two pillows covered with velvet, which, with the sheets, were all trimmed with a kind of ...
— Brittany & Its Byways • Fanny Bury Palliser
... conceived an exaggerated idea of its power and influence on the world and mankind. Of this mistake I was then unconscious; I smiled to think that Elsa could play at being a queen, the doll, the bolster, the dog, or whatever else might chance to come handy acting the regal role in my place. I do not now altogether quarrel with ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... brothers sat up on their bolster and stared into the darkness. The room was full of water, and by a misty moonbeam, which found its way through a hole in the shutter, they could see in the midst of it an enormous foam globe, spinning round and bobbing up and down like a cork, on which, as on a most luxurious cushion, ...
— The King of the Golden River - A Short Fairy Tale • John Ruskin.
... to procure it for him and began to ask how he was feeling. Prince Andrew answered all his questions reluctantly but reasonably, and then said he wanted a bolster placed under him as he was uncomfortable and in great pain. The doctor and valet lifted the cloak with which he was covered and, making wry faces at the noisome smell of mortifying flesh that came from the wound, began ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... maiden?— Where may she wander now, whither betake her, From the chill dew, amongst rude burrs and thistles? Perhaps some cold bank is her bolster now. Or, 'gainst the rugged bark of some broad elm Leans her unpillowed head, fraught with sad fears. What, if in wild amazement and affright Or while we speak, within the direful ...
— Heiress of Haddon • William E. Doubleday
... "inspiration" is that which leads to the promulgation of a fable as divine truth, which forces those who believe in that inspiration to hold on, like grim death, to the literal truth of the fable, which demoralises them in seeking for all sorts of sophistical shifts to bolster up the fable, and which finally is discredited and repudiated when the fable is finally proved to be a fable? If Satan had wished to devise the best means of discrediting "Revelation" he could ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... Bill was "going badly in the country, and the Noncons. and Leaguers in the House ought to have the game in their hands." He wished "they would have the pluck to tell Mr. Gladstone that they will do nothing to bolster up a Ministry which will not give satisfactory assurances upon English education;" and he wanted Mr. George Dixon to go on with his resolution in favour of universal free schools and ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... disease, they had orders to take all the bedding away and have it burnt. Sawkins was instructed to take a truck to the house and get the bedding and take it to the town Refuse Destructor to be destroyed. There were two feather beds, a bolster and two pillows: they were such good things that Sawkins secretly resolved that instead of taking them to the Destructor he would take them to a second-hand dealer and ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... in his arms, her head bent down, and her face hidden, while he looked not so much at her as above her. His eyes wandered over the mass of her dark-brown wavy hair that Mrs Flint said was not wavy by nature, but crimped to make her look like a Blandamer, and so bolster up her father's nonsensical pretensions. His eyes took full account of that wave and the silken fineness of her dark-brown hair, and then looked vaguely out beyond till they fell on the great flower-picture that hung on the ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... sentry-box: she whispers the porter sleeping in his arm-chair: she glides up the staircase, and lies down between the king and queen in their bed-royal: this very night I dare say she will perch upon poor old Goody Twoshoes's meagre bolster, and whisper, "Will the gentleman and those ladies ask me again? No, no; they will forget poor old Twoshoes." Goody! For shame of yourself! Do not be cynical. Do not mistrust your fellow-creatures. What? Has the Christmas morning dawned upon thee ninety ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... button's worth about me, I know. The funny part is that he doesn't know it. He has simply assumed he is devoted to me, because all respectable people are devoted to their wives. I can assure you, mon ami, he would be a veritable Othello, if there were any scandal, and would infinitely prefer the bolster to the divorce-court. He would have us followed and ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... but a fool. Yet that's why so many of these people turn to Christian Science. Yes, that is exactly why they try it. It bolsters up a sufferer for a time just as contact with a magnetic and hopeful personality may for a time bolster one up. But such persons almost always go back to the sanitariums. "Nerves" is not a mental disease; that is, the seat of the trouble is not mental but physical, and the mental phase of "nerves" is only a symptom, or rather one of ...
— How to Eat - A Cure for "Nerves" • Thomas Clark Hinkle
... a surprise it must be to the sun, Rising, to find the vanish'd world away. What less can be the wretched wife's surprise When, stretching out her arms to fold thee fast, She found her useless bolster in her arms. [1] Think, think, on that.—Oh! think, think well on that. I do remember also to have read [2] In Dryden's Ovid's Metamorphoses, That Jove in form inanimate did lie With beauteous Danae: and, trust me, love, [3] I fear'd the bolster ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... Sedgwick read it carefully through. The statement of the mine, the description of its development, and of the value of the ore, had been prepared by an expert so eminent that he could not afford to sell his name to bolster up a fraud. ...
— The Wedge of Gold • C. C. Goodwin
... conditions, by inconsistencies so strongly marked and so numerous that, having frequency on their side, they ought, in all logic, to serve as the basis of the law. Here, one fact says yes; there, a thousand facts say no. To which evidence shall we lend an ear? If we only wish to bolster up a theory, it would be prudent to listen to neither. The how and why escapes us; what we dignify with the pretentious title of a law is but a way of looking at things with our mind, a very squint-eyed way, ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre
... but he had put an end to one, aided by luck and a very rough weapon. With that to bolster his self-confidence to a higher notch, Shann dropped by cautious degrees over the bank and down to the water's edge. When his boots splashed into the oily flood he began to tramp downstream, feeling the pull ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... his case by an effort to bolster up the courage of his comrades or not, the sentiment has at all times been largely practised upon in the ...
— Red-Tape and Pigeon-Hole Generals - As Seen From the Ranks During a Campaign in the Army of the Potomac • William H. Armstrong
... appear that the objectionable statements on pp. 56 and 62 of "Esoteric Buddhism," which are alleged to create an "historical difficulty," were not made by Mr. Sinnett's correspondent to bolster a western theory, but in loyalty to historical facts. Whether they can or cannot be accepted in those particular localities where criticism seems based upon mere conjecture (though honoured with the name of ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... candy is a narrow foot-path that shows more mounting than anything, so much really that a calling meaning a bolster measured a whole thing with that. A virgin a whole virgin is judged made and so between curves and outlines and real seasons and more out glasses and a perfectly unprecedented arrangement between old ladies and mild colds there is no satin ...
— Tender Buttons - Objects—Food—Rooms • Gertrude Stein
... deserved to do. How much stronger the Republican party would have been if it had relied upon the loyal States which had sustained it through the war, instead of timidly distrusting them and trying to bolster itself up by the aid of the negro and "carpet-bag" governments in ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... the ball began Leila would have found it hard to say. Perhaps her first real partner was the cab. It did not matter that she shared the cab with the Sheridan girls and their brother. She sat back in her own little corner of it, and the bolster on which her hand rested felt like the sleeve of an unknown young man's dress suit; and away they bowled, past waltzing lamp-posts and ...
— The Garden Party • Katherine Mansfield
... word would be wrongly spoken, some garment would be ill-folded, some awkward movement would tell the tale,—and then he would feel that he had done wrong to marry the Quaker's daughter. All the virtues under the sun cannot bolster up love so as to stand the battery of one touch of disgust. Tell my father that, and tell him that I have done well. Then you can tell him also, that, if God shall so choose it, I shall live a strong old maid for many years, to think night and day of his goodness ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... argue this position with him, however, since he has not deigned to give any reasons for it, but chosen to let it rest upon his assertion merely. We shall, therefore, have to argue the point with Mr. Albert Barnes, and other abolitionists, who have been pleased to attempt to bolster up so novel, so original, and so bold an interpretation of Scripture with exegetical ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... mother's souls, and all Christian souls. Item. I give and bequeath to my mother-in-law Mercy Prior 40l. of lawful English money, and her chamber, with certain household stuff; that is to say, a featherbed, a bolster, two pillows with their beres, six pair of sheets, a pair of blankets, a garnish of vessel, two pots, two pans, two spits, with such other of my household stuff as shall be thought meet for her by the discretion of mine executors, and such as she ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... do now with my spouse But abide her of my gentleness, Till that she look out of her house Of fleshly affection? love mine she is; Her bed is made, her bolster is bliss, Her chamber is chosen; is there none mo. Look out on me at the window of kindeness Quia ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... you could leave something in your bed that looked vaguely like you in the dark? A bolster with a pyjama-coat round it, and one arm outside the blanket, and a pair of socks or something for the head. You know the kind of thing. I think it would please him to feel that you were still ...
— The Red House Mystery • A. A. Milne
... years ago, when Samuel Darby, though somewhat Abe's junior, was keeper of the Life-saving Station, and Abe was to be gone for a whole season's duty. Then all of his possessions had been stowed in a long, bolster-like canvas bag for the ...
— Old Lady Number 31 • Louise Forsslund
... in the above pathetic mood whenever I look out of my window and see the veteran Washington elm facing wind and weather, bravely waiting the end. With what care they bolster up its weary limbs, saw off its withered branches, and deluge its old roots! They spend days belting and tarring its waist, trying to destroy the perverse caterpillars; but with all this they can never give it back its fresh and green youth. It goes on patiently year after year putting forth its ...
— The Sunny Side of Diplomatic Life, 1875-1912 • Lillie DeHegermann-Lindencrone
... becoming every day more Burgundian. In the latter days of May. 1418, a plot was contrived for opening to the Burgundians one of the gates of Paris. Perrinet Leclerc, son of a rich iron-merchant having influence in the quarter of St. Germain des Pros, stole the keys from under the bolster of his father's bed; a troop of Burgundian men-at-arms came in, and they were immediately joined by a troop of Parisians. They spread over the city, shouting, "Our Lady of peace! Hurrah for the king! Hurrah for Burgundy! Let all who wish for ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... at length appeased, Mr. Jogglebury Crowdey returned to bed, but not to sleep—sleep there was none for him. He was full of indignation and jealousy, and felt suspicious of the very bolster itself. He had been insulted—grossly insulted. Three such names—the 'Woolpack,' 'Old puff-and-blow,' and 'Bellows-to-mend'—no gentleman, surely, ever was called before by a guest, in his own house. Called, too, before his own servant. What veneration, what respect, could a servant feel ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... through the old chiffonier and wardrobe turn-up impositions, but the grand piano would beat them; only it should be kept locked, for fear any one given to harmony might commence playing a fantasia on the bolster. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, December 25, 1841 • Various
... with the said Succubus, whose claws still clutched my heart, causing me infinite pains; still, while reanimated by the voice of my servitors, relations, and friends, I tried to make the sacred sign of the cross; the Succubus perched on my bed, on the bolster, at the foot, everywhere, occupying herself in distracting my nerves, laughing, grimacing, putting before my eyes a thousand obscene images, and causing me a thousand wicked desires. Nevertheless, taking pity on me, my lord the Archbishop ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... once he had had to stand for a frame-up against a guilty one. According to his cop-psychology, if his side partner saw something it was practically the same as if he had seen it himself. That phantasmagorical scintilla of evidence needed to bolster up a weak or doubtful case could always be counted on if Delany was the officer who had made the arrest. None of his cases were ever thrown out of court for lack of evidence, but then, Delany never arrested ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... cot were some very wide windows, and three windows were filled with galleons of cloud—fat, bolster, swelling vessels, white, save where, in their curving sails, they had caught a faint radiance from the hidden sun. In fine procession, against the blue, they passed along. Very faint and muffled there came up from the Square the ...
— The Golden Scarecrow • Hugh Walpole
... ceiling between. With a gimlet I bored a hole in the floor, through which I passed a piece of string. I had already got a bit of black cloth, and sewed and stuffed it into something of the shape of a rat. Watching an opportunity, I tied this to the end of the string by the head, and hid it under her bolster. When she was going to bed, I went into the closet, and, laying my mouth to the floor, began squeaking like a rat, and scratching with my nails. Knowing by the exclamation she made that I had attracted ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald
... of people. A man lay on the camp-bed, lying aslant for he was too long for it. A sheet covered his lower limbs, but his breast and shoulders had been bared. The head was nearest to the entrance, propped on an outjutting bolster. ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... is a weapon to bolster up the rich and keep down the poor," he flung back with an acid smile. "But there's law and law. Even in our class we have our ...
