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More "Homespun" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that fright had been! The recollection suddenly became so vivid in his mind, that as though a veil had been lifted he felt the living presence here, close by his side, of a small barefoot mountain lad, clothed in sober homespun gray, but filled with warm desires, dreams and curiosities, exploring upon every hand, now marching boldly forward, now stealing up so cautiously, now galloping away like mad! "I was once a child." To most of us these ...
— His Family • Ernest Poole
... questions, but went where they were led, and the foulness of the close-packed steerage seemed to cling about them. For a time the depot rang to the rhythmic tramp of feet, and when, at a sign from the interpreter, it stopped, two bewildered children, frowsy and unwashed, in greasy homespun, sat down and gazed at Miss Torrance with mild blue eyes. She signed to a boy who was passing with a basket slung before him, and made a little impatient gesture when the man slipped his hand ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... with me they knitted away at socks and stockings, in coarse, bright-coloured wool. Such articles are never bought, the home-made substitute being much more economical in the end. As an instance of the solid comfort of these apparently frugal folks, let me mention their homespun linen sheets. My hostess showed me some coarse bed-linen lately woven for her in the village. Calico sheets, she said, were much cheaper, but she preferred this durable home-spun even at three times the price. An old woman in the village still plied ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... swallow-tail coat of fine blue jeans, instead of the coarse brown native-made cloth. The blue-jeans coat was ornamented with brass buttons and cost one dollar and twenty-five cents a yard, a high price for that locality and time. His wife wore a calico dress for company, while the neighbor wives wore homespun linsey-woolsey. The new house was referred to as the Crystal Palace. When John and Jane Clemens attended balls—there were continuous balls during the holidays—they were considered the ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... She saw a number of canvas-covered wagons drawn up in front of the cabins; the vehicles were dusty and the wheels encrusted with yellow mud. The grizzled frontiersman who had smiled at Nell stood leaning on his gun, talking to three men, whose travel-stained and worn homespun clothes suggested a long and toilsome journey. There was the bustle of excitement incident to the arrival of strangers; to the quick exchange of greetings, the unloading of wagons and unharnessing ...
— The Spirit of the Border - A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley • Zane Grey
... actions, and even looks, adapted to the infinite variety and combinations of persons, places, and things. It is a mode, not a substance; for what is good-breeding at St. James's, would pass for foppery or banter in a remote village; and the homespun civility of that village would be considered as ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... ordnance would that is charged with amomum, musk, civet and ambergreece." It was surely a mock-modesty which led Nash to fear that such ghost-stories as these would appear to his readers duller than Holland cheese and more tiresome than homespun. To 1594, too, belongs the tragedy of "Dido," probably left incomplete by Marlowe, and finished by Nash, who shows himself here an adept in that swelling bombast of bragging blank verse of which he affected to disapprove. A new edition of "Christ's Tears" also belongs to this busy year ...
— The Vnfortunate Traveller, or The Life Of Jack Wilton - With An Essay On The Life And Writings Of Thomas Nash By Edmund Gosse • Thomas Nash
... fancy for being left with no other protection than a half-disciplined rabble, who, ready as they might be to act against their troublesome countrymen, had no more respect for a lawn sleeve than for a homespun jerkin. A few troops of regular cavalry were therefore retained, and one regiment of Foot Guards. The former were commanded by Athole, the latter by Linlithgow. Towards the end of 1677 a fresh troop of cavalry ...
— Claverhouse • Mowbray Morris
... West Kerry," "with a smooth mountain on one side and the sea on the other, and Brandon in front of me, partly covered with clouds. As far as I could see there were little groups of people on their way to the chapel at Ballyferriter, the men in homespun and the women wearing blue cloaks, or, more often, black shawls twisted over their heads. This procession along the olive bogs, between the mountains and the sea, on this gray day of autumn, seemed to wring me with the pang of emotion one meets everywhere in Ireland, an emotion that is partly ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... he, "to array myself in that old coatie when I go for my bit dip, you see—it's thick and it's warm, and I've had it twenty years or more—good tweed it is, and homespun. And whenever I've gone out here of a morning, I've put my pocket-book in the inside pocket, and laid the coat itself and the rest o' my scanty attire on the bank there down at Kernwick Cove while I went in the water. And I did that very ...
— Ravensdene Court • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... For this a British author bids again The heroine rise, to grace the British scene: Here, as in life, she breathes her genuine flame, She asks, What bosom has not felt the same? Asks of the British youth—is silence there? She dares to ask it of the British fair. To-night our homespun author would be true, At once to nature, history, and you. 20 Well pleased to give our neighbours due applause, He owns their learning, but disdains their laws; Not to his patient touch, or happy flame, 'Tis to his British heart he trusts for fame. If France excel him in one freeborn ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... and hooked nose, clasped the bars with both hands, gazing at us intently. I recognized his kind the moment I looked at him. He was like my Jonathan Gordon, my old fisherman who lived up in the Franconia Notch. His coarse, homespun clothes, dyed brown with walnut-shells, slouch hat crowning his shock of gray hair, and hickory shirt open at the throat, only heightened the resemblance; especially the hat canted over one eye. Why he wore the hat in such a place I could not understand, unless to be ready for departure ...
— The Underdog • F. Hopkinson Smith
... an old man, white-bearded and grey-haired, carrying his hat in his hand as he walked. His rough homespun clothing, his collarless shirt open at the throat, the plaid scarf around his neck, all these Poltavo saw through his powerful glasses and ...
— The Secret House • Edgar Wallace
... other playmates soon turned up. Bert was at first not very much inclined to be sociable with them. Not only did they seem to have no shoes and stockings, but their entire clothing was usually limited to a battered straw hat, an unbleached cotton shirt, and a pair of rough homespun trousers; and the city boy was inclined to look upon the country lads with some contempt, until his Aunt Martha cured him effectually one day by a remark made in a ...
— Bert Lloyd's Boyhood - A Story from Nova Scotia • J. McDonald Oxley
... had been worked out for the various classes. They were adapted both to the purse and to the pursuit. They were fitting—that is, silk was not worn in huts or homespun in palaces; slippers were for carriages and sabots for streets. The garments of a class were founded on good sound principles on the whole—but they marked the class. Democracy sought to destroy outward distinctions. The proscribed costumes went into the pot with proscribed ...
— The Business of Being a Woman • Ida M. Tarbell
... used to close up the cracks and keep the warmth within the room. The floors were made of oak and were white and clean. Several old-fashioned split-bottom chairs graced the room, a long table was placed in the center, upon which was spread a snow-white linen cloth of homespun, and woven by the women. While the wraps were being removed the women had placed upon the table the best that could be prepared for the pastor's welcome. I'll never forget the delicious roast chicken; baked sweet potatoes, baked in the ashes, ...
— Sixty Years of California Song • Margaret Blake-Alverson
... and a brave people; upon such a comparison, would he not be ready to conclude, "that we had forgot the reasons which urged us, with unexampled unanimity a few years ago - that our zeal for the public good had worn out, before the homespun cloaths which it had caused us to have made - and, that by our present conduct we condemned our own late successful example! -Although this is altogether supposition, without any foundation in truth, yet, so our enemies wish it may be in reality, and so they intend it ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, volume II (1770 - 1773) - collected and edited by Harry Alonso Cushing • Samuel Adams
... impression that she is a sang-mele. The skirt is of the common homespun of the backwoods, striped with a yellowish dye; but the green bodice is of finer stuff, with more pretensions to ornament; and her neck and wrists are embraced by a variety of those glancing circlets ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... was the principal grain food, and wild game supplied most of the meat. The wild animals furnished clothing as well as food; for the pioneers could not afford to pay from 15 to 25 cents a yard for calico, and from 25 to 75 cents for gingham.* Some persons indulged in homespun cloth for Sunday and festal occasions, but the common outside garments were made of dressed deerskins. Parley P. Pratt, in his autobiography, speaks of passing through a settlement where "some families were entirely dressed in skins, without any other clothing, ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... saw the white tops of wagons flashing in the sun at the far end of it. We caught up with them, the wagoners cracking their whips and swearing at the straining horses. And lo! in front of the wagons was an army,—at least my boyish mind magnified it to such. Men clad in homespun, perspiring and spattered with mud, were straggling along the road by fours, laughing and joking together. The officers rode, and many of these had blue coats and buff waistcoats,—some the worse for wear. My father was pushing the ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Town were men of many types. Here was the English merchant and man of business, looking and dressing just as he would at home. Names over the shop doors were for the most part Dutch, as was the appearance of the majority of the white men in the streets. Dutch farmers in broad hats and homespun garments, mounted on rough ponies, clattered along through the streets. The manual work was for the most part done by swarthy natives, while among the crowd were numbers of Malays, with dark olive skins, small eyes, and ...
— A Final Reckoning - A Tale of Bush Life in Australia • G. A. Henty
... toward them through the thickening gloom, very slowly; leaning on a stick. As he drew nearer, they observed that he was pale and worn, and that his anxious eyes were deeply sunken in his head. His dress of homespun blue hung about him in rags; his feet and head were bare. He sat down on a stump half-way, and beckoned them to come to him. When they complied, he put his hand upon his side as if in pain, and while he fetched his breath stared at ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... letter from that good friend of mine, presenting, in the most favourable view, my character and prospects. But had I read it I could scarce have seen more clear in her designs. Maybe I was countryfeed; at least, I was not so much so as she thought; and it was plain enough, even to my homespun wits, that she was bent to hammer up a match between her cousin and a beardless boy that was something of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... squalid, its French and French-Canadians, its soldiers and priests and civilians and Indians, its great stone houses, and its wooden huts, its young officers in fine white uniforms and its swarthy habitants in brown homespun. Albany had its Dutch, and New York had its Dutch, too, and people from many parts of Europe, but Quebec was different, something altogether new, without a trace of English or Dutch about it, and, for that reason, it made a ...
— The Hunters of the Hills • Joseph Altsheler
... brown twilled homespun cloth woven of wool prior to the Civil War—colored brown with dye from the butternut or walnut tree; used for men's wear and ...
— Textiles and Clothing • Kate Heintz Watson
... the male peasants; old men in homespun coats and bast shoes, and young men in new cloth caftans, bright-colored belts and boots. To the left the women, with red silk 'kerchiefs on their heads, shag caftans with bright red sleeves, and blue, green, red, striped and dotted skirts and ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
... his homespun tartan of yellow and black—came round from the kennels with the dogs, and Hamish, and the tall red-headed lad Sandy, it appeared that they considered this to be rather a fine day than otherwise, and ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... of yore contended more in goodness to exceed, Than in pride to be envied for that which least they need. Little lawn then serve[d] the Pawn, if Pawn at all there were; Homespun thread and household bread then held out all the year. But th' attires of women now wear out both house and land; That the wives in silk may flow, at ...