— The Highgrader • William MacLeod Raine
... in surplices,' who can no otherwise bolster up their supernatural system than by outraging all such rules of philosophising as forbid us to choose the greater of two difficulties, or to multiply causes without necessity, are precisely the men to explain everything. But unfortunately their explanations ...
— An Apology for Atheism - Addressed to Religious Investigators of Every Denomination - by One of Its Apostles • Charles Southwell
... don't! You may flout our beliefs; but wouldn't you like to bolster up your report with "the wife of a clergyman who was present!" It sounds so respectable and sane, doesn't it? No, sir! You cannot prop up ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm • David Belasco
... find it again. The wounds upon the hand of the dead man indicated his having caught and struggled to hold the blade of the weapon with which he was assailed. The impression of a bloody hand thrust under the bolster, where it was Sir Wynston's habit to place his purse and watch, when making his arrangements for the night, supplied the motive ...
— The Evil Guest • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... the Inca, over which the Spanish conquerors had clearly no jurisdiction, are so absurd, that they might well provoke a smile, did they not excite a deeper feeling. The last of the charges was the only one of moment in such a trial; and the weakness of this may be inferred from the care taken to bolster it up with the others. The mere specification of the articles must have been sufficient to show that the doom of ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... Marjorie, "no girl can permanently bolster up a lame-duck visitor, because these days it's every girl for herself. I've even tried to drop hints about clothes and things, and she's been furious—given me the funniest looks. She's sensitive enough to know she's not getting away with much, but I'll bet she consoles herself ...
— Flappers and Philosophers • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... so we turned in early. W Unfortunately, our rooms were immediately over the billiard room, where a bibulous and cosmopolitan lot were earnestly endeavouring to bolster up by further proof the fiction that a white man cannot retain his health in the tropics. The process was pretty rackety, and while it could not keep us awake, it prevented us from falling thoroughly asleep. At length, ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... sent for her after some time, and I think his servant was evilly entreated,"—such are Aubrey's brief notes of the facts; after which come his own reflections on the rupture: "Two opinions do not well on the same bolster;" and "What man, especially contemplative, would like to have a young wife environed and stormed by the sons of Mars, and those of the enemy party?" Finally Wood, in his Fasti, does little more than repeat Aubrey: ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... the inn-keeper's daughter, and this is my sister." There was another girl beside her, whom I had not seen, as her head was under the bolster. ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... always shift for himself better if he has no impediments," she said, speaking rapidly as if to bolster up her own resolution. "A woman is always an impediment in a ...
— Constance Dunlap • Arthur B. Reeve
... perfectly well made, went to the Prince de Conti, and said to him: "Monseigneur, I have examined the shape of the young Prince who is just born: he is at all points well formed, let him sleep without a bolster that he may remain so; and only imagine what grief it would occasion to the Princesse de Conti, who has brought him into the world straight, if you should ...
— The Memoirs of the Louis XIV. and The Regency, Complete • Elizabeth-Charlotte, Duchesse d'Orleans
... for very fear I dared not refuse. And when I had handed it in by a chink in the open door, first there was a sound like drinking, then an awful cry, "Potash again!" and then a heavy soft thud, as if you had knocked over a bolster stuffed with lead, mum.' ...
— HE • Andrew Lang
... town-officers in their Sunday garbs, and with their halberts in their hands; but the abominable and irreverent creature was so drunk, that he wamblet to and fro over the drum, as if there had not been a bane in his body. He was seemingly as soople and as senseless as a bolster.—Still, as this was no new thing with him, it might have passed; for James Hound, the senior officer, was in the practice, when Robin was in that state, of reading the proclamations himself.—On this occasion, however, James happened to ...
— The Provost • John Galt
... much rumpled, are they not? But look under the bolster—it is all smooth, and you find none of those wrinkles which are made by the weight of the head and the moving about of the arms. That's not all; look at the bed from the middle to the foot. The sheets ...
— The Mystery of Orcival • Emile Gaboriau
... the end of a week. She was the only really innocent, unspoiled, unselfconscious girl he had ever met, almost as old-fashioned as his great grandmother must have been. Not that he set forth her virtues to bolster his determination to marry a girl of no family even in her own country; he was madly in love, and life without her was unthinkable; but he tabulated the thousand points to her credit for the benefit ...
— The Avalanche • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... summer, serve during the day as a place for conversation, workshops, or refectories. The upper stories are used as immense sleeping apartments, ten or twelve feet in height, with shining floors; they are furnished with two rows of iron bedsteads, excellent beds, composed of a soft thick mattress, a bolster, sheets of white linen, and a ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... If a great old family can only bolster up its greatness by alliances with the daughters of oil-strikers, then let the family perish ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... English capitals in the main arcade are of Barnack stone, which is harder than clunch and so more suitable for bearing a weight. The Norman stonework was cut with an axe, the Transition with a chisel. The Early English is bolster-tooled; the Decorated ashlar (including the bays on the south side of the nave) is claw-tooled, the mouldings being scraped; the Perpendicular ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Saint Albans - With an Account of the Fabric & a Short History of the Abbey • Thomas Perkins
... filled in with withies and made flat. Another set of five poles is tied above, and to these the roof is affixed. On the platform, is placed the bedding belonging to the deceased, the undercloth, counterpane, etc., and at the head are laid the pillows, bolster-shaped and stuffed with cotton-tree fluff, or shredded palm-leaves, and covered with some gaily-coloured cotton cloth. In every case I have seen— and they amount to hundreds, for you cannot take an hour's walk even from Duke Town without coming upon a dozen or so of these erections- ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... historical materials is to adopt an apologetic tone. It is somewhat curious that such should be the case, for newspapers satisfy so many canons of historical evidence. They are contemporary, and, being written without knowledge of the end, cannot bolster any cause without making a plain showing of their intent. Their object is the relation of daily events; and if their relation is colored by honest or dishonest partisanship, this is easily discernible ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes
... Archie and Jamie, lay tossed about in a tangle of bare limbs and blankets. Elizabeth brushed back her hair from her sleepy eyes, and peered into the dim room. The green paper blinds were partly raised, and she could discern through the gloom John's black head on the bolster beside Malcolm's fair one. The black head was hanging half out of bed and its mouth was wide open. Elizabeth giggled softly. She longed to stuff something into that yawning cavity; but she knew that dire consequences followed upon tampering with John. She tiptoed back ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... conflict from his bedroom, and such expressions as these: "How do you like that?" "Come on, you ruffian!" "You'll want a beefsteak for your eye and not for your stomach, you glutton!" when Bess, in fear and trembling, entered the bedroom, she found her amiable spouse belaboring an innocent bolster which, propped against the wall, did service vicariously for some imaginary monster of flesh and blood. To all Bess's anxious inquiries there was but one answer: "Let me alone, 'uman; I'm half out o' my mind!" There should be a climax, of course, ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... Central Grammar boys left, most of them in one crowd, there was a rather general feeling that Dick was just a bit too confident. Or, was he simply "putting it on," in order to bolster up ...
— The Grammar School Boys in Summer Athletics • H. Irving Hancock
... the head!" cried Tim. "Quick, quick! I've got you in my hands!" He flew headlong over the sofa where Maria sat clutching the bolster to prevent being blown ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... crossed his legs and pushed out his lips. 'We are on quaky ground; and it's absolutely essential that you keep cool, and trust. I am yours, heart and soul—you know that. I own frankly, at first I was shaken. And I have, I confess, been very cunning. But first, faith, then evidence to bolster it up. The faith was absolute'—he placed one firm hand on Lawford's knee—'why, I cannot explain; but it was. The evidence is convincing. But there are others to think of. The shock, the incredibleness, the consequences; we must not scan too closely. ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... right direction; and the popular expression of them has always something hearty and human about it. I shall not therefore bring any fine or fastidious criticism, whether literary or musical, to bear upon the little boys who drag about a bolster and ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... hopelessness that was reflected in his face must have been the counterpart of what I myself felt, but in that brief instant I determined to hide my own misgivings that I might bolster up the ...
— The Lost Continent • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... negligently closed. An interstice left open between the two flaps permitted a fall view of the interior. A number of large boxes and articles of household use filled up the bed of the waggon. Over these had been thrown some coarse garments, and pieces of bed-clothing—blankets, counterpanes, and a bolster or two. Near the forward end, a chest of large dimensions stood higher than the rest; and upon the lid of this a piece of tallow-candle was burning, in the neck of an old bottle! Between the flame of the candle and my eyes a figure intervened, shadowing the ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... and required some shaking before they could be convinced that it was time to get up. Then each boy put his bolster in his bed, rolled up his night shirt into a ball and laid it on the pillow, and then partly covered it up with the clothes. Then they slipped on their shirts, breeches, and stockings and, taking their jackets and shoes in their hand, stole out of the door at their end of the room, ...
— Held Fast For England - A Tale of the Siege of Gibraltar (1779-83) • G. A. Henty
... that his presence gave her happiness. She became gloomy before she reached her new house, and never laid her gloom aside. He would have made a struggle for some domestic comfort, had any seemed to be within his reach. As it was, he struggled for domestic propriety, believing that he might so best bolster up his present lot in life. But the task became harder and harder to him, and the gloom became denser and more dense. He did not think of her unhappiness, but of his own; as she did not think of his tedium, but of hers. "If this be domestic felicity!" ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... Wee Bear came to look at his bed, there was the bolster in its place; and the pillow in its place upon the bolster; and upon the pillow was the little old Woman's ugly, dirty head,—which was not in its place, for she had ...
— The Apple Dumpling and Other Stories for Young Boys and Girls • Unknown
... remembered and tried to find words. What was it? Had her masters been more—respectful than these Germans were? She felt they had. But it was not only that. She recalled the men she remembered teaching week by week through all the years she had known them... the little bolster-like literature master, an albino, a friend of Browning, reading, reading to them as if it were worth while, as if they were equals... interested friends—that had never struck her at the time.... But it was true—she could not remember ...
— Pointed Roofs - Pilgrimage, Volume 1 • Dorothy Richardson
... he used looked, I'm told, rather like a big bolster-case blown full of air, and with a light frame-work of hollow brass tubes strapped to it underneath. In this frame-work was a seat for the man, and near him were two circular fans, which he turned round very fast indeed; one of the fans made the machine fly backward ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, October 1878, No. 12 • Various
... generis, and requires a ground plan. The ordinary size is six feet square. It is completely covered with mosquito curtains, and has no clothes, the broad expanse being broken by two pillows for the head and a long bolster (called a Dutch wife) which lies at right angles to the pillows. This latter is one of the numerous contrivances for securing coolness. The ordinary routine of hotel life is much the same as elsewhere in the island. At half-past six a coolie comes to the door and awakes you, bringing ...
— A Visit to Java - With an Account of the Founding of Singapore • W. Basil Worsfold
... beds nor her own were worthy of offering to such a grand lady; but Coquette desired her to feel at ease, as she would provide everything needful. She then drew forth some grains of sand, which she scattered on the floor. Instantly there arose on the spot a bed of rose-leaves three feet high; the bolster was of violets, heartsease and orange flowers, all breathing delicious perfumes; and the counterpane, entirely composed of butterflies' wings, exhibited colours so brilliant and varied that one could never be weary of examining ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)
... with no lively affection, though not without some kindly feeling and much confidence—at the same time regarding himself with still greater confidence. He had never been an idler, or disobedient; and had made such efforts after theological righteousness as served to bolster rather than buttress his conviction that he was a righteous youth, and nourished his ignorance of the fact that he was far from being the person of moral strength and value that he imagined himself. ...