— Lyrics from the Song-Books of the Elizabethan Age • Various
... Improvement must result from associated effort, and of that cities are the last expression. All the European towns are outgrowing the rural districts. With us the change states itself in an advance, since 1790, of the city population from 3.4 to 20.9 per cent. of the aggregate. Broadcloth has gained on homespun in the proportion of six to one, Giles having thus six mouths to fill where he formerly had but one. We shall show farther on how gallantly he meets this draft. New York, with its suburbs, contains more Germans than any German city save Vienna and Berlin, more Irish than ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... flimsy finery, as a matter of course, and to many a tidbit, cake or sweetmeat; she made herself gaudy as a butterfly with the one, and never went into a corner with the other. Of late, however, the finery and the delicates had become more uncommon things: Miss Emma wore a homespun gingham, her muslins, and Miss Agatha's, draped the windows,—for curtains and carpets had all gone to camp; bacon had ceased to be given out to the hands, who lived now on corn-meal and yams; the people at the house were scarcely better off,—for, though, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... with that of her father; the former, well dressed in the style of a gentleman of the time, in broadcloth, with fine linen, and a tall silk hat carefully placed on the floor of the pew; while Deacon Baxter wore homespun made of wool from his own sheep, spun and woven, dyed and finished, at the fulling-mill in the village, and carried a battered felt hat that had been a matter of ridicule these dozen years. (The Deacon would be buried in two coats, ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Piled at her knee, her white hands feeding the ravenous spindle, While with her foot on the treadle she guided the wheel in its motion. * * * * * She, the Puritan girl, in the solitude of the forest, Making the humble house and the modest apparel of homespun Beautiful with her beauty, and rich with ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... only of the mountain cattle and to see the red cow's picturesque head and crumpled horns thrust over the sassafras bushes, or to hear the brindle's clanking bell. It was certainly less unexpected to Cynthia when a young mountaineer, clad in brown jean trousers and a checked homespun shirt, emerged upon the rocky slope. He still wore his blacksmith's leather apron, and his powerful corded hammer-arm was bare beneath his tightly-rolled sleeve. He was tall and heavily built; his sunburned face was square, with a strong lower jaw, and his features were accented by fine lines ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... seemed, would not down: that he was never to be done with Aunt Anne's deeds, so often demanding, as they did, a reciprocal action from him. What he wanted, he realized grimly, was to have his cake and eat it, if he might use so homespun a simile for a woman who had persistently lived for him and in him and then had made clear spaces about him by going away in the dignity of death. He wanted to breathe in the space she had left, and he also wanted to be ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... of the world beyond the grave, gives full scope to his vivid imagination in portraying the condition of the lost. It contains some touches of racy humour, especially in the similes, and is written in the nervous homespun English of which he was master. Its popularity is shown by its having gone through nine editions in the author's lifetime. To take an example or two of its style: dealing with the excuses people make for ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables
... country, for he wore a suit of brown jeans, or woollen homespun, made up in the natural color of the "black" sheep, as we call it. He shyly sidled up to the school-house door, and looked doubtfully at the boys who were playing, watching the familiar game as though he had never ...
— The Hoosier School-boy • Edward Eggleston
... removed his boots, which he carried in his hand; this added to a certain surreptitiousness in his attitude. A handkerchief was bound over his left eye. He wore his shako still, but the rest of his uniform verged on the fantastic. Under a light-blue Bavarian cavalry cape he wore a peasant's homespun shirt, and he ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman
... that Ichabod arrived at the castle of the Heer Van Tassel, which he found thronged with the pride and flower of the adjacent country. Old farmers, a spare leathern-faced race, in homespun coats and breeches, blue stockings, huge shoes, and magnificent pewter buckles. Their brisk, withered little dames, in close crimped caps, long waisted short-gowns, homespun petticoats, with scissors and pincushions, and gay calico pockets hanging on the outside. Buxom lasses, almost as antiquated ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... They wore homespun clothes and high boots. They were speedily on intimate terms with Jolly Rovers, and gladly accepted Ned's invitation to dinner. They asked many curious questions, and lost themselves in admiration ...
— Canoe Boys and Campfires - Adventures on Winding Waters • William Murray Graydon
... homespun-clad mountain children. A high-shouldered, elderly man sat at a table near the deep fireplace, where a huge backlog was smouldering. Through the cobwebbed window-panes the ...
— The Young Mountaineers - Short Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... was plain enough; to be contented was another matter. Rufus joined again in the farm concerns; the well-worn Little River broadcloth was exchanged for homespun; and Winthrop's plough, and hoe, and axe, were mated again as in former time they used to be. This at least was greatly enjoyed by the brothers. There was a constant and lively correspondence between them, on all matters of interest, past, present, and future, ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... their unpacking, and Judith, who was naturally very orderly, soon had everything in its place. Her mother's parting gift had been couch-cover, cushions, and hangings for the new room—homespun of a lovely deep blue for cover and cushions, and a delightful rosy ...
— Judy of York Hill • Ethel Hume Patterson Bennett
... this eternal Crabbe is relished in America (I am not looking to my Edition, which would be a hopeless loss anywhere): he certainly is little read in his own Country. And I fancy America likes more abstract matter than Crabbe's homespun. ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes - Vol. II • Edward FitzGerald
... without doubt," says Frank. "Beware of the homespun brothers, dear. If they come into the dance, you'll see who's an ass. Think now, if they only applied (say) a quarter as much talent as I have applied to the question of what Mr. Archie does with his evening hours, ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... troubled, and Marg'et Ann could not trust her voice. They walked on without speaking, and the dusk was deepening before they turned to go back. Marg'et Ann had thrown a little homespun shawl over her head, for there was a memory of frost in the air, but it had fallen back and Lloyd could see her profile with its new lines of ...
— The Wizard's Daughter and Other Stories • Margaret Collier Graham
... glance very rapidly at a few out of the many literary forces of our day in which we may see the various reactions from Carlyle. First, there was the Early Victorian time, the eighteenth century in homespun. It was not great and pompous like that century, but it lived by formality, propriety, and conventionality. It was horribly shocked when George Eliot published Scenes of Clerical Life and Adam ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... discovered that Mrs. Todd was likely to take one herself; we had not been far afield to gather herbs and pleasures for many days now, but a little later she had silently vanished. I found my luncheon ready on the table in the little entry, wrapped in its shining old homespun napkin, and as if by way of special consolation, there was a stone bottle of Mrs. Todd's best spruce beer, with a long piece of cod line wound round it by which it could be lowered for coolness into ...
— The Queen's Twin and Other Stories • Sarah Orne Jewett
... behind them, which they both instantly recognised as that of Ned Hinkley, the cousin of William. He had approached them, in the earnestness of their interview, without having disturbed them. The bold youth was habited in a rough woodman's dress. He wore a round jacket of homespun, and in his hand he carried a couple of fishing-rods, which, with certain other implements, betiayed sufficiently the object ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... started to feel a great warm hand on my shoulder, and a loud, cheery voice saith, 'Dolly Jennings, whither away so fast thou canst not see an old friend?' I looked up, and there was dear old Farmer Ingham, in his thick boots and country homespun; but I declare to you, child, that in my trouble his face was to me as that of an angel of God. I brake down, and sobbed aloud. 'Come, come, now!' saith he, comfortably; 'not so bad as that, is it? I've been seeking thee these four days, Dolly, child. I knew I could find thee ...
— The Maidens' Lodge - None of Self and All of Thee, (In the Reign of Queen Anne) • Emily Sarah Holt
... in his homespun jacket was shaken smartly. "See here, my boy, either you tell me what you're screaming for, or I'll pick you up ...
— The Adventures of Joel Pepper • Margaret Sidney
... barley, and cotton, and produced all of our living on the plantation. There was no such thing as going to town to buy things. All of our clothing was homespun, our socks were knitted, and everything. We had our looms, and made our own suits, we also had reels, and we carved, spun, and knitted. We always wore yarn socks for winter, which we made. It didn't get cold, in the winter in Tennessee, just a little frost was all. We fixed all of ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Kansas Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... confidence could follow; he took America with him where he went; what he gained he occupied, and his advanced posts became colonies. The very homeliness of his genius was its distinction. His kingship was conspicuous by its workday homespun. Never was ruler so absolute as he, nor so little conscious of it; for he was the incarnate common-sense of the people. With all that tenderness of nature whose sweet sadness touched whoever saw him with something of its own pathos, there was no trace of sentimentalism ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... the air was thick with rumors. A besieged city must perforce be a nest of gossip, a hive of cock-and-bull stories. The regulars looked smart in their regimental uniforms. The militia wore such toggery as they could get—grey homespun coat with red sash, cowskin boots, and the traditional tuque bleue. The trappers not being allowed into the town, furs were rare, and women of the lower classes were obliged to go without them altogether. The centres of attraction were the guard-rooms ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance
... ran away to do her bidding, as he always did. He had no clothes besides the worn suit of homespun which he was then wearing, except one other of buckskin, gayly fringed on the sleeves and on the outer seam of the breeches. This had been his pride till of late. But he now took it down from its peg behind his cabin door and eyed it with new dissatisfaction. Fashions were ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks
... the name of one of the "homespun actors" in "Midsummer Night's Dream," and is no doubt there used as a ludicrous name. The ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... spades, wagons, and other agricultural implements. The young man was his father's western representative, and Fisher sold his goods in the Indianapolis district. He dressed well and was affable with his homespun friends. In truth, he was a gentleman. He made himself at home in the cabin; but he had brains enough to respect and not to patronize the good ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major
... social service are carried on,—district nursing, classes in sanitation and hygiene, social clubs and entertainments for people of all ages, and a department of fireside industries, through which is created an outside market for the beautiful coverlets, blankets and homespun, woven by the mountain women, as well as for ...
— Sight to the Blind • Lucy Furman
... he won respect for the lucidity of his statements and his conciliatory address. It soon became evident that the Stamp Act could not be enforced. No one could be compelled to buy stamps or pay tariff taxes if he preferred to withdraw from all business transactions, wear homespun, do without British manufactures, and even refrain from eating lamb that flocks of sheep might be increased and the wool used for ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XI • John Lord
... a-settin' on de end of a rail, Pickin' his tooth wid de end of his tail. Mulberry leaves an' homespun sleeves! Better know dat ole Mosser's ...
— Negro Folk Rhymes - Wise and Otherwise: With a Study • Thomas W. Talley
... bench and bush and ground were littered with garments and furs and weapons, and odds-and-ends of spoil, as if a ship had been overturned on the spot. The lean little man whom Rolf had pointed out stood in the midst of it all, examining and directing. He was dressed in coarse homespun of the dingy colors of trading vessels, gray and brown and rusty black, which contrasted oddly with the mantle of gorgeous purple velvet he was at that moment trying on. His little freckled face was wrinkled into a hundred shrewd puckers, and his eyes were two twinkling pin-points of sharpness. ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... broadcloth, lace ruffles, silk stockings, and silver shoe buckles, powdered their hair, and carried swords. The women dressed more elaborately in silks and brocades, and wore towering head-dresses and ostrich plumes. Shopkeepers wore homespun, workingmen and ...
— A Brief History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... quite wealthy now, as they possess many thousands of sheep and goats, and they are famed for their quaint and beautiful blankets and homespun, which they weave on their hand looms from the wool of their sheep. They owned large herds of horses, beautiful ponies, a crossed breed of mustangs and Mormon stock, which latter they had stolen in their raids on the Mormon settlements ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann
... she must still be dreaming; for, standing a little way down the path, was a tall man leaning on a musket. He wore a flannel blouse, and his homespun trousers were tucked into high ...
— A Little Maid of Ticonderoga • Alice Turner Curtis
... of specie to pay for them, while they drank Madeira wine and dressed their wives in fine velvets and laces. So said the farmers; and city ladies, far kinder than these railers deemed them, formed clubs, of which the members pledged themselves to wear homespun,—a poor palliative for the deep-seated ills of the time. In such mood were many of the villagers when in the summer of 1786 they were overtaken by the craze for paper money. At the meeting of the legislature in May, a petition came in from Bristol County, ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... was full of peril, especially on the road from York, which ran through dense woods, where Indians often waylaid the traveller. The bridegroom's father was present with the rest. It was a concourse of men in homespun, and women and girls in such improvised finery as their poor resources could supply; possibly, in default of better, some wore nightgowns, more or less disguised, over their daily dress, as happened on similar occasions half a century later among the ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman
... herself. Down came the coach-and-four, and forth from it came Lady Belamour in a magnificent hoop, the first seen in those parts, managing it with a grace that made her an overwhelming spectacle, in contrast with Betty, in her close-fitting dark-grey homespun, plain white muslin apron, cap, kerchief, and ruggles, scrupulously neat and fresh, but unadorned. The visit was graciously designed for "good cousin Harry," but his daughter was obliged, not unwillingly, though quite truly, to declare ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a trailing, clinging black skirt which her aunt had sent her a year ago and which she had never been permitted to wear. It transformed her into a woman. She had cast aside her waist of dark plum-coloured homespun and wrapped a silken shawl about herself until only her beautiful arms and shoulders were left bare. Her hair, glossy and brown, with burnished red lights where the rays of the dull autumn sun struck on it through the window, was heaped high on her head and held in place by a fillet ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1905 to 1906 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... figure in homespun gray took acute shape in her mind's eye. The features were oddly sharp and clear. There was even the rough trooper's disdain, which had been in his expression when first he saw her, but which she had not noticed at the time. She brushed the vision aside haughtily, as she would ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... hospitality. This is not an infrequent combination in the outlying districts of the Cape, where the nature of life and things is such that wealth, education, and refinement are often found robed in a modest homespun garb, and housed in ...
— Six Months at the Cape • R.M. Ballantyne
... elbow-room, and old women, capped and spectacled, still peered through the same windows from which they had watched Lord Percy's artillery rumble by to Lexington, or caught a glimpse of the handsome Virginia general who had come to wield our homespun Saxon chivalry. People still lived who regretted the unhappy separation from the mother island. . . The hooks were to be seen from which swung the hammocks of Burgoyne's captive redcoats. If memory does not deceive me, women still washed clothes in the ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody
... spotless background of glittering ice-field and snow-covered cliffs. Risk and his partner wore over their ordinary clothing long frocks of white flannel, with white "havelocks" over their seal-skin caps, and their gray, homespun pants were covered to the knee by seal-skin Esquimaux boots—the best of all water-proof walking-gear for cold weather. Risk carried the single ducking-piece before mentioned, but Davies had a Blissett breech-loading double-barrel. They had chosen their ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... went to school for the first time is very clear in my memory. I can see myself, a stout little fellow about eight years old, clad in gray homespun, with breeches, low shoes, and a low, flat beaver hat. I can hear my mother say, "Here are two big apples for thy master," it being the custom so to propitiate pedagogues. Often afterward I took eggs in a little basket, or flowers, and others ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... our country leaves us nothing to relate, which may interest a mind surrounded by such buoyant scenes as yours. No matter; I will still tell you the charming though homespun news, that our crops of wheat have been abundant and of superior quality; that very great though partial drought has destroyed the crops of hay to the north, and corn to the south; that the late rains may recover ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... (smoothness) 255; fineness of grain; coarseness of grain, dry goods. silk, satin; muslin, burlap. [Science of textures] histology. Adj. structural, organic; anatomic, anatomical. textural, textile; fine grained, coarse grained; fine, delicate, subtile, gossamery, filmy, silky, satiny; coarse; homespun. rough, gritty; smooth. smooth as silk, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... them with some curiosity. They did not look in the least like the ordinary run of Lindsay people. The boy, in particular, had a distinctly foreign appearance, in spite of the gingham shirt and homespun trousers, which seemed to be the regulation, work-a-day outfit for the Lindsay farmer lads. He had a lithe, supple body, with sloping shoulders, and a lean, satiny brown throat above his open shirt collar. His head was covered ...
— Kilmeny of the Orchard • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... looking at him, and interested in getting all the rough wool off the collar of his homespun coat. ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... army began to gather into Boston. Tan, lanky, awkward fellows came in squads, and companies, and regiments, swaggering along, dressed in their brown homespun clothes and blue yarn stockings. They stooped as if they still had hold of the plough-handles, and marched without any time or tune. Hither they came, from the cornfields, from the clearing in ...
— Grandfather's Chair • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... little aggravating halts, up to the point on the river where the Thirty-sixth Indiana had already embarked, and were now being ferried over. The Twenty-fourth Ohio crossed at the lower landing. There were a number of country folk here, clad in the coarse, rusty homespun common in the South, whose intense anxiety to see every movement visible on the farther side of the river kept them unquietly shifting their positions continually. One of these worthies ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... to see their daughter graduated, after six or seven long years, their faces are radiant because of their realized hopes. When they see their white-robed daughter transformed from the girl they brought here clad in the homespun of the old days, and receiving her certificate, the tears come unchecked, and the moving lips no ...
— Tuskegee & Its People: Their Ideals and Achievements • Various
... mail arrived, on horseback. There was but one letter, and it was for the postmaster. The long-legged youth who carried the mail tarried an hour to talk, for there was no hurry; and in a little while the male population of the village had assembled to help. As a general thing, they were dressed in homespun "jeans," blue or yellow—here were no other varieties of it; all wore one suspender and sometimes two—yarn ones knitted at home,—some wore vests, but few wore coats. Such coats and vests as did appear, however, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... observance of Saturday evening appears to have been derived from the backward influence of the day, as the release upon Sunday evening appears to have been a concession to the flesh, which would otherwise have rebelled. Dr. Bushnell, in his "Age of Homespun," tells of his own experience in boyhood, when he was refused a load of apples, which he had gone to buy on Saturday afternoon, because the farmer, on consulting the sun, decided that he could not measure out the fruit before the ...
— Noah Webster - American Men of Letters • Horace E. Scudder
... hills of Vermont came in all haste a company of hardy mountaineers, at their head a large-framed, strong-limbed, keen-eyed frontiersman, all dressed in the homespun of their native hills, but all with rifles in their hands, a weapon which none in the land knew better how to use. The tidings of stirring events at Boston, spreading rapidly through New England, had reached their ears. The people of America had been attacked by English ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... ruddy-faced man of sixty, with neatly trimmed, snow-white whiskers. He had on a soft Alpine hat of pearl gray, a modishly cut gray homespun suit, a tie in which glimmered an opal pin, wore tan gloves, and had slung over one shoulder by a narrow black strap a ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... he was himself the neatest-gloved man I knew. "Armstrong of Oregon" was a rough figure enough; but how well he knew how to bring out the kindly traits in that rude lumberman's character! how true to Nature is that sketch of a gentleman in homespun! And even Jake Shamberlain, the Mormon mail-carrier, a rollicking, untidy rover, fond of whiskey, and doubtless not too scrupulous in a "trade," has yet, in Winthrop's story, qualities ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... fathers from exile Wandered back to their native land to die in its bosom. In the fisherman's cot the wheel and the loom are still busy; Maidens still wear their Norman caps and their kirtles of homespun, And by the evening fire repeat Evangeline's story, While from its rocky caverns the deep-voiced, neighboring ocean Speaks, and in accents disconsolate answers the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... poverty of sentiment. The transplanting of a people breaks the successions and associations of history. No memories of conqueror and crusader stir for us poetic fancy. Instead of the glitter of chivalry there is but the sombre homespun of Puritan peasants. In place of the "long-drawn aisle and fretted vault" of Gothic cathedral there is but the rude log meeting-house and schoolhouse. Instead of Christmas merriment there is only the noise of axe and hammer or the dreary droning of psalms. It seems a history bleak ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... little homespun sitting-room, and laid aside her bonnet and shawl, then went to the window, and looked out in an absent way. The high, pure brow, and calm, thoughtful eyes, remind us of one we have met before, and the ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... was all made of homespun. De women done all de spinning and de weaving but Miss Betsy cut out all de clothes and helped wid de sewing. She learned to sew when she was away to school and she learnt all her women to sew. She done all the sewing for de children. Master Holmes bought our shoes and we all had ...