— Salted With Fire • George MacDonald
... a upland dog like Ship be gwaine to faace the fiery sunshine on furrin gawld diggings, I caan't answer. Here goes again: '1 sofa; 1 armchair; 4 fine chairs with green cloth seats; 1 bedstead; 2 cots; 1 cradle; feather beds and palliasses and bolster pillows to match; wash-stands and sets of crockery, mostly complete; 2 swing glasses; 3 bedroom chairs; 1 set of ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... looking back at the servant, whose horse was close upon his heels, and glancing with a leer at his bolster case of pistols, by which he seemed to set great store. He was a square-built, strong-made, bull-necked fellow, of the true English breed; and as Hugh measured him with his eye, he measured Hugh, regarding him meanwhile with a ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... necessary that your fleet should take possession of Cuba; which, after a civil apology to Spain for taking such a liberty with her possessions, and, perhaps, a few million by way of hush money, you carve into two more states, and, in this manner, try to bolster up your federal relations. How many of her West India islands Great Britain will be able to keep after such a war, is another problem, the solution of which will depend upon the relative strength of fleets and success ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... Little, Small, Wee Bear came to look at his bed, there was the bolster in its place, and upon the pillow was the little old woman's ugly, dirty head-which was not in its place, for she had no ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... did. Our procession was in this fashion: The Kirangozi, with a load on his shoulder, led the way, flag in hand, followed by the pagazis carrying spears of bows and arrows in their hands, and bearing their share of the baggage in the shape either of bolster-shaped loads of cloth and beads covered with matting, each tied into the fork of a three-pronged stick, or else coils of brass or copper wire tied in even weights to each end of sticks which they ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... hitting him?" said Robert scornfully. "Why, I should kill him. But I'll give him something to remember. Wait till I pull up my stocking." He pulled up his stocking, which was as large as a small bolster-case, and strode off. His strides were six or seven feet long, so that it was quite easy for him to be at the bottom of the hill, ready to meet the baker's boy when he came down swinging the empty basket to meet his master's ...
— Five Children and It • E. Nesbit
... Romeo wish to be "a glove upon that hand that he might touch that cheek:" three minutes afterwards he beholds Romeo refresh himself with a pot of porter. We see the Moor, who "loved not wisely, but too well," smother Desdemona with the nuptial bolster: he sees them sit down to a hot supper. We always think of the actor as on the stage: he always thinks of us as in the boxes. In justice to the poets of the present day, it may be noticed that they have improved on their brethren in Johnson's time, who were, according to Lord Macaulay, hunted by ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... the old chiffonier and wardrobe turn-up impositions, but the grand piano would beat them; only it should be kept locked, for fear any one given to harmony might commence playing a fantasia on the bolster. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... the place.' Her serpents have shortened my life, word of honour!— they wander where they will. I never lay my head beside those curl rags of hers without anticipating a cobra-decapello under the bolster. It is not everybody's money. Lucrece has no objection to them; well, it is very courageous—very fortunate, since snakes are her profession—but I, I was not brought up to snakes; I am not at my ease ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... the bed is well aired, shake the feathers, from each corner to the middle; then take up the middle, and shake it well, and turn the bed over. Then push the feathers in place, making the head higher than the foot, and the sides even, and as high as the middle part. Then put on the bolster and the under sheet, so that the wrong side of the sheet shall go next the bed, and the marking come at the head, tucking in all around. Then put on the pillows, even, so that the open ends shall come to the sides of ...
— A Treatise on Domestic Economy - For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School • Catherine Esther Beecher
... steadily? In spite of the panic, more and more people were coming to Oakland right along. Movements were already beginning in real estate. He was dickering even then to sell over a thousand of his suburban acres. Of course it was at a sacrifice, but it would ease the strain on all of them and bolster up the faint-hearted. That was the trouble—the faint-hearts. Had there been no faint-hearts there would have been no panic. There was that Eastern syndicate, negotiating with him now to take the majority of the stock in the Sierra and Salvador Power Company off his ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... a chuckle, spoke of her two children, saying they hadn't come from under a bolster, she slapped his fingers; she added that she was, no doubt made on the model of other women; women thought of their home, slaved to keep the place clean and tidy, and went to bed too tired at night not to go to sleep at once. Besides, she resembled her ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... so firm in the whirlwind of opinions, that she needed not to bolster it by bigotry. To the friends, who once murmured against her too great tolerance, she replied, "Of what use is it to live, if one is never to hear any thing but his own voice?" Her compassion and her patience were unconquerable. Nothing ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... Uvula.—Examples of double uvula are found in the older writers, and Hagendorn speaks of a man who was born without a uvula. The Ephemerides and Salmuth describe uvulae so defective as to be hardly noticeable. Bolster, Delius, Hodges, Mackenzie of Baltimore, Orr, Riedel, Schufeldt, and Tidyman are among observers reporting bifurcated and double uvula, and they are quite common. Ogle records instances of ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... two flaps permitted a fall view of the interior. A number of large boxes and articles of household use filled up the bed of the waggon. Over these had been thrown some coarse garments, and pieces of bed-clothing—blankets, counterpanes, and a bolster or two. Near the forward end, a chest of large dimensions stood higher than the rest; and upon the lid of this a piece of tallow-candle was burning, in the neck of an old bottle! Between the flame of the candle and my eyes a figure intervened, shadowing the rearward part ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... before, and sat by Halldis afterwards while the men talked and passed the mead about. She was pale and silent, but did not give way, nor leave them till her usual time. When she was in her bed she sobbed, and buried her hot face in the bolster; but even then she did not cry. She was always impatient of deeds which led nowhere—and ...
— Gudrid the Fair - A Tale of the Discovery of America • Maurice Hewlett
... moralist admits that vice is often pleasant, and that wicked men flourish like a green bay-tree. He cannot be over-anxious to preach, for he feels that the intrinsic charm of high qualities can dispense with any artificial attempts to bolster them up by sham rhetoric, or to slur over the hard facts of life. He will describe Iago as impartially as Desdemona, and, having given us the facts, leave us to make what we please of them. It is the mark of a more sickly type of morality, that it must always be distorting the plain truth. ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... The government of the Czech Republic, using successful stabilization policies to bolster its claims to full membership in the western economic community, has reduced inflation to 10%, kept unemployment at 3%, balanced the budget, run trade surpluses, and reoriented exports to the EU since the breakup ...
— The 1995 CIA World Factbook • United States Central Intelligence Agency
... is to strike his spear into the ground or sand. When my friend Ouweek was napping near me at the well of Tadoghseen, his spear was struck into the sand close by his head. So it is said, "And, behold, Saul lay sleeping within the trench, and his spear stuck in the ground at his bolster." (1 Samuel, chap. xxvi. ver 7.) The Sheikh of highest rank now seated, the Sheikhs next in dignity take their seats around him, at a short distance off, in the form of a semicircle, these generally squatting on the ground. Sometimes the principal Sheikh himself squats on ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... shirts, a waistcoat, a suit of canvas (work clothes), a suit of frieze and a suit of cloth, also three pairs of Irish stockings, four pairs of shoes, a pair of garters, a dozen points, a pair of canvas sheets, canvas to make a bed and a bolster, to be filled in Virginia and serving for two men, canvas to make a bed enroute, also for two men, a coarse rug (covering) ...
— Domestic Life in Virginia in the Seventeenth Century - Jamestown 350th Anniversary Historical Booklet Number 17 • Annie Lash Jester
... upon her first clever book, I Pose; a surer touch, a finer restraint. What is it all about? Does that matter? It is the manner of the telling rather than what is told that constitutes the charm. If I tell, you that Jay runs away from a respectable home, and, after a grievous experiment as a bolster-filler, becomes a bus-conductor, has a romantic friendship with a middle-aged married man, and marries the faithful Mr. Morgan, her dead brother's soldier friend, I have told you just nothing at all. I will merely add that you will be foolish if ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 4, 1917 • Various
... his left hand alone, you might have thought it a very simple and easy thing to do, until you tried to do it yourself.—Mr. Bernard looked at himself with the eye of an expert. "Pretty well!" he said;—"not so much fallen off as I expected." Then he set up his bolster in a very knowing sort of way, and delivered two or three blows straight as rulers and swift as winks. "That will do," he said. Then, as if determined to make a certainty of his condition, he took a dynamometer from one of the drawers in his old veneered ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... bed, Sat'day morning," Master Gammon added, and, warmed upon the subject, went on: "He's that stiff, folks say, that stiff he is, he'll have to get into a rounded coffin: he's just like half a hoop. He was all of a heap, like. Had a fight with 's bolster, and got th' wust of it. But, be 't the seizure, or be 't gout in 's belly, he's gone clean dead. And he wunt buy th' Farm, nether. Shutters is all shut up at the Hall. He'll go burying about Wednesday. Men that ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... philanthropist. Well, then, where's Slingsby, if that's philanthropy? So Mr. Churchill comes along and says, in a manner of speaking, "That's all very well, but this same Mr. Mersch is the grand duke of somewhere or other, and we must bolster him up in his kingdom, or else there will be trouble with the powers." Powers—what's powers to me?—or Greenland? when there's Slingsby, a man I've smoked a pipe with every market evening of my life, in the workhouse? And there's hundreds of ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... bed, I was longing to lie down in it; and having made those ablutions which our journey rendered necessary, I at length lay down, having first religiously stuck my talismanic pin, with the head of sealing-wax, into the bolster. ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... surprise I have discovered that I have suddenly become a moral coward, and am obliged to descend to subterfuges in order to bolster up my courage. This isn't a usual thing with me, I think, but neither is the occasion. I've been wanting and planning to tell you something, face to face, for a long time; but at the crucial moment my courage has failed ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... the quiet imposed upon him, without being conscious of it, believing himself far from sleep, and convinced that he required no effort to keep awake, he suddenly slept. When he awoke a ray of pale sunlight filled the room, and leaning her elbow on the bolster, Phillis was watching him. He made a brusque movement, throwing himself backward. "What is the matter?" he cried. "What have I said?" Instantly his face paled, his lips quivered; he felt his heart ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... recompense the labours of the diligent worker. Allowed to lie waste, the product will be only noxious weeds and vicious growths of all kinds. One of the minor uses of steady employment is, that it keeps one out of mischief, for truly an idle brain is the devil's workshop, and a lazy man the devil's bolster. To be occupied is to be possessed as by a tenant, whereas to be idle is to be empty; and when the doors of the imagination are opened, temptation finds a ready access, and evil thoughts come trooping in. It is observed at sea, ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... there, and were only aroused by a confused noise outside. Rising, and going to the door, they beheld a strange sight. The slashers were all lined up in front of the house, surrounded by armed mast-cutters. Ben Bolster, the boss, was giving orders to the rebels. He was telling them that they must go to work, and make up for some of the trouble they had caused. Those who objected were to step forward. At this the three ringleaders advanced, and flatly refused ...
— The King's Arrow - A Tale of the United Empire Loyalists • H. A. Cody
... But today our censors have nothing behind them. No one supposes them to be more moral, more charitable, more instructed than other men; still less does anyone suppose them to be more inspired or dowered with divine right. They do not defend a faith for which they, too, would die; they merely bolster up a position because in so doing they find bread and butter. They do not object to innovators because what they innovate is bad; they object to innovators because they innovate. They do not object to us because they believe that ...
— Nonsenseorship • G. G. Putnam
... gave Douglass and the other abolitionists a new text. It was a set-back to their cause; but they were not entirely disheartened, for they saw in it the desperate expedients by which it was sought to bolster up an institution already doomed by the ...
— Frederick Douglass - A Biography • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... some financial publications. An editorial notice or subsidised paragraph will be inserted in the paper, extolling the merits and predicting the certain success of some concern which it is desired to bolster up or to foist upon the public. This is done in such a way that the reader is expected to believe that it is the genuine ex- pression of a truthful opinion by the editor, who has obtained his information from unimpeach- able sources. Of course, this peculiar kind of advertisement ...
— Everybody's Guide to Money Matters • William Cotton, F.S.A.
... here and dawdle all day," exclaimed Deppingham. "We must be moving about—arrange our batteries, and all that, don't you know. Get out a skirmish line, nominate our spies, bolster up our defences, set a watch, court-martial the prisoners, and look into the commissariat. We've got to stave these devils off for two or three weeks, at least, and we'll have to look sharp. Browne, that's the third cup of coffee you've had. ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon
... thought, no feeling, is ever manifested save as the result of a physical force. This principle will before long be a scientific commonplace. And Huxley predicted that we would arrive at a mechanical equivalent of consciousness. But I will not attempt to bolster my position with authorities. I know, and I can prove what ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... she said that no one but I need ever know. She would creep home through the fields soon after sunrise and her sister would let her in. The old man would be sleeping heavily.... The end of it was that I let her go up to my room while I lay on the sofa in the little parlour. The horsehair bolster was deucedly hard, but I was young, and when I did get off I slept well. When I woke it was nearer eight than seven, and I had just scrambled up when my landlady came in. One look at her face was enough. I understood that Gertrude had ...