— Slave Narratives, Oklahoma - A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From - Interviews with Former Slaves • Various
... of a bristly red beard and mustache; on one side of his head was a round cap with a knob at the top, such as Scottish laborers sometimes wear; his coat was of a nondescript form, and made of a gray Scotch plaid, with the fringes hanging all about it; he wore pantaloons of coarse homespun, and hob-nailed shoes; and to complete his equipment, a little black pipe was stuck in one corner of his mouth. In this curious attire, I recognized Captain C. of the British army, who, with his brother, and Mr. R., an English gentleman, was bound on ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... admirers, fall in love with heroes and heroines who make war without a glimpse of provocation. I do like our makincy peace, whether we had provocation or not. I am forced to deal in European news, my dear lord, for I have no homespun. I don't think my whole inkhorn could invent another paragraph; and therefore I will take my leave, with (your lordship knows) every kind wish for your ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... Sense returning with return of day, Have chid the Night, which fled so fast away! 440 Such my pursuits, and such my joys of yore, Such were my mates, but now my mates no more. Placed out of Envy's walk, (for Envy, sure, Would never haunt the cottage of the poor, Would never stoop to wound my homespun lays) With some few friends, and some small share of praise, Beneath oppression, undisturb'd by strife, In peace I trod the humble vale of life. Farewell, these scenes of ease, this tranquil state; Welcome the troubles which on empire wait! 450 Light toys from this day forth I ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... young chaps looked once and then looked away. Raymond himself was inconvenienced. Nor did matters mend when, within a week or so, Mrs. Raymond Prince began to rate the women of her new circle as "homespun." ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller
... quiet country beauty, made dignified by the hills around the river. A hot, rustic station of two or three rooms, an abandoned factory building—tall, empty-windowed and haunted-looking—gone clean out for want of commerce, like a lamp for lack of oil. Opposite the station a pretty homespun tavern trellised with grapes, a portrait of General Lee in the sitting-room, and a fat, buxom Virginia matron for hostess. All this quiet scene was once the locality of the hot hopes and anxieties of genius, and it is for this ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... his matter, made him Paymaster, in spite of both king and ministers. From this draw the obvious conclusion. The same thing holds full as true in conversation; where even trifles, elegantly expressed, well looked, and accompanied with graceful action, will ever please, beyond all the homespun, unadorned sense in the world. Reflect, on one side, how you feel within yourself, while you are forced to suffer the tedious, muddy, and ill-turned narration of some awkward fellow, even though the fact may be interesting; and, ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... raised some flax, and from the fibre made coarse linen fabrics, supplementing these by skins of wild animals and the hides of cattle. With the introduction of sheep by the British settlers wool became an important product, and homespun garments provided additional clothing for all the members of the family. Seeds of various fruit trees were planted, and by 1830 the products of these seedlings supplemented the wild plums and cherries of the woods ...
— History of Farming in Ontario • C. C. James
... wat yer got," said Aunt Edy; and they spread out on the table garments of worsted and silk and muslin and lace and tarlatan and calico and homespun, just whatever their little hands had ...
— Diddie, Dumps, and Tot • Louise-Clarke Pyrnelle
... bumblebee," beside this quick intelligence! Our knight of the ruby throat, with lance in rest, makes wild and rapid sallies on this "little mundane bird,"—this bumblebee,—this rolling sailor, never off his sea-legs, always spinning his long homespun yarns. This rich bed of golden and crimson flowers is a handsome field of tournament. What invisible circle sits round to adjudge ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... nor sigh; but at every moment I say: Cursed be the man who invented the art of making common stuff precious by dyeing it scarlet! Cursed be the costly robe that I stand in awe of! Where is my old, my humble, my obliging piece of homespun? ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... his news, Kosmaroff sat down and ate, while Wanda waited on him, and Prince Bukaty poured out wine for this rough man in the homespun clothing and heavy boots of the Vistula raftsman, who yet had the manner of a gentleman and that quiet air of self-possession in all societies which is not to be learned in schools nor yet acquired ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... dooers run in again & caught her master abought ye middle, he askd her ye reason, she sd yt she meet an olde woman at ye dooer, with 2 firebrands in her forehead, he askd her what kinde of clooths she had on, answered she had two homespun coats, one tuct up rounde her ye other down. The next day she namd a person calling her goody Clauson, & sd there she is sitting on a reel, & again sd she saw her sit on ye pommel of a chair, saying Ime sure you are a witch, elce you coulde not sit so & sd she ...
— The Witchcraft Delusion In Colonial Connecticut (1647-1697) • John M. Taylor
... side. As the Wanita ploughed up the lake that day on her return trip, a man came down from the hurricane-deck into the cabin, sat by the table and took up a magazine lying there and turned it over. He was dressed in coarse, ill-fitting, homespun clothes, and had a newly-healed scar on his forehead. His upper lip was roughly shorn, and the rest of his face covered with a two or three weeks' beard. He was not an attractive-looking person, certainly, and yet the pretty girl sewing by the window, her ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... The young lord was now to be transformed into the peasant boy—his long bright curls were cut off, his face and hands were stained with a brown liquid to make him look sunburnt, as if he was used to work in the fields, and his rich velvet apparel was changed for coarse homespun woollen cloth. But he cared not what they put him on—his only thought was that he was going away from his beloved mother, perhaps never to see her more. He clasped his arms round her neck and clung to her ...
— The Grateful Indian - And other Stories • W.H.G. Kingston
... the light thus suddenly surrounding her, and looked about the room piteously, with her little lips trembling and her eyes filled with tears. She was very small for her years, and had long, tumbled hair. Her dress was a homespun frock in a single piece, and her feet were wrapped for warmth in wool stockings of a grown woman's measure. She looked about the room, I say, until she saw me. No doubt my Dutch face was of the sort she was accustomed to, for she stretched out her ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... band of brigands; some loading their pieces as they ran. There was no hint of soldier discipline, and they might have been leaderless for aught I saw of deference to their captain. Indeed, at first I could not pick the captain out by any sign, since all were clad in coarsest homespun and well-worn leather, and all wore the long, fringed hunting shirt and raccoon-skin cap ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... the restrictions upon domestic industry, they were not severely felt among a people devoted, in the country to agriculture, and in the towns to local traffic and shipping, and the American farmer who wore homespun attire, did not realize the harshness or appreciate the purpose of the statute which prohibited the export of wool, or woolen manufactures. As for the Southern planter, the question of fostering domestic manufactures never ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann
... Cousin Oliver get together and fix those new gadgets on my ship. I'll take the other boys for a run over to this spaceport town. The boys need a run ashore, and there might be some loot. Your grandmother's fond of homespun. I'll try to ...
— The Pirates of Ersatz • Murray Leinster
... Robert, "the feckless body," stands in a rather apprehensive attitude before the old lady. He is a huge man of about forty-five. He is clean-shaven, and he has humorous grey eyes and dark hair. Despite his homespun attire, he looks more like a leader of men than a ...
— The Right Stuff - Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton • Ian Hay
... had plenty of work to do. Squire Boone had a big farm, and kept five or six looms working in his house, making homespun clothes for his large family and to sell to his neighbors. He owned a splendid grazing range some little distance north of his home, and sent his ...
— Historic Boyhoods • Rupert Sargent Holland
... pleasure, and when sorrow came to you they sorrowed also. No matter if they have gone down in social scale and you up; no matter if poverty and misfortune have come to them while prosperity came to you; are they any less true for that? Are not their hearts as warm and tender if they do beat beneath homespun instead of velvet? Yes, kind reader, they are as true, loving and tender; ...
— The Jericho Road • W. Bion Adkins
... to be proficient. In the census of 1901 nearly a quarter of the whole caste were shown as malguzars or village proprietors and lessees. They wear a coarse cloth of homespun yarn which they get woven for them by Gandas; probably in consequence of this the Agharias do not consider the touch of the Ganda to pollute them, as other castes do. They will not grow turmeric, onions, garlic, san-hemp ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... furniture of any well-ordered house; the exceptions were among people rich enough to buy their own clothes, or so poor and miserable that they had to wear the cast-off rags of their more fortunate neighbors. The women and girls sheared the sheep, carded the wool, spun the yarn, wove the homespun cloth, and made the clothes. In the haying season they amused themselves by joining in the raking of hay, in which they had to be particularly active if rain was threatened; but any man would have lost caste who allowed wife or daughter to engage ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... feckless body," stands in a rather apprehensive attitude before the old lady. He is a huge man of about forty-five. He is clean-shaven, and he has humorous grey eyes and dark hair. Despite his homespun attire, he looks more like a leader of men ...
— The Right Stuff - Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton • Ian Hay
... people agreed to wear homespun instead of English cloths, and to stop eating mutton in order to have more sheep to produce wool for this homespun, thus showing a willingness to give up for the cause some of the luxuries which ...
— Stories of Later American History • Wilbur F. Gordy
... hand on my shoulder, and a loud, cheery voice saith, 'Dolly Jennings, whither away so fast thou canst not see an old friend?' I looked up, and there was dear old Farmer Ingham, in his thick boots and country homespun; but I declare to you, child, that in my trouble his face was to me as that of an angel of God. I brake down, and sobbed aloud. 'Come, come, now!' saith he, comfortably; 'not so bad as that, is it? I've been seeking thee these four days, Dolly, ...
— The Maidens' Lodge - None of Self and All of Thee, (In the Reign of Queen Anne) • Emily Sarah Holt
... March, 1905, there entered the writer's office in the Criminal Courts Building, New York City, a ruddy, stoutly-built man, dressed in homespun garments, accompanied by an attractive and vivacious little woman, who, while unable to speak a single word of English, had no difficulty in making it obvious that she had a story to tell of the most vital importance. An interpreter was soon found ...
— True Stories of Crime From the District Attorney's Office • Arthur Train
... scarce know Robin now. Curs'd Marian may go seek another man, For I intend to dwell no longer with her, Since that the bastinado drove me thence. These silken girls are all too fine for me: My master shall report of those in hell, Whilst I go range amongst the country-maids, To see, if homespun lasses milder be Than my curs'd dame and Lacy's wanton wife. Thus therefore will I live betwixt two shapes; When as I list, in this transform'd disguise, I'll fright the country-people as they pass; And sometimes turn me to some other form, And ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... the magnificence of black velvet and white satin, his queue in a black silk bag, stood beside his lady, who was as brave as himself in a gown of violet brocade over an immense hoop. Poor dame, she would far rather have been at Mount Vernon in homespun, for all this pomp and circumstance bored and isolated her. She hedged herself about with the etiquette which her exalted position demanded, and froze the social aspirant of insufficient pretensions, but her traditions and her propensities were ever at war; she ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... our societies, from the broad-brimmed Society of Friends downwards, have something in them of a homespun, humdrum, plain, flat—not unprofitable, perhaps, but unattractive character. They may be good and useful, but they have no dignity or splendour, and are quite destitute of the strange meteoric power and grandeur which have accompanied the career of Clubs. ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... eyes were rather a wide oval in shape, clear and steady, with shadows of thought in their amber-brown depths. They seemed to look through Jean, and his gaze dropped first. Then it was he saw her ragged homespun skirt and a few inches of brown, bare ankles, strong and round, and crude worn-out moccasins that failed to hide the shapeliness, of her feet. Suddenly she drew back her stockingless ankles and ill-shod little feet. When Jean lifted ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... before the Civil War, Abingdon possessed a Sergeant-at-Mace in the person of Mr. John Richardson, who also appears to have been a poet, as he dedicated what he described as a poem "of harmless and homespun verse to the Mayor, Bayliffs, Burgesses, and others," in which are portrayed the proceedings at the celebration of the peace between the King and the Scots. Early in the morning the inhabitants were roused by "Old Helen's trowling bells," which were answered by the "Low Bells of ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... Quietness without offence; Content in homespun kirtle; True Love; and True Love's Innocence, 15 ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... It was warm and durable, as well as somewhat distinctive and picturesque. Every parish had spinning wheels and handlooms in some of its homes on which the women turned out the heavy druggets or etoffes du pays from which most of the men's clothing was made. A great fabric it was, this homespun, with nothing but wool in it, not attractive in pattern but able to stand no end of wear. It was fashioned for the habitant's use into roomy trousers and a long frock coat reaching to the knees which he tied around his waist with a belt ...
— Crusaders of New France - A Chronicle of the Fleur-de-Lis in the Wilderness - Chronicles of America, Volume 4 • William Bennett Munro
... secret, and began to import the plant to perfume articles of their make, and thus palm off homespun shawls as real Indian! From this origin the perfumers have brought it into use. Patchouly herb is extensively used for scenting drawers in which linen is kept; for this purpose it is best to powder the leaves and put them into muslin sacks, covered with silk, after the manner of the old-fashioned ...
— The Art of Perfumery - And Methods of Obtaining the Odors of Plants • G. W. Septimus Piesse
... Lincoln through literature into politics. The ease with which he drifted from one to the other is also still to be evaluated. Did it show a certain slackness, a certain aimlessness, at the bottom of his nature? Had it, in a way, some sort of analogy—to compare homespun with things Olympian—to the vein of frivolity in the great Caesar? One is tempted to think so. Surely, here was one of those natures which need circumstance to compel them to greatness and which are not foredoomed, Napoleon-like, ...
— Abraham Lincoln and the Union - A Chronicle of the Embattled North, Volume 29 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... amid I'd found a folded bit of Britain, Laid by in lavender and hid The year—let's say—Tom Jones was written; An old farm manor-house it is With fantails fluttering on the gables, A place of men and memories And solid facts and homespun fables. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 29, 1914 • Various
... HOMESPUN AND GOLD, by Alice Brown (The Macmillan Company). Miss Brown's new collection of fifteen short stories, which she has written during the past thirteen years, is not one of her best books, but it is of considerable importance as one more contribution ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... breath more perfumed the air than ordnance would that is charged with amomum, musk, civet and ambergreece." It was surely a mock-modesty which led Nash to fear that such ghost-stories as these would appear to his readers duller than Holland cheese and more tiresome than homespun. To 1594, too, belongs the tragedy of "Dido," probably left incomplete by Marlowe, and finished by Nash, who shows himself here an adept in that swelling bombast of bragging blank verse of which he affected to disapprove. A new edition of "Christ's ...
— The Vnfortunate Traveller, or The Life Of Jack Wilton - With An Essay On The Life And Writings Of Thomas Nash By Edmund Gosse • Thomas Nash
... illustrious munificence in monuments of learning, of art and of charity. As for the restrictions upon domestic industry, they were not severely felt among a people devoted, in the country to agriculture, and in the towns to local traffic and shipping, and the American farmer who wore homespun attire, did not realize the harshness or appreciate the purpose of the statute which prohibited the export of wool, or woolen manufactures. As for the Southern planter, the question of fostering domestic manufactures ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann
... type of the peasant. His features might, in the strong chiaroscuro of the candle-light, have stood as model for some church fresco of a St. Peter. His dress was of grey country homespun, cut in a long coat, and girded by a many-coloured arrow-pattern sash, and on his feet he wore a ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... Premier, plain, homespun gentleman that he is, longed for Friday evening and the Crown Hill farm and the quiet little church in the village, because one week at his desk took more out of him than a month in overalls. And then to relieve ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... agreed to sleep by watches, knowing the sort of people we had to deal with. It was my watch, when voices were heard as of men landing and pulling up a canoe or boat. Presently three men came into the wigwam, railing-men, dressed in gray Canada homespun and heavy Scotch bonnets. The light of the fire outside flashed on their faces, as they stooped to enter the elm-bark tent, and in the foremost I recognized the hideous Rupe Falardeau, Junior. This ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... is about thirty-seven years of age, his hair is light, not a "sable silvered," but a yaller gilded; you can see some of it sticking out of the top of his hat; his costume is the national costume of Arkansas, coat, waistcoat, and pantaloons of homespun cloth, dyed a brownish yellow, with a decoction of the bitter barked butternut—a pleasing alliteration; his countenance presents a determined, combined with a sanctimonious expression, and in his brightly gleaming eye—a red eye we think it is—we ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... is a gentleman in purple and fine linen, otherwise broadcloth; and sometimes in hodden gray, otherwise homespun or slop-shop; and sometimes he cuts the poor little chap with a silver knife, which is rhetoric, and sometimes with a wooden spoon, which is raw-hide. Am I ...
— What Answer? • Anna E. Dickinson
... active, agile, unmuscular race, mostly preserve the old national dress. Some men still wear, and both sexes once wore, the ridiculous carapuca, or funnel-cap with a rat-tail for a tassel. The rest of the toilet consists of homespun cottons, shirts and knickerbockers, with buff shoes or boots broad-soled and heelless. The traveller who prefers walking should always use this chaussure, and the 'little girl in topboots' is ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... which supplied him with light when, an hour before midnight, he silently rose, dressed himself and prepared to leave the hotel. He was not attired in what Mary Ann called his "glad rags" now, but in a dark gray suit of homespun that was nearly the color of the night. The blond wig was carefully locked in a suit case, a small black cap was drawn over his eyes, and thus—completely transformed—Mr. Hopper's guest had no difficulty in gaining the street without a particle of noise betraying ...
— Mary Louise in the Country • L. Frank Baum (AKA Edith Van Dyne)
... very coarse homespun and home-woven cloth, composed of linen and wool, and called linsey-woolsey, very coarse shoes, and sometimes with buckskin gloves of their own manufacture. If any one chanced to have a ring or pretty buckle, it was ...
— David Crockett: His Life and Adventures • John S. C. Abbott
... or two after he uttered his complaint, Robert saw a middle aged man, not remarkable of appearance, talking with Braddock. His dress was homespun and careless, but his large head was beautifully shaped, and his features, though they might have been called homely, shone with the light of an extraordinary intelligence. His manner as he talked to Braddock, ...
— The Shadow of the North - A Story of Old New York and a Lost Campaign • Joseph A. Altsheler
... among the colonists in those days. But the heavy lashes hung low in the slumbrous, dreamy way that sees all and reveals nothing. Instinctively I started up, with wild thoughts thronging to my lips. At the same moment Mr. Sutherland did the most chivalrous thing I have seen in homespun ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... offence; Content in homespun kirtle; True love; and true love's innocence, White blossom of ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... I was not told; but two days later, a little before sundown, I saw a plain, honest-looking man ride slowly up the road in a great pother of dust. He was clad in homespun, with a broad straw hat; wore a patriarchal beard; and had an air of a simple rustic farmer, that was, in my eyes, very reassuring. He was, indeed, a very honest man and pious Mormon; with no liking for his errand, though neither ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... that you need say that to me, Jack! As for respectability, that homespun word hardly applies; we do have lineage here, and in the European sense, even if without the European power. But that's no matter. It's the pressing down on me of this alien standard, whether expressed or not, that stifles ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... pioneers raised some flax, and from the fibre made coarse linen fabrics, supplementing these by skins of wild animals and the hides of cattle. With the introduction of sheep by the British settlers wool became an important product, and homespun garments provided additional clothing for all the members of the family. Seeds of various fruit trees were planted, and by 1830 the products of these seedlings supplemented the wild plums and cherries of the woods and the wild raspberries that sprang up in abundance in ...
— History of Farming in Ontario • C. C. James
... he combated the ungracious feeling which, it seemed, would not down: that he was never to be done with Aunt Anne's deeds, so often demanding, as they did, a reciprocal action from him. What he wanted, he realized grimly, was to have his cake and eat it, if he might use so homespun a simile for a woman who had persistently lived for him and in him and then had made clear spaces about him by going away in the dignity of death. He wanted to breathe in the space she had left, and he also wanted to be spared the indecency ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... impetus was given to everything throughout the South, and especially to education. The ambition for wealth seized upon her people, the high price of cotton favored its accumulation, and with it came new and more extravagant wants, new and more luxurious habits. The plain homespun jean coat gave way to the broad-cloth one; and the neat, Turkey-red striped Sunday frock of the belle yielded to the gaudy red calico one, and there was a sniff of aristocratic contempt in the upturned nose towards those who, from ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... Dalica, so many years Weaned from the bosom of thy native land, Returnest back and seekest true repose. Oh, what more pleasant than the short-breathed sigh When laying down your burden at the gate, And dizzy with long wandering, you embrace The cool and quiet of a homespun bed." "Alas," said Dalica, "though all commend This choice, and many meet with no control, Yet none pursue it! Age by Care oppressed Feels for the couch, and drops into the grave. The tranquil scene lies further still from Youth: Frenzied Ambition and desponding Love Consume Youth's ...
— Gebir • Walter Savage Landor
... and man of business, looking and dressing just as he would at home. Names over the shop doors were for the most part Dutch, as was the appearance of the majority of the white men in the streets. Dutch farmers in broad hats and homespun garments, mounted on rough ponies, clattered along through the streets. The manual work was for the most part done by swarthy natives, while among the crowd were numbers of Malays, with dark olive skins, small eyes, and jet-black hair, their women being ...
— A Final Reckoning - A Tale of Bush Life in Australia • G. A. Henty
... sent from Conway, Mass., contained a pair of socks knit by a lady ninety-seven years old, who declared herself ready and anxious to do all she could. A homespun blanket bore the inscription, "This blanket was carried by Milly Aldrich, who is ninety-three years old, down hill and up hill, one and a-half miles, to be given to ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... man, white-bearded and grey-haired, carrying his hat in his hand as he walked. His rough homespun clothing, his collarless shirt open at the throat, the plaid scarf around his neck, all these Poltavo saw through his powerful glasses and ...