— Olive in Italy • Moray Dalton
... straw, and when this scaffolding has been raised some feet, a paillasse is placed over it, then the feather-bed, so that it literally requires a ladder to ascend to the top of this mountain of bedding, and then it is difficult to crawl into it. There were a bolster and two pillows covered with velvet, which, with the sheets, were all trimmed with a kind of lace ...
— Brittany & Its Byways • Fanny Bury Palliser
... numerous that, having frequency on their side, they ought, in all logic, to serve as the basis of the law. Here, one fact says yes; there, a thousand facts say no. To which evidence shall we lend an ear? If we only wish to bolster up a theory, it would be prudent to listen to neither. The how and why escapes us; what we dignify with the pretentious title of a law is but a way of looking at things with our mind, a very squint-eyed ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre
... ghastly fashion. With a snakelike movement, the evil thing slithered out of the wardrobe, and, gliding past Letty, approached the bed. Letty was obliged to follow every proceeding. She saw the thing deftly snatch the bolster from under the sleeping head; noted the gleam of hellish satisfaction in its eyes as it pressed the bolster down; and watched the murdered creature's contortions grow fainter, and fainter, until they finally ceased. The eyes then left the room; and from afar off, away below, in the abysmal cellars ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... appeal to the Bible for justification of his system, that system must be so modified, as no longer to make open, shameless war upon the Bible. I would recommend to slaveholders, that, rather than make so unhallowed a use of the Bible as to attempt to bolster up their hard beset cause with it, they should take the ground, which a very distinguished slaveholding gentleman of the city of Washington took, in a conversation with myself on the subject of slavery. Feeling himself uncomfortably plied by quotations from the word of God, he said with ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... Abishai the son of Zeruiah, brother to Joab, saying, Who will go down with me to Saul to the camp? And Abishai said, I will go down with thee. 7. So David and Abishai came to the people by night: and, behold, Saul lay sleeping within the trench, and his spear stuck in the ground at his bolster: but Abner and the people lay round about him. 8. Then said Abishai to David, God hath delivered thine enemy into thine hand this day: now therefore let me smite him, I pray thee, with the spear even to the earth at once, and I will not ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... one May morning, and, on turning the corner, they found the little girl leaning convulsively against the old straw stack for support, while in front of her, blinded by a big, red handkerchief, and with a long bolster full of hay across her dappled withers, was the blue mare, making stiff, wild plunges into the air, with arched back and head held low. For the little girl was breaking her ...
— The Biography of a Prairie Girl • Eleanor Gates
... grandmother taught me them lines when I wasn't more'n eleven, and I've never forgot 'em. Next you spreads the sheet just so, and you must be careful not to leave any creases in it. Then you beat up the bolster and pillow, and lay them like that," suiting the action to the words. "Then comes the top sheet, and the blankets. You must tuck each one in at the bottom first, and then at the sides, and leave the top end loose, ...
— The Carroll Girls • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... very honest gentleman, who, we were told, was then drinking below. Though we could have very well dispensed with his company, we were glad to submit to this disposition, as there was not another bed empty in the house; and accordingly went to rest, after having secured our baggage under the bolster. About two or three o'clock in the morning I was awaked out of a very profound sleep by a dreadful noise in the chamber, which did not fail to throw me into an agony of consternation, when I heard these words pronounced with a terrible ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... hour," said Clover, unhooking the rules, and carrying them to the window,—"Half an hour; and this says that we must turn the mattress, smooth the under-sheet over the bolster, and spend five minutes in silent devotion! We'll have to be quick to do all that ...
— What Katy Did At School • Susan Coolidge
... criminals) which bears his name. It mattered not that Bertillon had never appeared in a handwriting case before, or that his skill in this line was unknown. He was a man of science, of great renown in other lines, and the government relied on these facts to bolster up its claim that Dreyfus wrote the incriminating papers Bertillon reported in favor of the government's contention, and it was an easy matter to get some alleged experts—weak as to will and ability—and one or two honest ...
— Disputed Handwriting • Jerome B. Lavay
... a palliasse of straw, with a pillow consisting of a thin bolster propped on his outer clothes. Three very yellow blankets made up the tally of comfort. And the whole was spread out on the floor of a room in which four other ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... trying to bolster up my nerve, Jack It's mighty nice of you in the bargain. I'll need your counsel more than a few times from now on, and I'm right glad I can have some one to go to when I feel so sick with the suspense, All the while I'm waiting and hoping I've got to tremble every time my father speaks ...
— Jack Winters' Gridiron Chums • Mark Overton
... odours. A bed there was in the darkest corner of the room on the floor. It looked as though composed of the refuse raked from a pig-sty, and thrust into a sack which had been used for the conveyance of dust and bones. Bolster or pillow it had none, but against the wall, where the bed's head was supposed to be, were three or four logs of rough wood piled together, over which was laid a faded cloak crumpled into a heap. Such was the only couch which the unhappy sufferer had to lay him down upon at night, or when weary ...
— Amos Huntingdon • T.P. Wilson
... for himself better if he has no impediments," she said, speaking rapidly as if to bolster up her own resolution. "A woman is always an impediment in ...
— Constance Dunlap • Arthur B. Reeve
... other cause—he dropped the knife in the bed, and was not able to find it again. The wounds upon the hand of the dead man indicated his having caught and struggled to hold the blade of the weapon with which he was assailed. The impression of a bloody hand thrust under the bolster, where it was Sir Wynston's habit to place his purse and watch, when making his arrangements for the night, supplied the motive of this otherwise ...
— The Evil Guest • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... the Lord taketh away, according to His good will and pleasure," I ventured piously, as Mrs. M'Collop beat the bolster and laid it ...
— Penelope's Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... and down goes George's head on the pillow again, and he takes his pencil and notebook from under his bolster, and falls to polishing his verses, as Harry, with his cloak over his shoulder and a little valise in his hand, walks to the inn in Holborn whence the Portsmouth ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... on the camp-bed, lying aslant for he was too long for it. A sheet covered his lower limbs, but his breast and shoulders had been bared. The head was nearest to the entrance, propped on an outjutting bolster. ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... end than the making things clear to himself and his readers, and whom we should mistrust as having an ulterior aim on which he is more intent than on the furthering of our better understanding. We want to know who is doing his best to help us, and who is only trying to make us help him, or to bolster up the system in which his interests are vested. There is nothing that will throw more light upon these points than the way in which a man behaves towards those who have worked in the same field with ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler
... so absurd, that they might well provoke a smile, did they not excite a deeper feeling. The last of the charges was the only one of moment in such a trial; and the weakness of this may be inferred from the care taken to bolster it up with the others. The mere specification of the articles must have been sufficient to show that the doom of ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... that, though he gave up his own bedroom, Mrs. Sherwood could not find a pillow, not only there, but in the whole house; and, with a severe pain in her face, could get nothing to lay her head on "but a bolster stuffed as hard as ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... Every man must build up his own fortune nowadays. Shirt-sleeves rolled up lead on to best broad cloth; and he who is not ashamed of the apron will soon be able to do without it. "Diligence is the mother of good luck," as Poor Richard says; but "idleness is the devil's bolster," John Ploughman says. ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... extremely drunk. He went to the bed, piled himself loosely atop of it and forgot his identity. About the middle of the night, his wife, who was sitting up darning stockings, heard a voice from the profoundest depths of the bolster: ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... friendship; her passionate lips curled in scorn. "I might marry the sort of man you could be," she said, "but I never could marry a man so weak that, without me to bolster him up, he'd become ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips
... man's name was Jonathan Leavitt. He was quite old but hearty, with a stubbly fringe of white beard around a ruddy face. He had come on a wood-sled for the greater convenience of bringing Sylvia's goods. There were a feather-bed, bolster, and pillows, tied up in an old homespun blanket, on the rear of the sled; there was also a red chest, and a great bundle of bedclothing. Sylvia sat in her best rocking-chair just behind Jonathan ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... turned many things over in his mind to bolster up this conclusion, he was still not at ease. Against his will he recalled certain unpleasant things which had happened within his knowledge under sudden and unexpected stress of emotion. He tried to laugh the absurd stuff out of his thoughts and to the end ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood
... truth. All true whole men succeed; for what is worth Success's name, unless it be the thought, The inward surety, to have carried out A noble purpose to a noble end, 160 Although it be the gallows or the block? 'Tis only Falsehood that doth ever need These outward shows of gain to bolster her. Be it we prove the weaker with our swords; Truth only needs to be for once spoke out, And there's such music in her, such strange rhythm, As makes men's memories her joyous slaves, And clings around the soul, as the sky clings Round the mute earth, forever beautiful, And, if o'erclouded, only ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... mind of an old story which, besides applying to the Parish, all who are married, and all who intend to marry, will do well to recollect. A worthy couple, named John and Joan, had lived happily together many a long year, till one unlucky day they bought a new bolster. Joan said the bolster was too hard, and John that it was too soft. So, of course, they quarrelled. After sulking all day, they agreed to put the bolster between them at night." (Roars of laughter amongst the men; the women did not know which way to look, except, indeed, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... the porter sleeping in his arm-chair: she glides up the staircase, and lies down between the king and queen in their bed-royal: this very night I dare say she will perch upon poor old Goody Twoshoes's meagre bolster, and whisper, "Will the gentleman and those ladies ask me again? No, no; they will forget poor old Twoshoes." Goody! For shame of yourself! Do not be cynical. Do not mistrust your fellow-creatures. What? Has the Christmas morning dawned upon thee ninety times? For four-score and ten years has ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... hand with humid kisses, and, slowly rising, he bent towards her face, which she again began to hide. Suddenly he threw one arm across the bed, winding it around his wife over the clothes, and slipped his other arm under the bolster, which he raised with her head upon it; then he ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... (exactly a month since the first shock,) the earth had a shivering fit between one and two; but so slight that, if no more had followed, I don't believe it would have been noticed. I had been awake, and had scarce dozed again-on a sudden I felt my bolster lift up my head; I thought somebody was getting from under my bed, but soon found it was a strong earthquake, that lasted near half a minute, with a violent vibration and great roaring. I rang my bell; my servant came in, frightened out of his senses- - in an instant we heard all the windows ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... little of this in Pope. Had he been a really great poet of the old Homer or Dante breed, he would have outshot his age, till he "dwindled in the distance;" but in lieu of immediate fame, and of elaborate lectures in the next century, to bolster it unduly up, all generations would have "risen and ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... also give and bequeath, unto my said son, George Beall, his choice of one of my feather beds, bolster and pillow and other furniture thereunto belonging, with two cows and calves and half my sheep from off this plantation I now live on, unto him ...
— A Portrait of Old George Town • Grace Dunlop Ecker
... of innumerous boughs. But, oh, that hapless virgin, our lost sister! Where may she wander now, whither betake her From the chill dew, amongst rude burs and thistles Perhaps some cold bank is her bolster now, Or 'gainst the rugged bark of some broad elm Leans her unpillowed head, fraught with sad fears. What if in wild amazement and affright, Or, while we speak, within the direful grasp Of savage hunger, or of savage heat! ELD. BRO. Peace, ...
— L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, Comus, and Lycidas • John Milton
... a scheming Boston banker, gets control of an old, reliable trust company, wrecks it to bolster up another business, and disappears. Police and reporters hunt him in vain. As Ashley, a reporter, is "combing" the neighborhood of Newhall's home for evidence, a young girl draws him inside a house, where he finds the banker dead, a pistol beside him. The police call ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... we search beneath bolster, mattress, and blankets; yea, even downwards to the fundamental straw. Not a trace was to be seen of Cox Savory's horizontal lever, jewelled, as Tom pathetically remarked, in four special holes, and warranted to go for a year without more than a minute's deviation. Neither were the emerald ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... Sarah, sensibly enough, wants to get it over before dinner, so I've promised to come over right after lunch and sit on your porch so I'll be here no matter how early Hugh gets home. You and I have to bolster up the ...