— The Secret House • Edgar Wallace
... a square, ruddy-faced man of sixty, with neatly trimmed, snow-white whiskers. He had on a soft Alpine hat of pearl gray, a modishly cut gray homespun suit, a tie in which glimmered an opal pin, wore tan gloves, and had slung over one shoulder by a narrow black strap a pair ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... oblation and a lock of hair; from which circumstance he conjectured that Orestes had been there. We have then an allusion to the means which Aeschylus had employed to bring about the recognition, namely, the resemblance of the hair, the prints of feet, as well as the homespun-robe, with a condemnation of them as insufficient and absurd. The probability of this part of the drama of Aeschylus may, perhaps, admit of being cleared up, at all events one is ready to overlook it; but an express reference like this to another author's ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... I watched the yard gate with eager eyes. No dragoons appeared, and in a short time madam and Jane were back in the house-place. Jane had done her work well. The great lady was now a fine country serving-wench, her shapeliness obscured in a homespun gown that fitted only where it touched, her feet in huge, rough boots, her yellow hair plastered back off her forehead and bunched into one of Jane's 'granny caps,' and indeed totally hidden by the ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... quietly into the parlor, already shadowed into twilight: a neat, compact little person, dressed in soft gray homespun, with a pale pink bow on her throat, and another in her cap—a pretty little fabric of lace and cambric, which, being now the fashion, her girls had at last condescended to let her wear. She had on a black silk apron, with pockets, into ...
— The Laurel Bush • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... Down came the coach-and-four, and forth from it came Lady Belamour in a magnificent hoop, the first seen in those parts, managing it with a grace that made her an overwhelming spectacle, in contrast with Betty, in her close-fitting dark-grey homespun, plain white muslin apron, cap, kerchief, and ruggles, scrupulously neat and fresh, but unadorned. The visit was graciously designed for "good cousin Harry," but his daughter was obliged, not unwillingly, though quite ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... description of the realities of the world beyond the grave, gives full scope to his vivid imagination in portraying the condition of the lost. It contains some touches of racy humour, especially in the similes, and is written in the nervous homespun English of which he was master. Its popularity is shown by its having gone through nine editions in the author's lifetime. To take an example or two of its style: dealing with the excuses people make for not hearing the Gospel, "O, saith one, I dare not for my master, my brother, my landlord; I shall ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables
... please your boss Or fawn round folks with bankrolls; Be just as friendly to the guys Whose homespun round their shank rolls. The best investment in the world Is goodwill, twenty carat; It costs you nothing, brings returns; So get yours out and air it. A niggard of good nature cheats Himself and ...
— It Can Be Done - Poems of Inspiration • Joseph Morris
... interrogatively the colour faded from her face. The relief of hearing that homespun plan had chilled her blood, and she was faint for an instant with the sickness of hearty youth that only knows it feels odd to itself and concludes the strangeness is of the soul. But she did not answer, for Anne was ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... 'down-along more than up-along 'men like Isaiah Fetch. (The phrase is his own.) And, in any case, I told myself, it was not for the likes of me to keep hired men. And so, when the garden was made, and the other needed work done, I parted with Isaiah—a good, honest, homespun creature, rich in a sort of bovine contentment which often moved me to sincere envy—and was left quite alone in my hermitage, save for the morning visit of perhaps a couple of hours, which the worthy Mrs. Blades undertook to pay for the purpose of tidying my rooms and cooking ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... forced to stop very often to admire my own handicraft. However, I got on so readily that she allowed I could undertake a child's sock. I wanted it to look pretty as well as to be comfortable, and not fancying Mrs. Blake's homespun yarn, I started out to the store to get some better suited ...
— Medoline Selwyn's Work • Mrs. J. J. Colter
... though not to those gay flies Gilded i' the beams of earthly kings, Slippery souls in smiling eyes, But to poor shepherds' homespun things; Whose wealth's their flock, whose wit to be Well read ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow—Book 3 - Christmas Poems from 'round the World • Various
... of young fellows (well guarded) who had drawn unlucky numbers in the last conscription, and were on their way to a famous French garrison town where much of the raw military material is worked up into soldiery. At the station they had been sitting about, in their threadbare homespun blue garments, with their poor little bundles under their arms, covered with dust and clay, and the various soils of France; sad enough at heart, most of them, but putting a good face upon it, and slapping their breasts and singing choruses on the smallest provocation; ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... as compared with great cathedrals, was stamped with the Flemish hall-mark; it had the homespun peasant expression, the cheerful faith of the race. It was a domestic sanctuary, very native to the soil; the folks would hold converse with the Black Virgin standing there on an altar, tell her all their little concerns, make themselves at home ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... press against the wall, and as she spoke, as if by chance, she swung the door open, so that I had a glimpse of the mighty piles of homespun cloth and linen, her pride, which lay therein, Truly she had to ...
— A King's Comrade - A Story of Old Hereford • Charles Whistler
... 1808, Franz in his homespun grey suit, spectacles shielding his bright, near-sighted eyes, his bushy black hair covered by an old fashioned hat, presented himself for examination by the Court Capellmeister and the singing master. The other boys ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... which had but one length of pipe, out of which the smoke was pouring towards an opening in the roof, glancing around on the women in their sun bonnets, the babies in their little calico caps and the men in homespun, then out of the open door into a ravine where the tops of the tall trees were beneath us, I said to myself, I've reached "that beyond." The undefined has taken shape and I have reached the place of which I could never formulate ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 1, January, 1889 • Various
... subdued by the novelty of his surroundings,—the hillocky, sloping pastures, and the shadowy solemnity of the forest. Moreover, he perceived, in his dim way, a kind of mastery in this heavy-booted, homespun-clad, tobacco-chewing, grave-eyed man from the backwoods, and for a long time he felt none of his usual pugnacity. But by and by the craving for freedom began to stir in his breast, and the blood of his hill-roving ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... the matter. Elnathan, then about fifteen, was, much like a wild colt, caught and trimmed by clipping his bushy locks; dressed in a suit of homespun, dyed in the butternut bark; furnished with a New Testament and a Websters Spelling Book, and sent to school. As the boy was by nature quite shrewd enough, and had previously, at odd times, laid the foundations of reading, writing, and arithmetic, he was soon conspicuous in ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... kept locked. He had heard her there at night sometimes, for he slept above it, and once or twice had seen the door open in the daytime, and looked in. It held, he saw, better furniture than the rest of the house: a homespun carpet of soft, grave colors, thick drab curtains, a bedstead, one or two bookcases, filled and locked, of which Jane made as little use, he was sure, as she could of the fowling-piece and patent fishing-rod which he saw in one corner. There were no shams, no cheap makeshifts in the Quaker's ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... candles, kill his own hogs and sheep, attend to his horses and his oxen, and "bring in firing at requiring," and abstains from whiskey, it signifies very little whether he is gentle or simple, an honourable or a homespun, he will get on. Life in the Bush is, however, no joke, not even a practical one. It involves serious results, with an absence of cultivated manners and matters, toil, hardship, and the effects of seasoning, ...
— Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 2 • Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... plenty of reindeer. The ladies, therefore, were very anxious to display these powerful attractions to the greatest advantage; and the best rooms in the house, instead of being adorned with caricatures of Dame Nature, in water-colors and needlework, were always hung round with abundance of homespun garments, the manufacture and the property of the females; a piece of laudable ostentation that still prevails among the heiresses of our ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... swung wide on its hinges and Gila entered, trig and chic as usual, in a stylish little coat-suit of homespun, leather-trimmed and short-skirted, high boots, leather leggings, and a jaunty little leather cap with a bridle under her chin. Only her petite figure and her baby face saved her from being taken for a tough young sport. She swaggered in, chewing gum, her gauntleted ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... old-fashioned frame building, square as a packing-box, and surrounded, as all country dwellings at the South are, by a broad, open piazza. Our summons was answered by its owner, a well-to-do, substantial, middle-aged planter, wearing the ordinary homespun of the district, but evidently of a station in life much above the common 'corn-crackers' I had seen at the country meeting-house. The Colonel was an acquaintance, and greeting us with great cordiality, our ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... of one of the "homespun actors" in "Midsummer Night's Dream," and is no doubt there used as a ludicrous name. The name was anciently ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... left behind him a firm road on which public confidence could follow; he took America with him where he went; what he gained he occupied, and his advanced posts became colonies. The very homeliness of his genius was its distinction. His kingship was conspicuous by its workday homespun. Never was ruler so absolute as he, nor so little conscious of it; for he was the incarnate common-sense of the people. With all that tenderness of nature whose sweet sadness touched whoever saw him with something of its own pathos, there was no trace ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... the door where they could survey the village, unseen by the brown people who now swarmed the hard-packed clearing. They were a squat race. The men, G-stringed, displayed the same powerful physique that had marked the warrior who had conducted the Major, the women were clad in a single width of homespun cotton which draped from waist to knee and passed up over breast and back to knot at the right shoulder. Men, women and children were all long haired, and marked alike with broad, high cheek-boned faces flattened across the ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... coarseness of grain, dry goods. silk, satin; muslin, burlap. [Science of textures] histology. Adj. structural, organic; anatomic, anatomical. textural, textile; fine grained, coarse grained; fine, delicate, subtile, gossamery, filmy, silky, satiny; coarse; homespun. rough, gritty; smooth. smooth as silk, smooth ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... tol'able good to de slaves. We has clothes made of homespun what de nigger women weaved, and de little boys wo' long-tail shirts, with no pants till they's grown. Massa raised sheep and dey make us wool clothes for winter, but we has ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves. - Texas Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... fled so fast away! 440 Such my pursuits, and such my joys of yore, Such were my mates, but now my mates no more. Placed out of Envy's walk, (for Envy, sure, Would never haunt the cottage of the poor, Would never stoop to wound my homespun lays) With some few friends, and some small share of praise, Beneath oppression, undisturb'd by strife, In peace I trod the humble vale of life. Farewell, these scenes of ease, this tranquil state; Welcome the troubles which on ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... 'bout two miles from Eatonton, Georgia. My Ma and Pa was 'Melia and Iaaac Little and, far as I knows, dey was borned and bred in dat same county. Pa, he was sold away from Ma when I was still a baby. Ma's job was to weave all de cloth for de white folks. I have wore many a dress made out of de homespun what she wove. Dere was 17 of us chillun, and I can't 'member de names of but two of 'em now—dey was John and Sarah. John was Ma's onliest son; all de rest of de other 16 ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume IV, Georgia Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration
... of white plaster, used to close up the cracks and keep the warmth within the room. The floors were made of oak and were white and clean. Several old-fashioned split-bottom chairs graced the room, a long table was placed in the center, upon which was spread a snow-white linen cloth of homespun, and woven by the women. While the wraps were being removed the women had placed upon the table the best that could be prepared for the pastor's welcome. I'll never forget the delicious roast chicken; baked sweet potatoes, baked in the ashes, for ...
— Sixty Years of California Song • Margaret Blake-Alverson
... its mingling of the splendid and the squalid, its French and French-Canadians, its soldiers and priests and civilians and Indians, its great stone houses, and its wooden huts, its young officers in fine white uniforms and its swarthy habitants in brown homespun. Albany had its Dutch, and New York had its Dutch, too, and people from many parts of Europe, but Quebec was different, something altogether new, without a trace of English or Dutch about it, and, for that reason, it made a ...