— Rosemary • Josephine Lawrence
... was beyond her strength. She could not move the helpless weight, and, in her despair, she let Tibbie's head fall back with a dull plash upon the bolster. ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... ribbons, laces on floors; chairs overturned; my desk wide open covered with letters, trinkets, etc.; bureau drawers half out, the bed filled with odds and ends of everything. I no longer recognized my little room. On the bolster was a little box, at the sight of which I burst out laughing. Five minutes before the alarm, Miriam had been selecting those articles she meant to take to Greenwell, and, holding up her box, said, "If we were forced to run for our lives without a moment's warning, I'd ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... heard every word, had folded up all her clothes, and put them under the bolster, had taken off her chemise, that her husband should not recognise it, had twisted her head up in a sheet, and had brought to light the carnal convexities which commenced where ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 3 • Honore de Balzac
... the country. Men, lured by the gains of slavery and corrupted by its contact, sought by infamous reasoning and vicious legislation to avert the criticism of men and the judgment of God. In the words of our immortal Douglass, "To bolster up and make tolerable what was intolerable; to make human what was inhuman; to make divine what was infernal." To make this giant wrong acceptable to the moral sense it was averred and enacted that slavery was right; that God himself had so predetermined in His wisdom; that ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... faint vestige of smoke vanished, neither said a word, but sat there silent, with clasped hands. The bitterness of disappointment wore away slowly, and as the uneventful hours left them in the same helpless condition, they fell again into fitful conversation, merely to thus bolster up courage, and lead their minds to other thoughts. It was maddening to sit there motionless and stare off across the desolate water, seeing nothing but those white-crested surges sweeping constantly toward them, and to feel the continuous leap and drop of the ...
— The Case and The Girl • Randall Parrish
... been used externally has decayed. The abaci of the Early English capitals in the main arcade are of Barnack stone, which is harder than clunch and so more suitable for bearing a weight. The Norman stonework was cut with an axe, the Transition with a chisel. The Early English is bolster-tooled; the Decorated ashlar (including the bays on the south side of the nave) is claw-tooled, the mouldings being scraped; the ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Saint Albans - With an Account of the Fabric & a Short History of the Abbey • Thomas Perkins
... space upon discussing the different fashions of spelling in England and America. The rage excited in otherwise rational human beings by the dropping of the "u" in "favor," or the final "me" in "program," is one of the strangest of psychological phenomena. The baselessness of the reasonings used to bolster up the British clinging to superfluous letters is very ably shown in Professor Matthews' Americanisms and Briticisms. Let me only put in a plea for the retention of such abnormal spellings as serve to distinguish two words of the same sound. For instance, it seems to me useful that we should ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... not unlikely that Flechter's fear of a conviction led him to invite testimony in his behalf which would not bear the test of careful scrutiny. Many an innocent man has paid the penalty for uncommitted crime because he has sought to bolster up his defense with doubtful evidence without the incubus of which he ...
— True Stories of Crime From the District Attorney's Office • Arthur Train
... that he had an equally accurate knowledge of the state of my father's health. That would account for what Cumming says as to his offer to bolster up the bank for a time, and for a retraction of that offer within a few days after my ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... Cibot, meanwhile, looking under the pillow, found the handkerchief with the key of the bureau knotted to one corner; and this so much the more easily because Pons purposely left the end hanging over the bolster, and lay with his ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... at threats so fervent and precise; but Gerard only gnashed his teeth with rage at the noise, and seized his hard bolster with ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... Not now, Theridamas; her time is past: The pillars, that have bolster'd up those terms, Are faln in clusters at ...
— Tamburlaine the Great, Part I. • Christopher Marlowe
... Small, Wee Bear came to look at his bed, there was the bolster in its place; and the pillow in its place upon the bolster; and upon the pillow was the head of Goldenlocks—which was not in its place, for she had ...
— The Golden Goose Book • L. Leslie Brooke
... have given most trouble. One German officer who was sent to Austria to help bolster up her army told me that he didn't worry over the desertion of Bohemians singly and in small groups. He expected that. But he did take serious exception to the increasingly popular custom of whole battalions with their officers ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin
... Ireland, and all the schemes contrived to bolster up the credit of the base coin, would have proved insufficient to support the expenses of the war, had not James received occasional supplies from the French monarch. After the return of the fleet which had conveyed him ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... sat endeavouring to shake it off. He also tried to bolster himself up by thinking he might perhaps be able to assist his mother to come out from her narrowness, and discover too how warm and glorious the sun shone outside, where people loved and helped each other. Then he ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim
... left for the small chest of drawers of painted deal to stand back to the wall. A similar washstand and a low bed completed the furniture. The last was immediately behind the door, and there lay the woman, with a bolster heightened by a thin petticoat and threadbare cloak under her head. Hester saw a pale, patient, worn face, with ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... his powerful influence carried no weight in this case. It was useless to argue with the infatuated old boy, who was evidently very uneasy about Major Lund, and suspected also that Miss Nightingale had not reported fair, in order to prevent him coming. He made himself into a perfect bolster with wraps, and put on a respirator. This damned thing, however, he took off again, as it impeded respiration, and then went out into the all but solid fog, gasping and choking frightfully, to feel his way to Hill Street and satisfy himself the best ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... amendment of lodging; for, said they, our fathers, yea and we ourselves also, have lain full oft upon straw pallets, on rough mats covered only with a sheet, under coverlets made of dagswain or hopharlots (I use their own terms), and a good round log under their heads instead of a bolster or pillow. If it were so that our fathers—or the good man of the house had within seven years after his marriage purchased a mattress or flock bed, and thereto a stack of chaff to rest his head upon, ...
— Chronicle and Romance (The Harvard Classics Series) • Jean Froissart, Thomas Malory, Raphael Holinshed
... cried with her head buried in Aunt Cordelia's new bolster sham; for how could she confess to Hattie and to Rosalie that it was a ...
— Emmy Lou - Her Book and Heart • George Madden Martin
... to my husband no more than if he were a crow's son and not a king's; and yet will the thing come to pass, but and if thou standest in the way thereof, and goest against him with an army, and takest me away withal; for verily with no king would I rather bide on bolster ...
— The Story of the Volsungs, (Volsunga Saga) - With Excerpts from the Poetic Edda • Anonymous
... easy to understand their plight. If we know ourselves we are strengthened that much, because we can bolster up our weaknesses. We will know enough to combat timidity. We can then know what we are capable of, and thus become conscious of our innate powers that only need to be called into action in order to become useful. We ...
— Laugh and Live • Douglas Fairbanks
... moment of uneasiness," she added, slapping the bolster. "You didn't know what to ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... the motives of the later "reconstruction." Both ingloriously failed, as they deserved to do. How much stronger the Republican party would have been if it had relied upon the loyal States which had sustained it through the war, instead of timidly distrusting them and trying to bolster itself up by the aid of the negro and "carpet-bag" ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... time to turn over a new leaf. With this lame affair the first division of the disastrous campaign of 1776 properly closes, and the second properly begins. It had been watched with alternate hope, doubt, and despondency. Excuses are never wanting to bolster up failing reputations. The generals said they had no soldiers, the soldiers declared they had no generals; the people hung their ...
— The Campaign of Trenton 1776-77 • Samuel Adams Drake
... encounter with O'Malley and the galling sense of inferiority it carried with it; but once on the highroad again the smart returned and the sting lingering behind the man's scorn was not to be allayed. It required every excuse his wounded dignity could muster to bolster up his pride and make out for himself the plausible case that had previously comforted him and lulled his conscience to rest. It was now more impossible than ever for him to make any confession, he decided; for having denied in his father's ...
— Steve and the Steam Engine • Sara Ware Bassett
... a knife, but fell upon it tooth and nail. He ate and ate till school began, and after school was over he ate again; at night, too, it was the same thing till bedtime—nay, a little fellow that Henry had for a playmate told me that he put the cake upon his bolster when he went to bed, and waked and waked a dozen times, that he might take a bit. I cannot so easily believe this last particular; but, then, it is very true, at least, that on the morrow, when the day was hardly broke, he set about his favourite business once again, ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... graceless uncles, who had seen the world, were ever ready to bolster the matter through, and as they were brawny, broad-shouldered warriors, and veterans in brawl as well as debauch, they had great sway with the multitude. If any one pretended to assert the innocence of the duchess, they interrupted him with a loud ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... he repeated seven or nine Times, I know not which; but I was so disturb'd at it, that I began to wake, and with my Eyes but half open was preparing to rise; when I fancy'd I felt a cold Hand take me by the Hand, and force me on my hard Bolster again, with these Words, take thy Rest, Miles! This I confess did somewhat surprize me; but I concluded, 'twas the Effect of my Melancholy, which, indeed, has held me ever since I last left England: I therefore resolutely started up, and jump'd out of Bed, designing to leave you, and sit ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... he looked up. Her eyes were certainly extraordinary. Could she be laughing at him? The prospect of a new building had been, it was true, a joke for many years and evidently she put no more confidence in the statement than he did himself. "Of course, you are aware," he continued to bolster his assertion, "that the road has been bought by an immensely rich lot ...
— The Daughter of a Magnate • Frank H. Spearman
... men were kept well off the ground, and the hair-felt not only preserved their bodily heat from escaping, but it prevented the damp of the earth from ascending. This mattress was ten feet long, therefore it could be rolled up to form a bolster at one end; and, during a hot sun, it was intended for a cover to the roof of the ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... his complaint to Joseph that Rabbinism laid no stress on immortality, further investigation of the Pentateuch had shown him that Moses himself had taken no account whatsoever of the conception, nor striven to bolster up the morality of to-day by the terrors ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... upon which he laid the oilskin and then one of the blankets—they were new white blankets, fresh from the store. After that, he set the cushions from the buggy, covering them with the rug, at the head of the couch, making a bolster, and, over that, the one she ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... that such statements as the foregoing would throw the scholastic world into a ferment. There was a scramble to bolster up the cause of Aryanism and to preserve this one civilization, at least, to the credit of the Caucasian race. Homer was scanned with a patience unknown to college students and the classic myths were refined in the alembics of master minds. Yet there were some who cared for truth more than ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... prisoners were told next morning the decision of Chief Justice Bolster to try each prisoner separately and in closed court, they all protested against such proceedings. But guards took the women by force to a private room. "The Matron, who was terrified," said Miss Morey, "shouted to the guards, 'You don't handle the drunks that ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens
... games had been played, and two of them were won by the Navy. Next would come Stanford College, a hard lot to beat. The Navy tried to bolster up its own hopes; a loss to Stanford would mean the majority of games lost ...
— Dave Darrin's Fourth Year at Annapolis • H. Irving Hancock
... made by Germans about England have often been to me. It is true, however, that tall people do find the old-fashioned German bedsteads short; and it is true that the big square downy pillows are supported by a wedge-shaped bolster called a Keilkissen. But the Plumeau is what the German loves, and the Briton hates above all things: the mountain of down or feathers that tumbles off on cold nights and stays on on hot ones. You hate it all ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... Institute meetings which open with a hymn and end up with sponge-cake and green tea, after a platitudinous paper on the Beauty of Prairie Life. It has its beauties, God knows, or we'd all go mad. We women, in this brand-new land, try to bolster ourselves up with the belief that we have greatnesses which the rest of the world must get along without. But that is only the flaunting of La Panache, the feather of courage in our cap of discouragement. There is so much, so much, we are denied! So much we must do without! So much we must see ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... pride in these possessions was almost as vast as the labor she expended in caring for them. What a collection was in those old-time linen chests! Humphreys, in her Catherine Schuyler, copies the inventory of articles in one: "35 homespun Sheets, 9 Fine sheets, 12 Tow Sheets, 13 bolster-cases, 6 pillow-biers, 9 diaper brakefast cloathes, 17 Table cloathes, 12 damask Napkins, 27 homespun Napkins, 31 Pillow-cases, 11 dresser Cloathes and a damask Cupboard Cloate." And this too before the day of the washing-machine, the steam ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... occasion, you may be obliged to have the beds made without airing, turn the clothes half way down, and leave them for several hours. Some persons have cheap calico covers, to spread over beds, while the room is swept, this is a good plan, on account of the dust. Bolster and pillow tucks wear better, if you have a check case basted on, this should be changed, washed and starched occasionally. It is a good plan also to have check covers for matresses and feather beds, but the covers should not be kept on ...
— Domestic Cookery, Useful Receipts, and Hints to Young Housekeepers • Elizabeth E. Lea
... out of Dessie, covered over from head to foot in the bed. Directly John reached over to lay a hand on her shoulder. 'Dessie, honey,' he coaxed, 'Brother Dyke Garrett's come to pray with you!' He shook the heap of covers. And bless you, what they thought was Dessie turned out to be a feather bolster. John snatched back the covers. The bed was empty except for that long feather bolster that strumpet had covered over lengthwise of the bed. Come to find out Dessie had sent John snipe huntin', so to speak, and she skipped out with a timber cruiser. Dyke ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... canvas bag like a short bolster was handed down into the boat, and then the boy followed with a light, useful-looking rifle, belt and long keen sheath-knife, which he hung up under the canvas to be clear of the night ...
— Rob Harlow's Adventures - A Story of the Grand Chaco • George Manville Fenn
... affairs, our objectives will be to hold down taxes, to continue controlling inflation, to promote economic growth, to increase productivity, to encourage foreign trade, to keep farm income high, to bolster small business, and to promote ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... led to a long and recriminatory correspondence in the columns of The Tittersham Observer. The Rev. Eldred Bolster, Vicar of Little Titley, writing in the issue of May 9th, characterises them as grotesque and preposterous fabrications. He points out, to begin with, that the Nether Wambleton Parish Magazine only contains eighteen pages, of which no fewer than sixteen are provided from London and have no ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 3, 1914 • Various
... presented a striking contrast to the condition the "old men" had been satisfied with in their "yoong daies," "Our fathers (yea, and we ourselves also) have lien full oft upon straw pallets, on rough mats * * * and a good round log under their heads instead of a bolster or pillow. If it were so that our fathers, or the good man of the house, had within eleven years after his marriage purchased a matteras or flockebed, and thereto a sacke of chaffe to rest his head upon, he thought himself to be as well lodged as the lord of the towne." ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... It's going to be difficult enough to do anything for you as it is. However, if you don't advance him any more—we will see. It may be possible, I can't say, but at any rate, no more money must leave the treasury to bolster up this bad business. It's much too difficult as it now is." He stared at Stener warningly. And he, shaken and sick, yet because of the faint suggestion of mercy involved somewhere in Mollenhauer's remarks, now slipped from his chair to his knees and folded ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... is nothing like an evil to bolster up an evil," cried Professor Fortescue; "the argument never fails. Every abuse may find shelter behind it. The slave trade, for instance; have we not white slavery in our midst? How inconsistent to trouble about negroes till our own people are truly free! Wife-beating? ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... these false notions, with which both the minds of the sovereign and the people were prepossessed, it was found that every thing in society concurred to gratify the avidity, to bolster the pride, to glut the vengeance of the sacerdotal order: every where, it was to be observed, that the most turbulent, the most dangerous, the most useless men, were those who were the most amply rewarded. The strange spectacle presented itself, of beholding those who ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... little paths, crossed the road and disappeared under the thick spruces and balsams; here and there, the sly, single track of the fox, or the deep hoof-mark of the deer, led off into unknown depths on either side. Hughie, sitting up on the bolster of the front bob beside Billy Jack, for even the big boys recognized his right, as Thomas' guest, to that coveted place, listened with eager face and wide-open eyes to Billy Jack's remarks upon the forest and ...
— Glengarry Schooldays • Ralph Connor
... gesticulating, and after a moment one of them leaped into the air, brandishing his spear and uttering savage war cries, which soon had their effect upon his fellows so that it was not long ere all of them were taking part in the wild show of savagery, which would bolster their waning courage and presently spur ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... tomb, a sort of coffin of white marble which rose a few inches above the ground, with an elevation at one end, like the bolster of a bed and ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... dome, and he's built together like a glass-house—when they part, you wonder to see the steeple separate from the chancel, and were they to embrace, he must hang round her neck like a skein of thread on a lace-maker's bolster—to sing her praise, you should choose a rondeau; and to celebrate him, you must write all Alexandrines.—Sheridan's MSS. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 290 - Volume X. No. 290. Saturday, December 29, 1827. • Various
... spread open, with clothes tumbled in every direction, inside and out; ribbons, laces on floors; chairs overturned; my desk wide open covered with letters, trinkets, etc.; bureau drawers half out, the bed filled with odds and ends of everything. I no longer recognized my little room. On the bolster was a little box, at the sight of which I burst out laughing. Five minutes before the alarm, Miriam had been selecting those articles she meant to take to Greenwell, and, holding up her box, said, ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... not in the distance. And Elisha, coming to the child's assistance, With the house on the wall that was built for the prophet, The chair, the bed and the bolster of it. The eyebrows all had a twirl reflective, Just like an eel: to spare invective There was plenty of color but no perspective. However, Clara cleaned it all, With a curious lamp, that hangs in the hall; She cleaned the drops of the chandeliers, Madam, in mittens, ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... of the geology of the Cuzco Basin undoubtedly might lead Dr. Bowman to reverse his opinion, as was expected by some geologists, if it should lead him to confirm his original conclusions the same skeptics would be likely to continue their skepticism and say he was trying to bolster up his own previous opinions. Accordingly, I believed it preferable to take another geologist, whose independent testimony would give great weight to those conclusions should he find them confirmed by an exhaustive geological study of the Huatanay Valley. ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham
... haid up wid de blanket—an' de bolster—an' de piller when hit's astormin'," said Hattie, in an awed undertone. "An' Ah squeals lak a pig ev' ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... am afraid that the white 'feathers will fly' whenever that Case is opened, and that Pillow will give us the slip. 'The sword of the Lord' isn't 'the sword of Gideon' Pillow—that's certain—so I shall bolster him up no longer. Gideon is 'a cuss,' and ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... owing to the chill and the excitement of my discovery, an attack of delirium supervening, during which I related the whole adventure; so that, guided by my avowal, my governor found the pieces of the queen's letter inside the bolster where I had ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... tossed about in a tangle of bare limbs and blankets. Elizabeth brushed back her hair from her sleepy eyes, and peered into the dim room. The green paper blinds were partly raised, and she could discern through the gloom John's black head on the bolster beside Malcolm's fair one. The black head was hanging half out of bed and its mouth was wide open. Elizabeth giggled softly. She longed to stuff something into that yawning cavity; but she knew that dire consequences followed upon tampering with John. She tiptoed back to her ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... very simple and easy thing to do, until you tried to do it yourself.—Mr. Bernard looked at himself with the eye of an expert. "Pretty well!" he said;—"not so much fallen off as I expected." Then he set up his bolster in a very knowing sort of way, and delivered two or three blows straight as rulers and swift as winks. "That will do," he said. Then, as if determined to make a certainty of his condition, he took a dynamometer from one of the drawers in his old veneered bureau. First he squeezed it with ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... growth in reserves. Inflation fell sharply in subsequent years. In 1995, the Mexican peso crisis produced capital flight, the loss of banking system deposits, and a severe, but short-lived, recession; a series of reforms to bolster the domestic banking system followed. Real GDP growth recovered strongly, reaching 8% in 1997. In 1998, international financial turmoil caused by Russia's problems and increasing investor anxiety over Brazil produced the highest domestic interest rates in more ...
— The 2002 CIA World Factbook • US Government
... now as a bedlam; trunks and chests were locked and tied round with ropes; and a general washing and rinsing of faces and hands was beheld. While this was going on, forth came an order from the quarter-deck, for every bed, blanket, bolster, and bundle of straw in the steerage to be committed to the deep.—A command that was received by the emigrants with dismay, and then with wrath. But they were assured, that this was indispensable to the getting rid of an otherwise long detention of some weeks at the quarantine. They therefore ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... rest on heavy sleepers, 4. Figure 5 represents a thick strap of iron which clasps the trunion or axis of the mortar, and holds it in its place. This strap is held by two other straps, 6, 6, all iron, and very strong. The figure 7 represents what is called a bolster. You see it is in the shape of a wedge. It is used to raise or depress the muzzle of the mortar. The figure 8 represents what is called a quoin, and keeps the bolster in its place. The figure 9 represents one of the many bolts by which ...
— My Days and Nights on the Battle-Field • Charles Carleton Coffin
... European nations, Hayti has been brought into a position where it is on the high road to better things in future. That has been the result of the prescriptive American policy. With Mexico, the case is far stronger. We all know that in 1848, after our war of spoliation, we had to bolster up a semblance of a government for Mexico, with which to negotiate a treaty of peace. Mexico at that time was reduced by us to a condition of utter anarchy. Under the theory now gaining in vogue, it would then have ...
— "Imperialism" and "The Tracks of Our Forefathers" • Charles Francis Adams
... regeneration was not a mere external change of life; that the Divine government was a perpetual interference to bring good out of evil, even if it were in accordance with natural law. He knew that the boastful philosophy by which some sought to bolster up Christianity was that against which the apostles had warned the faithful. He knew that the Church was attacked in her most vital points, even in doctrines,—for "as a ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord
... being at these times a mere clothes-bag with a black skull-cap on the top of it, does not present a very animated appearance until he has undergone the two operations at the hands of his granddaughter of being shaken up like a great bottle and poked and punched like a great bolster. Some indication of a neck being developed in him by these means, he and the sharer of his life's evening again fronting one another in their two porter's chairs, like a couple of sentinels long forgotten on their post by ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... beds made without airing, turn the clothes half way down, and leave them for several hours. Some persons have cheap calico covers, to spread over beds, while the room is swept, this is a good plan, on account of the dust. Bolster and pillow tucks wear better, if you have a check case basted on, this should be changed, washed and starched occasionally. It is a good plan also to have check covers for matresses and feather beds, but the covers ...
— Domestic Cookery, Useful Receipts, and Hints to Young Housekeepers • Elizabeth E. Lea
... then he tried to bolster up his slipping courage, as he fell in behind the two men, and marched out of the shanty prison. Larry trotted along in the rear; for Phil purposely refrained from slipping his arm in that of his chum; wishing to make it appear that Larry ...
— Chums in Dixie - or The Strange Cruise of a Motorboat • St. George Rathborne
... cheering, In this close dungeon of innumerous boughs. But, oh, that hapless virgin, our lost sister! Where may she wander now, whither betake her From the chill dew, amongst rude burs and thistles Perhaps some cold bank is her bolster now, Or 'gainst the rugged bark of some broad elm Leans her unpillowed head, fraught with sad fears. What if in wild amazement and affright, Or, while we speak, within the direful grasp Of savage hunger, or of savage heat! ELD. ...
— L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, Comus, and Lycidas • John Milton
... day, and spelt out their Horace from ragged texts by brushwood fires, beneath the stars, or in verminous shacks by night. Their power to construe a dead language served to differentiate them from their associates, and, rather foolishly if heroically, to bolster up ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson
... her masters been more—respectful than these Germans were? She felt they had. But it was not only that. She recalled the men she remembered teaching week by week through all the years she had known them... the little bolster-like literature master, an albino, a friend of Browning, reading, reading to them as if it were worth while, as if they were equals... interested friends—that had never struck her at the time.... But it was true—she could not remember ever having felt a schoolgirl... or being "talked ...
— Pointed Roofs - Pilgrimage, Volume 1 • Dorothy Richardson
... after making the rounds and giving strict instructions to the three sentries, and further ordering side lines as well as lariats for the horses—all this as a result of a low-toned conference with Loring—he came back to find that officer with his valise rolled in a blanket and used as a bolster, while the owner lay on his back gazing dreamily up at the stars. A trooper was silently making down the bedding of the other officers. The sand was soft and dry, no campfire was needed, no tent, no mattress. All four were hardened campaigners and ...
— A Wounded Name • Charles King
... different appraisal of agitations. Our present method is to discuss whether the proposals are right and feasible. We do this hastily and with prejudice. Generally we decide that any agitation foreign to our settled habits is wrong. And we bolster up our satisfaction by pointing to some mistake of logic or some puerility of statement. That done, we feel the agitation is deplorable and can be ignored unless it becomes so obstreperous that we have ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... pairs of sheets, three pairs of pillow cases, three bolster cases, one or two pairs of blankets, two ...