— The Hunters of the Hills • Joseph Altsheler
... to gather into Boston. Tan, lanky, awkward fellows came in squads, and companies, and regiments, swaggering along, dressed in their brown homespun clothes and blue yarn stockings. They stooped as if they still had hold of the plough-handles, and marched without any time or tune. Hither they came, from the cornfields, from the clearing in the forest, from the blacksmith's forge, from the carpenter's workshop, and from the ...
— Grandfather's Chair • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... is the flight of the "burly, dozing bumblebee," beside this quick intelligence! Our knight of the ruby throat, with lance in rest, makes wild and rapid sallies on this "little mundane bird,"—this bumblebee,—this rolling sailor, never off his sea-legs, always spinning his long homespun yarns. This rich bed of golden and crimson flowers is a handsome field of tournament. What invisible circle sits ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... I calls a one-button cutaway. It was jis' a shirt make out of homespun with pleats down front. Dey make dey ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Texas Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration
... you're pining for frills, eh? Well, if it will make you feel more comfortable, we'll go down to Stewart's and get fitted out to your satisfaction. But don't forget that you can be a gentleman in homespun as well as broadcloth, Dick. Real diamonds don't need to borrow any luster from their setting; ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black
... equally novel. Such a check on reckless criticism was sadly needed. Of the process by which Thomson achieved his ends even his fullest biography gives little information. There must have been endless conferences of homespun, honest farmers like Willson, men of breeding like {42} Robinson, brilliant lawyers like Sullivan, plain soldiers like MacNab, with the little, sickly, understanding governor of the brilliant eyes, the charming manner, and the persuasive ...
— The Winning of Popular Government - A Chronicle of the Union of 1841 • Archibald Macmechan
... never have guessed that her name was Idyl—the slender, angular little girl of thirteen years who stood in her faded gown of checkered homespun on the brow of the Mississippi River. And fancy a saint balancing a bucket of water on ...
— Solomon Crow's Christmas Pockets and Other Tales • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... A girl in a homespun gown and a blue sunbonnet came up the road and unlatched the little gate. She had upon her arm a small basket such as the mountain folk weave. "Good-mahnin', Mrs. Cole. Good-mahnin', Mr. Cole. It cert'ny is fine weather the ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... She wore a brown homespun dress—that is to say, the materials had been woven by the deft fingers of her mother, with the aid of the old spinning wheel, which in those days formed a part of every household. The dark stockings were knitted by the same busy fingers, with ...
— The Daughter of the Chieftain - The Story of an Indian Girl • Edward S. Ellis
... rehearsed a scene in which she would be called upon to soothe a stricken woman and speak comfort to a breaking heart. She had supposed that love was the same the world over, whether it went in silk brocade or coarse homespun. She had apt phrases ready to meet the expected, plenty of well-prepared sympathy to bestow, but she had no answer for this quiet, deliberate manner, and ...
— The Brown Mask • Percy J. Brebner
... down from the hills he already felt very hungry, his fingers tenderly fondling the slices of oaten bread he had put away in the pocket of his grey homespun coat. But he checked the impulse to eat, the long jaw of his swarthy face set, his strong teeth tight together awaiting the right hour to play their eager part. If he ate all the oaten bread now—splendid, dry, hard stuff, made of oat meal and water, baked ...
— Waysiders • Seumas O'Kelly
... two to four street costumes, a fur coat, another long coat, a dozen hats and from four to ten house dresses. In this day of week-ends in the country, no trousseau, no matter how town-bred the bride, is complete without one or two "country" coats, of fur, leather or woolen materials; several homespun, tweed or tricot suits or dresses; skirts with shirt-waists and sweaters in endless variety; low or flat heeled shoes; woolen or woolen and silk mixture ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... her baskets one in the other, and stowed them away in the cart. She had sold everything but a few bundles of beans, and was well content. So she trudged off to buy some yarn and some homespun tweed where she could get the ...
— Little Folks (November 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... Dalgas was prophet, prince, and friend of the people. In the crowds that flocked about his bier homespun elbowed gold lace in the grief of a common loss. Boughs of the fragrant spruce decked his coffin, the gift of the heath to the memory of him who set ...
— Hero Tales of the Far North • Jacob A. Riis
... good-looking boy— there's no denying it!—and yet I liked him; he looked very sensible and straightforward, and there was a vigorous ring in his voice. He had nothing to boast of in his attire; it consisted simply of a homespun shirt and patched trousers. The face of the third, Ilyusha, was rather uninteresting; it was a long face, with short-sighted eyes and a hook nose; it expressed a kind of dull, fretful uneasiness; his tightly- drawn lips seemed ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Works of Ivan Turgenev, Vol. I • Ivan Turgenev
... hills around the river. A hot, rustic station of two or three rooms, an abandoned factory building—tall, empty-windowed and haunted-looking—gone clean out for want of commerce, like a lamp for lack of oil. Opposite the station a pretty homespun tavern trellised with grapes, a portrait of General Lee in the sitting-room, and a fat, buxom Virginia matron for hostess. All this quiet scene was once the locality of the hot hopes and anxieties of genius, and it is for this ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... seein my mammy wear shoes. Even in de winter she go barefoot, an I reckon cold didn't hurt her feet no moran her hands an face. We all wore dresses made o' homespun. De thread was spun an de cloth wove right in our own home. My mamy an granmamy an me done it ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Florida Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... other color shows black and prominent against the spotless background of glittering ice-field and snow-covered cliffs. Risk and his partner wore over their ordinary clothing long frocks of white flannel, with white "havelocks" over their seal-skin caps, and their gray, homespun pants were covered to the knee by seal-skin Esquimaux boots—the best of all water-proof walking-gear for cold weather. Risk carried the single ducking-piece before mentioned, but Davies had a Blissett breech-loading ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... plantation 'cept cotton. Nary a stalk of cotton was growed dar, but jus' de same our clothes was made out of cloth dat Mistess and my mammy wove out of thread us chillun spun, and Mistess tuk a heap of pains makin' up our dresses. Durin' de war evvybody had to wear homespun, but dere didn't nobody have no better or prettier dresses den ours, 'cause Mistess knowed more'n anybody 'bout dyein' cloth. When time come to make up a batch of clothes Mistess would say, 'Ca'line holp me git up my things for dyein',' and us would fetch dogwood bark, sumach, ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 3 • Works Projects Administration
... not poverty that drives them to the great cities or across the seas, for many peasant families, I was told, have a fortune of at least 40,000 francs. The lads go forth pricked with the spirit of adventure and the desire to rise in life, and leave their homespun elders grumbling and wondering over the event. Once, at a village called Laussonne, I met one of these disappointed parents: a drake who had fathered a wild swan and seen it take wing and disappear. The wild swan in question was now an apothecary in Brazil. He ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of Plymouth,—gentle, shy, and sweet; Primly, trimly tripping down the queer old street; Homespun frock and apron, clumsy buckled shoe; Skirts that reach your ankles, just as Mother's do; Bonnet closely clinging over braid and curl; Modest ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... He was wearing now a very old blue flannel blazer, no hat, and a pair of knickerbockers, not tweed breeches but tweed knickerbockers of a remarkable bagginess, and made of one of those virtuous socialistic homespun tweeds that drag out into woolly knots and strings wherever there is attrition. His stockings were worsted and wrinkled, and on his feet were those extraordinary slippers of bright-coloured bast-like interwoven material one ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... these were narrow and edged with lace. "Petty coats" are mentioned in wills among the garments of the women. We would not assume that in 1621-2 all the women in Plymouth colony wore silken or even homespun clothes of prevailing English fashion. Many of these that are mentioned in inventories and retained heirlooms, with rich laces and embroideries, were brought later from England; probably Winslow, Allerton ...
— The Women Who Came in the Mayflower • Annie Russell Marble
... and crumpled horns thrust over the sassafras bushes, or to hear the brindle's clanking bell. It was certainly less unexpected to Cynthia when a young mountaineer, clad in brown jean trousers and a checked homespun shirt, emerged upon the rocky slope. He still wore his blacksmith's leather apron, and his powerful corded hammer-arm was bare beneath his tightly-rolled sleeve. He was tall and heavily built; his sunburned face was square, with a strong lower jaw, and his features were accented ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... Europe in the Middle Ages. The badge in Japan was a spirally twisted pyramidal cap of linen, about a foot and a half high. The materials of which clothing were made varied from rich Chinese brocade to coarse homespun, but, in general, the use of brocade was forbidden except to persons who had received it as a gift from the Court in Kyoto or Kamakura. Historical mention is first made of badges during the war of the Minamoto and the Taira. Their use was originally ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... and I were left to tell secrets. When he was sure we were alone he took from his trunk a long, flat box. Inside was the most wonderful shirt I have ever seen; it looked like a cross between a nightshirt and a shirt-waist. It was of homespun linen. The bosom was ruffled and tucked, all done by hand,—such tiny stitches, such patience and skill. Then he handed me an old daguerreotype. I unfastened the little golden hook and inside was a face ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... you're an angel in homespun. Without you we could never do what we want to do. Lead the way to that blessed creek. We don't want any of the Yankee vanguard to see us when we turn ...
— The Star of Gettysburg - A Story of Southern High Tide • Joseph A. Altsheler
... from the branch of a tree. It can hardly be told whether it is a joy or a pain, after such a momentary vision, to gaze around in the broad daylight of reality and see stone fences, white houses, potato-fields, and men doggedly hoeing in their shirt-sleeves and homespun pantaloons. But this is nonsense. The Old Manse is better than a ...
— The Old Manse (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Ronsard and his Pleiad. Lyly failed in prose, where Ronsard succeeded in poetry, because he endeavoured to go back upon tradition, while the Frenchman worked strictly within its limits. The attempt to throw Court dress over the plain homespun of our English prose might have been attended with success, had our literature been younger and more easily led astray. As it was, prose in this country, when euphuism invaded it, could already show seven centuries of development, ...
— John Lyly • John Dover Wilson
... come to him. Through the partition he could hear the clear, sonorous voice of Reine singing her father to sleep with one of the popular ballads of the country, and while turning and twisting in the homespun linen sheets, scented with orrisroot, he could not help thinking of this young girl, so original in her ways, whose grace, energy, and frankness fascinated and shocked him at the same time. At last he dozed off; and when the morning stir awoke him, the sun was up and struggling through ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... so is the harness; the home-spun cloth of his suit is made by his wife from the wool of his own sheep: it is an excellent fabric but, alas, the young people now prefer the machine-made cottons and cloths of commerce and will no longer wear homespun. Sometimes the habitant makes his own boots, the excellent bottes sauvages of the country. The women make not only home-spun cloth, but linen, straw hats, gloves, candles, soap. When there are maple trees, the habitant provides his own sugar; he makes even the buckets ...