— The Etiquette of To-day • Edith B. Ordway
... to understand their plight. If we know ourselves we are strengthened that much, because we can bolster up our weaknesses. We will know enough to combat timidity. We can then know what we are capable of, and thus become conscious of our innate powers that only need to be called into action in order to become useful. We cannot imagine for ...
— Laugh and Live • Douglas Fairbanks
... reestablishment of the imperial regimen, as they pinned their fate to this last desperate conflict. Among these, none had been prouder, none more loyal to the Spanish Sovereign, and none more liberal in dispensing its great wealth to bolster up a hopeless cause than the ancient and aristocratic family at whose head stood Don Ignacio Jose Marquez de Rincon, distinguished member of the Cabildo, and most loyal subject of his imperial majesty, King Ferdinand ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... beat, and will not be obedient. She eat no meat to-day, nor none shall eat; Last night she slept not, nor to-night she shall not; As with the meat, some undeserved fault I'll find about the making of the bed; And here I'll fling the pillow, there the bolster, This way the coverlet, another way the sheets; Ay, and amid this hurly I intend That all is done in reverend care of her; And, in conclusion, she shall watch all night: And if she chance to nod I'll rail and brawl, And with the clamour keep ...
— The Taming of the Shrew • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... 's bed, Sat'day morning," Master Gammon added, and, warmed upon the subject, went on: "He's that stiff, folks say, that stiff he is, he'll have to get into a rounded coffin: he's just like half a hoop. He was all of a heap, like. Had a fight with 's bolster, and got th' wust of it. But, be 't the seizure, or be 't gout in 's belly, he's gone clean dead. And he wunt buy th' Farm, nether. Shutters is all shut up at the Hall. He'll go burying about Wednesday. Men ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... false reverence that fears to speak plainly of God. It seeks by holding back some things, and speaking of others with very carefully thought-out phrase, to bolster up God's side. True love has two marked traits: it is always plain-spoken in telling all the truth when it should be known; and it is always reverential. It can't be otherwise. The bluntest words on the lips combine with ...
— Quiet Talks with World Winners • S. D. Gordon
... dignity is a great possession; but a man should struggle for it no more than he would for beauty. Many, however, do struggle for it, and with such success that, though they do not achieve quite the real thing, still they get something on which they can bolster ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... practising on the cre- dulity of the public may be noticed in some financial publications. An editorial notice or subsidised paragraph will be inserted in the paper, extolling the merits and predicting the certain success of some concern which it is desired to bolster up or to foist upon the public. This is done in such a way that the reader is expected to believe that it is the genuine ex- pression of a truthful opinion by the editor, who has obtained his information from ...
— Everybody's Guide to Money Matters • William Cotton, F.S.A.
... defeat means dissolution, an Austrian victory means the absorption of Serbia and Montenegro, and in either case the balance between Austria and Hungary will be fatally disturbed and a new constitutional arrangement rendered inevitable. It is thus a tragic paradox that while the attempt to bolster up the Dual System was undoubtedly one of the great underlying causes of the war, its first effect is likely to be the collapse ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... reproduction, and the satisfaction of the sexual instincts, are the unvarying themes of primitive mythology. So far as the red race is concerned, this is a most gratuitous assumption. The facts that have been eagerly collated by Dulaure and others to bolster such a detestable theory lend themselves fairly ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... in the deal and the shares began to decline in value. He put up more margins and still more, but it continued to decline. Finally under the spur of another "tip," the last of his own savings having gone to the insatiate brokers, he sent, to bolster his account and to save him from utter ruin, some ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln
... was almost bare of furniture. Even part of the carpet had been taken up. The windows were wide open; a stale odour of drugs pervaded the air, while upon the bed nothing remained but the mattress and bolster. For a moment Bennett looked about him bewildered, then he started sharply. This was—had been—the sick-room. Here, upon that bed, Ferriss had died; here had been enacted one scene in the terrible drama wherein he, Bennett, had played so ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris
... revealed a crowd of people. A man lay on the camp-bed, lying aslant for he was too long for it. A sheet covered his lower limbs, but his breast and shoulders had been bared. The head was nearest to the entrance, propped on an outjutting bolster. ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... raised some feet, a paillasse is placed over it, then the feather-bed, so that it literally requires a ladder to ascend to the top of this mountain of bedding, and then it is difficult to crawl into it. There were a bolster and two pillows covered with velvet, which, with the sheets, were all trimmed with a kind of lace ...
— Brittany & Its Byways • Fanny Bury Palliser
... bent down, and her face hidden, while he looked not so much at her as above her. His eyes wandered over the mass of her dark-brown wavy hair that Mrs Flint said was not wavy by nature, but crimped to make her look like a Blandamer, and so bolster up her father's nonsensical pretensions. His eyes took full account of that wave and the silken fineness of her dark-brown hair, and then looked vaguely out beyond till they fell on the great flower-picture that hung on the ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... room, are flock-beds, chests, guns, pistols, swords, drums, saddles, and bridles. The chamber contains every variety of article in use in the household. One of the rooms in the house of Thomas Osborn contained a bedstead with feather-bed, bolster, rug, blanket and sheets, two long table cloths, twenty-eight napkins, four towels, one chest, two warming pans, four brass candle-sticks, four guns, a carbine and belt, a silver beaker, three tumblers, twelve spoons, one sock and ...
— Patrician and Plebeian - Or The Origin and Development of the Social Classes of the Old Dominion • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... lofty branches of a tree, There my bed-fellows and companions were, My man, my horse, a bull, four cows, two steer: But yet for all this most confused rout, We had no bed-staves, yet we fell not out. Thus nature, like an ancient free upholster, Did furnish us with bedstead, bed, and bolster; And the kind skies, (for which high heaven be thanked,) Allowed us a large covering and a blanket; Auroras face 'gan light our lodging dark, We arose and mounted, with the mounting lark, Through plashes, puddles, thick, ...
— The Pennyles Pilgrimage - Or The Money-lesse Perambulation of John Taylor • John Taylor
... mentioning a sudden rush of scarlet to the cheeks, is as lamentable as may be. But! But with the universal use of cosmetics and the consequent secernment of soul and surface, upon which, at the risk of irritating a reader, I must again insist, all those old properties that went to bolster up the ordinary novel—the trembling lips, the flashing eyes, the determined curve of the chin, the nervous trick of biting the moustache, aye, and the hectic spot of red on either cheek—will be made spiflicate, as the puppets were spiflicated by Don Quixote. Yes, even now Demos begins to discern. ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... has ritual as its subject, is embodied ritual. The reader perhaps at this point may suspect that he is being juggled with, that, out of the thousands of Greek reliefs that remain to us, just this one instance has been selected to bolster up the writer's art and ritual theory. He has only to walk through any museum to be convinced at once that the author is playing quite fair. Practically the whole of the reliefs that remain to us from the archaic period, and a very large proportion of those at later date, when they do not represent ...
— Ancient Art and Ritual • Jane Ellen Harrison
... us about fetching heaps of dry leaves to spread behind the stocks for a couch. A trunk of a small cocoa-nut tree was then placed for a bolster—rather a hard one, but the natives are used to it. For a pillow, they use a little billet of wood, scooped out, and standing on four ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... could advise him to give up his silly notions for acquiring land. He might listen to you, Phil. You might be able to induce him to sell part of what he has in order to bolster up what remains. If a slump of any kind comes, he will be without a prop to lean on. No man has any right to involve himself in this way, no matter how good the ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... Carritte arrived, and the bolster flew at his head, and then went back again under Esther's. While paralysed by this phenomenon, unprecedented in his practice, the doctor heard a metal point scribbling on the wall. Examining the place whence the sound proceeded, he ...
— The Book of Dreams and Ghosts • Andrew Lang
... march up to the guns like good soldiers to-night, and I'm going to do the talking for them. Sarah, sensibly enough, wants to get it over before dinner, so I've promised to come over right after lunch and sit on your porch so I'll be here no matter how early Hugh gets home. You and I have to bolster up the weak spots in ...
— Rosemary • Josephine Lawrence
... now, Theridamas; her time is past: The pillars, that have bolster'd up those terms, Are faln in ...
— Tamburlaine the Great, Part I. • Christopher Marlowe
... and satisfied about the fight that old Sam and Peter couldn't make 'im out at all. He wouldn't even practise punching at a bolster that Peter rigged up for 'im, and when 'e got a message from Bill Lumm naming a quiet place on the Lea Marshes he agreed to it ...
— Odd Craft, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... many things over in his mind to bolster up this conclusion, he was still not at ease. Against his will he recalled certain unpleasant things which had happened within his knowledge under sudden and unexpected stress of emotion. He tried to laugh the absurd stuff out of his thoughts and to the end that he might add a ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood
... proceeded to ransack the house. Every room, every closet, every trunk, box, drawer, was rifled. Two men went to the sideboard, quietly gathering up the few silver spoons, forks, ladles, etc., not hidden, wrapped them up and put them in their pockets. Others stripped off the pillow-and bolster-cases, stuffing them with clothing, pictures, etc., tied them together, and placed them ready to be slung over the backs of their horses. Bayonets wore thrust through portraits; the sofas, beds, and lounges were pierced in search of concealed ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers
... neighbors, you put me in mind of an old story which, besides applying to the Parish, all who are married, and all who intend to marry, will do well to recollect. A worthy couple, named John and Joan, had lived happily together many a long year, till one unlucky day they bought a new bolster. Joan said the bolster was too hard, and John that it was too soft. So, of course, they quarrelled. After sulking all day, they agreed to put the bolster between them at night." (Roars of laughter amongst the men; the women did not ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... on which sprawl his hat and ashplant. With two fingers he repeats once more the series of empty fifths. Florry Talbot, a blond feeble goosefat whore in a tatterdemalion gown of mildewed strawberry, lolls spreadeagle in the sofacorner, her limp forearm pendent over the bolster, listening. A heavy stye droops ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... a Javan bedstead is quite sui generis, and requires a ground plan. The ordinary size is six feet square. It is completely covered with mosquito curtains, and has no clothes, the broad expanse being broken by two pillows for the head and a long bolster (called a Dutch wife) which lies at right angles to the pillows. This latter is one of the numerous contrivances for securing coolness. The ordinary routine of hotel life is much the same as elsewhere in the island. At half-past six a coolie comes to the door and awakes you, bringing tea ...
— A Visit to Java - With an Account of the Founding of Singapore • W. Basil Worsfold
... of us, he came now and stood in the aisle, rocking slightly on his bolster legs and eying us glassily. Eventually a thought pierced the fog of his understanding. He hauled his saber out of its scabbard and invited us to run our fingers along the edge and see how keen and sharp it ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... shake it off. He also tried to bolster himself up by thinking he might perhaps be able to assist his mother to come out from her narrowness, and discover too how warm and glorious the sun shone outside, where people loved and helped each other. Then ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim
... the table—a saucepan on the hob—the sofa one of those that serve as a bed, which Sleep little visits, for one who may watch through the night over some helpless sufferer—a woman's shawl thrown carelessly over its hard narrow bolster;—all, in short, betraying that pathetic untidiness and discomfort which says that a despot is in the house to whose will order and form are subordinate;—the imperious Tyranny of Disease establishing itself in a life that, within ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... out from the side lines to help bolster a Grinnell forward wall which had taken plenty of punishment. These fresh men drove into the Pomeroy line on the first play and opened a hole through which Mack Carver darted. He hit an interferer, sent him spinning and broke up a pass behind the line. The ...
— Interference and Other Football Stories • Harold M. Sherman
... as to make a skeleton platform which is filled in with withies and made flat. Another set of five poles is tied above, and to these the roof is affixed. On the platform, is placed the bedding belonging to the deceased, the undercloth, counterpane, etc., and at the head are laid the pillows, bolster-shaped and stuffed with cotton-tree fluff, or shredded palm-leaves, and covered with some gaily-coloured cotton cloth. In every case I have seen— and they amount to hundreds, for you cannot take an hour's walk even from Duke Town without ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... thus unto Pantagruel: Sir, were it not expedient for my purpose to put a branch or two of curious laurel betwixt the quilt and bolster of my bed, under the pillow on which my head must lean? There is no need at all of that, quoth Pantagruel; for, besides that it is a thing very superstitious, the cheat thereof hath been at large discovered unto us in the writings of Serapion, Ascalonites, Antiphon, Philochorus, ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... frame-up against a guilty one. According to his cop-psychology, if his side partner saw something it was practically the same as if he had seen it himself. That phantasmagorical scintilla of evidence needed to bolster up a weak or doubtful case could always be counted on if Delany was the officer who had made the arrest. None of his cases were ever thrown out of court for lack of evidence, but then, Delany never arrested ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... I never knew any ailment you had. You can go out at night in all weathers, sit up all hours. Well, I don't want to moralise. I only wish to say that if you are enclined to a game at Doubly Dumby, I would try and bolster up myself in a chair for a rubber or so. My days are tedious, but less so and less painful than my nights. May you never know the pain and difficulty I have in writing so much. Mary, who is most kind, joins in ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... labor she expended in caring for them. What a collection was in those old-time linen chests! Humphreys, in her Catherine Schuyler, copies the inventory of articles in one: "35 homespun Sheets, 9 Fine sheets, 12 Tow Sheets, 13 bolster-cases, 6 pillow-biers, 9 diaper brakefast cloathes, 17 Table cloathes, 12 damask Napkins, 27 homespun Napkins, 31 Pillow-cases, 11 dresser Cloathes and a damask Cupboard Cloate." And this too before the day of the washing-machine, the steam ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... the last scene of "Othello," had this exquisite passage: "Upon which the Moor, seizing a bolster full of rage and ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... regret to one another whatsoever, but referred scathingly, amid rapturous cheers, at our next meetings to the blackguardly policy of intimidation and hooliganism by which the other side found it necessary to bolster up a barren cause and hopeless future; all of which shows that things were tuning up ...
— The Right Stuff - Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton • Ian Hay
... men, very respectable, with two wives, one apiece, lawful and right, and their children, and Miss Schack and her three children, and a Mr. Bolster, and that wuz all there wuz of us, includin' and takin' in my pardner ...
— Samantha at the World's Fair • Marietta Holley
... not to make a noise, and saying, "Well,—well,—well,—so you shall,—hold your tongue (to the girl), he won't hurt you,—look his cock is not big." She pulled the girl on to the edge of the bed again, and brought her cunt up to the proper level with the bolster and pillows. Then said the woman, "Let me hold your cock, you must not put it far in, she is so young." I promised I would only sheath the tip; but she declared I should not unless she held it. "Wrap your ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... exclaimed lady Feng, laughingly, "I know everything! You don't at all come to look me up on account of verses or paintings, but simply to take revenge on P'ing Erh's behalf! I never had any idea that P'ing Erh had such a backer as yourself to bolster her up! Had I known it, I wouldn't have ventured to strike her, even though a spirit had been tugging my arm! Miss P'ing come over and let me tender my apologies to you, in the presence of your senior lady and the young ladies. Do bear with me for having proved ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... He called upon the rich landowner, the Marquis de Chavanes, on purpose to deliver himself with joyful unction of solemn platitudes about the inscrutable ways of Providence. In the vast dimness of the curtained drawing-room, the little man, resembling a black bolster, leaned towards a couch, his hat on his knees, and gesticulated with a fat hand at the elongated, gracefully-flowing lines of the clear Parisian toilette from which the half-amused, half-bored marquise listened with gracious languor. He was exulting and humble, proud and awed. The impossible ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... my own surprise I have discovered that I have suddenly become a moral coward, and am obliged to descend to subterfuges in order to bolster up my courage. This isn't a usual thing with me, I think, but neither is the occasion. I've been wanting and planning to tell you something, face to face, for a long time; but at the crucial moment my courage has failed each ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... a blanket, and also fled, just as Matty Merryon, who slept in an attic room above, tumbled down her wooden staircase and burst into the room by another door, uttering a wild exclamation that was choked in the bud partly by terror, partly by smoke. Attempting in vain to wrap herself in a bolster, Matty followed her mistress. All three had utterly forgotten the existence of Miss Deemas. That strong-minded lady being, as we have hinted, a sound sleeper, was not awakened by the commotion in the street. In fact, she was ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne
... not correct so far as regards this part of the country at least. He says "it is now danced with a handkerchief instead of a cushion," whereas the fact is I have never seen it danced but with a pillow, as its name "Bab in the Bowster (Anglice bolster)" would seem to denote. The manner of dancing it is, the company having formed itself into a circle, one, either male or female, goes into the centre, carrying a pillow, and dances round the circle with a sort of shuffling quick step, while the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 64, January 18, 1851 • Various
... should take possession of Cuba; which, after a civil apology to Spain for taking such a liberty with her possessions, and, perhaps, a few million by way of hush money, you carve into two more states, and, in this manner, try to bolster up your federal relations. How many of her West India islands Great Britain will be able to keep after such a war, is another problem, the solution of which will depend upon the relative strength of fleets and ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... you'll enlighten me as to what 'it' means?" hinted Jack, trying hard to bolster up a courage that, none the less, would ...
— The Submarine Boys for the Flag - Deeding Their Lives to Uncle Sam • Victor G. Durham
... sent for the serjeant, who was his first acquaintance among these military gentlemen. Unluckily that worthy officer having, in a literal sense, taken his fill of liquor, had been some time retired to his bolster, where he was snoring so loud that it was not easy to convey a noise in at his ears capable of drowning that which issued ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... half an hour," said Clover, unhooking the rules, and carrying them to the window,—"Half an hour; and this says that we must turn the mattress, smooth the under-sheet over the bolster, and spend five minutes in silent devotion! We'll have to be quick to do all ...
— What Katy Did At School • Susan Coolidge
... the crown and counsel for the prisoner. The crimes charged against the Inca were chiefly of a kind with which the Spaniards had nothing to do, among them the assassination of Huascar and the guilt of idolatry. These were simply to bolster up the only real charge, that of exciting an insurrection against the Spaniards. The whole affair was the merest show of a trial, and was hurried through without waiting for the return of De Soto, who could have given useful evidence about the insurrection. The culprit was adjudged guilty, and ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume III • Charles Morris
... "Dodd" found his employer an exact man—one who required service by the card. This the young man could not, or rather would not render. He blundered in his work on more than one occasion, and resorted to tricks to bolster up his carelessness or inefficiency. The result was that after a few weeks' service he was discharged. He was chagrined, mortified, angry. But he "cheeked it through," as the young men of his class would say. It ...
— The Evolution of Dodd • William Hawley Smith
... this in Pope. Had he been a really great poet of the old Homer or Dante breed, he would have outshot his age, till he "dwindled in the distance;" but in lieu of immediate fame, and of elaborate lectures in the next century, to bolster it unduly up, all generations would have "risen ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... theory—much like the stuff they put between the covers of school history books—so Ali Baba's lecture, although gorgeous fiction in its way, hardly enriched knowledge. Not that he was free from the latterday craving for accuracy whenever it might serve to bolster up ...
— The Lion of Petra • Talbot Mundy
... sisters were enjoying their feast, a witch passed by, and catching sight of the open door, she walked in. She went up to the eldest girl, and said: 'Where shall I begin on you, you fat bolster?' ...
— The Grey Fairy Book • Various
... look like hitting him?" said Robert scornfully. "Why, I should kill him. But I'll give him something to remember. Wait till I pull up my stocking." He pulled up his stocking, which was as large as a small bolster-case, and strode off. His strides were six or seven feet long, so that it was quite easy for him to be at the bottom of the hill, ready to meet the baker's boy when he came down swinging the empty basket ...
— Five Children and It • E. Nesbit
... combat with the said Succubus, whose claws still clutched my heart, causing me infinite pains; still, while reanimated by the voice of my servitors, relations, and friends, I tried to make the sacred sign of the cross; the Succubus perched on my bed, on the bolster, at the foot, everywhere, occupying herself in distracting my nerves, laughing, grimacing, putting before my eyes a thousand obscene images, and causing me a thousand wicked desires. Nevertheless, taking pity on me, my lord the Archbishop ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... furnished—being, in fact, the chamber of Mrs. Wilcox, the mother of the little fellow who occupied the wide bed. He lay there in lugubrious state, the rosy face stained with much crying, just showing above the edge of the counterpane; his tangle of yellow curls crushed upon the bolster. Below these was a white mound, stretched along the middle of the bed, just the length of Robby, aged seven and a half, the youngling of the Wilcox family. Two big blue eyes, glazed with tears, wandered from one ...
— Choice Readings for the Home Circle • Anonymous
... trouble. One German officer who was sent to Austria to help bolster up her army told me that he didn't worry over the desertion of Bohemians singly and in small groups. He expected that. But he did take serious exception to the increasingly popular custom of whole battalions with ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin
... European Union attempts to lower trade barriers, adopt a common currency, and move toward convergence of living standards. Internationally, the EU aims to bolster Europe's trade position and its political and economic power. Because of the great differences in per capita income (from $10,000 to $28,000) and historic national animosities, the European Community faces difficulties ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... Atonement, or for a crucified savior, who would take upon himself the sins of poor, weak human nature. By simply believing on this crucified redeemer, man would be saved, not from sin itself, but from the penalty of sin. To bolster up the belief in original sin and the necessity for an atonement, the allegory of the fruit tree and the serpent in ...
— The God-Idea of the Ancients - or Sex in Religion • Eliza Burt Gamble
... perplexity with respect to the engagements she had entered into with the Prince of Conde. It was part of the misfortune of this improvident princess that each new intrigue was of such a nature as to require a second intrigue to bolster it up. Yet she was to live long enough to learn by bitter experience that there is a limit to the extent to which plausible but lying words will pass current. At last the spurious coin was to be returned discredited to her own coffers. Catharine had enticed Conde into ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... are as likely as the holiest of 'em to refresh ourselves all night on a stone bolster," pettishly replied the unthankful youth, as he seated himself ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... victory, the situation looked black as ink, and the tense atmosphere that accompanies forlorn hopes took possession of Ridgley School and penetrated not merely to the recitation halls, but even, it was said, to the office of Doctor Wells, the head. In such times there were mighty efforts to bolster up the spirit of the team, to feed it concentrated football knowledge and to ward off by Herculean effort the black shadow of defeat that raised its ugly head like a thunder cloud pushing itself higher and higher over the white buildings ...
— The Mark of the Knife • Clayton H. Ernst
... of her boy. Although their own home was safe, the sorrow of other homes, devastated and mourning, weighed heavily upon Mary Ballard, and she needed to listen to the stirring editorials of the Tribune, which Bertrand read with dramatic intensity, to bolster up her faith in the rightness of this war between men who ought to be brothers in their hopes and ambitions for the national life ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... economists assures us that national wellbeing increases proportionally with the increase in the consumption of commodities. The principle is unsound. Its outcome is that it inoculates people with artificial needs. But it is this artificially excited greed which, in the last resort, continues to bolster up slavery in the shape of exploitation and war. Property created war, and property maintains war. For the weak only, is property a source of virtue, since the weak will not make efforts without the stimulus afforded by the desire for possession. Throughout history, war has been for ...
— The Forerunners • Romain Rolland
... quite independent. You would be surprised at their impertinence. I kicked one of them in the hotel yesterday, and he asked me what the devil I was doing, so I knocked the insolent scoundrel down. He says that he will sue me, but I cannot believe that the law is so servile as to bolster up a black ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... but the document, says Darwin, is a fragment; I will interpolate long periods to account for all the changes. I say, in reply, if you deny my conclusion, grounded on positive evidence, I toss back your conclusion, derived from negative evidence,—the inflated cushion on which you try to bolster up the defects of your hypothesis." [The punctuation of the imaginary dialogue is slightly altered from the original, which is obscure in one place.]) If my views ever are proved true, our current geological views will have to be considerably modified. My greatest trouble is, ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... sloped to the floor till there was but just height enough left for the small chest of drawers of painted deal to stand back to the wall. A similar washstand and a low bed completed the furniture. The last was immediately behind the door, and there lay the woman, with a bolster heightened by a thin petticoat and threadbare cloak under her head. Hester saw a pale, patient, worn face, with ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... sooner than anyone had anticipated. The next trip that the captain made was for his hammock (he always slept in one), which was a long unwieldy bundle, like a gigantic bolster. He carried it into the parlour on his ...
— The Lighthouse • Robert Ballantyne
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