— A Canadian Manor and Its Seigneurs - The Story of a Hundred Years, 1761-1861 • George M. Wrong
... the house chatted with me they knitted away at socks and stockings, in coarse, bright-coloured wool. Such articles are never bought, the home-made substitute being much more economical in the end. As an instance of the solid comfort of these apparently frugal folks, let me mention their homespun linen sheets. My hostess showed me some coarse bed-linen lately woven for her in the village. Calico sheets, she said, were much cheaper, but she preferred this durable home-spun even at three times the ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... fancy interweaves its threads of gold With the plain and homespun present, and a ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... women of the frontier was suited to the plainness of the habitations where they lived and the furniture they used. Homespun, linsey-woolsey and buckskin were the primitive materials out of which their everyday dresses were made, and only on occasions of social festivity were they seen in braver robes. Rings, broaches, buckles, and ruffles were heir-looms from parents ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... afraid I can't pay you that money. But you know that big flock of sheep down in the back pasture? Well, tell you what we'll do. Over at Beaverton I've got an uncle who's a tailor. I can give you a suit of full cloth of homespun and call it square," and though the boy wanted the money for fifty things he had to take ...
— Deep Furrows • Hopkins Moorhouse
... her fire, And drew the oaken settle nigher, And welcom'd home her own good man To his clean hearth, his pipe, and can; For Homespun and his bustling wife Were honest folks in humble life, Who liv'd contented with their lot, And lov'd the comforts of their cot. With willing hand and chearful heart, Each of life's burden bore their part, With patience all its ills withstood, ...
— Think Before You Speak - The Three Wishes • Catherine Dorset
... morning the news of the capture had spread to the farthest limits of the county. A much larger number of people than usual came to town that Saturday,—bearded men in straw hats and blue homespun shirts, and butternut trousers of great amplitude of material and vagueness of outline; women in homespun frocks and slat-bonnets, with faces as expressionless as the dreary sandhills which gave them ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... other children who generation after generation had come to live in this Quaker dwelling, he was brought up in simple, useful ways, and was early given his full share of the duties about the farm. No matter how sharply the cold of the harsh New England winter pierced his homespun clothes, the snow must be shoveled from the paths, firewood must be brought, the stalls in the barn must be littered, and, worst task of all for him, seven cows must be milked. Yet there was plenty of fun to be had, too. When the snow fell so heavily that it blocked all ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... the pride of the chamber—a four-post, mahogany bedstead with white, dimity curtains, and with a full, high, feather bed and bolsters and pillows heaped up, and covered—the bed with a homemade, blue-and-white counterpane, and the bolster and pillows by cases of homespun white linen. ...
— Her Mother's Secret • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... forestalled our ancestor the troglodyte, who borrowed the fur-coat of his contemporary the Cave-bear. We had not got beyond the fig-leaf, when the Crioceris already excelled in the manufacture of homespun, both providing the raw material ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... in the same way as modern sewing machines are made for hand or treadle, and sometimes a combination of both methods. The very general use of the spinning wheel is accounted for by the fact that this useful machine was met with in every cottage in the days when homespun yarns and wools were prepared by hand, and they were also found in the mansion and the palace, where they served to amuse the ladies ...
— Chats on Household Curios • Fred W. Burgess
... chest, where a man's strength needs lie, big-shouldered, long-armed, but scrawny and crooked in the legs and of an inconfident, stumbling gait, prone to halt, musing vacantly as he went. He was bravely clad upon his courtship: a suit of homespun from the Quick as Wink, given in fair dealing, as to quality, by Tumm, the clerk, but with reservations as to fit—everywhere (it seemed) unequal to its task, in particular at the wrists and lean shanks. His visage was in the main of a gravely ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan
... in the room was also hand wrought, as were the fiber rugs on the floor and the checked homespun blankets on the beds. There was a harmonious and pleasing effect; the rooms were cheerful, abounding in evidences of Indian handicraft. Beadwork and embroidery of dyed porcupine quills were prevalent, even the tester which roofed the four-post bedstead was ornamented ...
— The Black Wolf Pack • Dan Beard
... called, who lived as Elijah did, whose temper was very much the temper of Elijah, in whose exalted narrowness of devotion, all that was stern, dark, foreboding—the very brood of the forest's innermost heart—had found a voice. Their religion was ecstasy in homespun, a glory of violent singing, the release of a frantic emotion, formless but immeasurable, which at all other times, in the severity of the forest routine, gave no sign of ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... mother, with her seven young children, her little farm, and two or three slaves, could do no more for him. Next, we see him a tall, awkward, slender stripling of thirteen, still barefoot, clad in homespun butternut of his mother's making, tilling her fields, and going to mill with his bag of corn strapped upon the family pony. At fourteen, in the year 1791, a place was found for him in a Richmond drug-store, where he served as errand-boy and ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... tenants and others, and brought both the law and the strong hand on them, and made them all villeins in deed as they are now in name; for now these rascals make more than their bellies need of bread, and their backs of homespun, and the overplus they keep to themselves; and we are more worthy of it than they. So let us get the collar on their necks again, and make their day's work longer and their bever-time shorter, as the good statute of the old king bade. And good it were if the Holy Church ...
— A Dream of John Ball, A King's Lesson • William Morris
... she In innocence and homespun vestments spread, Than if cerulean sapphires at her ears Shone pendent, or a precious diamond cross Heaved gently on ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... on benches, were homespun-clad mountain children. A high-shouldered, elderly man sat at a table near the deep fireplace, where a huge backlog was smouldering. Through the cobwebbed ...
— The Young Mountaineers - Short Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... my own age, or perhaps a little younger, and from her garb it was plain that she belonged to the peasant class. She wore a spotless bodice of white linen, which but indifferently concealed the ripening swell of her young breast. Her petticoat, of dark red homespun, stopped short above her bare brown ankles, and her little feet were naked. Her brown hair, long and abundant, was still fastened at the nape of her slim neck, but fell loose beyond that, having been disturbed, no doubt, in her scuffle with Rinolfo. Her little mouth was deeply red and ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... he might well be confident in it. His is a homespun style, not a manufactured one; and what a difference is there between its homeliness, and the flippant vulgarity of the Roger L'Estrange and Tom Brown school! If it is not a well of English undefiled to which the poet as well as the philologist must repair, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XVII. No. 469. Saturday January 1, 1831 • Various
... if this eternal Crabbe is relished in America (I am not looking to my Edition, which would be a hopeless loss anywhere): he certainly is little read in his own Country. And I fancy America likes more abstract matter than Crabbe's homespun. ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes - Vol. II • Edward FitzGerald
... is after all a strange thing for him to go about in the churchyard with such a decoration on—in the place where we see what we are all coming to, whether in our lifetime we have worn clothes of silk or of homespun. It annoyed me to see him wear it in the church—a thing of that kind ought to be taken off when one goes to church, and ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... disappointed. To see get out of the train merely a tall man with a usual straw hat, and Scotch homespun suit of a rather better cut than most in Bennington—this was dull. And his conversation—when he indulged in any—seemed fit to come ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... that her sympathetic color came and went more with her own spirits than yours. But you and I are not in love with her, dear madam, and Mr. Oakhurst is. And, even in the folds of her Parisian gown, I am afraid this poor fellow saw the same subtle strokes of purity that he had seen in her homespun robe. And then there was the delightful revelation that she could walk, and that she had dear little feet of her own in the tiniest slippers of her French shoemaker, with such preposterous blue bows, and Chappell's own stamp—Rue de something ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... was fairly started on my travels—in a customary suit of plain gray homespun, with worsted hose, knit for me by Mistress Pennyquick, a pair of stout shoes, a round hat, and a stout staff in my hand. I carried a few extra garments in a knapsack strapped to my back, and my few guineas were safely stowed in a ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... time helping her. It became the order of the day for them to have a cup of tea about four o'clock. Piney would take a candle-stand by the west window and make it look so inviting with a little strip of homespun linen and a spray of flowering almond that no one could resist tea from the old blue ware which ...
— Kit of Greenacre Farm • Izola Forrester
... order, and watered the Tivoli, all for fifty francs a year. He was always without a jacket, except on grand occasions; usually his sole garments were a pair of blue linen trousers, heavy shoes, and a striped velvet waistcoat, over which he wore an apron of homespun linen when at work in the cafe or billiard-room. This apron, with strings, was the badge of his functions. The fellow had been hired by Socquard at the last annual fair; for in this valley, as throughout Burgundy, servants are ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... climbed the Lowari Pass among the fir trees and the pines, and on the very summit he met three men clothed in brown homespun with their hair clubbed at the sides of their heads. Each man carried a rifle on his back and two of them carried swords besides, and they wore sandals of grass upon their feet. They were talking as they went, and they were talking ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason
... the words "St. Knud's Fair," and it would rise before him in the brightest colors, lighted by the beams of childish fancy.... Somewhere near the middle of the town, five streets meet and make a little square.... There the town crier, in striped homespun, with a yellow bandoleer, beat his drum and proclaimed from a scroll the splendid things to be seen ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... lady. Then when he had risen she gave him down the armour piece by piece, dusting each with her kerchief with a sort of reverent action, as one might touch the face of the dead. In Sholto's hands it proved indeed light almost as woven cloth of homespun from Dame Barbara's loom, and flexible as the spun silk of Lyons which the great wear next ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... Democrats came together to the great Convention, and with them came Satan also. Bands of ill-favored men, in bushy hair, bad whiskey, and seedy homespun, staggered from the railway-stations, and hung about the street-corners. A reader of Dante or Swedenborg would have taken them for delegates from the lower regions, had not their clothing been plainly perishable, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... not a Christian. I had rather be the humblest German peasant that ever lived, sitting in his cottage, vine clad, from which the grapes hang, made purple by the kiss of the sun as the day dies out of the sky, shod with wooden shoes, clad in homespun, at peace with the world, his family about him, with never a thought of God—I say the truth I had rather be such a peasant than any Christian that I have ever known." And when he said it the people cheered him. It was, however, but the trick of an orator. Let us change the sentences and ...
— And Judas Iscariot - Together with other evangelistic addresses • J. Wilbur Chapman
... under her arm, knitting swiftly, even while her eyes followed lovingly the little figure skipping along the lavender road. The soft blue light touched her silver hair and her white apron and turned the gray homespun dress into a royal robe of purple worthy of the owner's wearing. The little figure danced out of sight behind a clump of cedars and the woman turned from the doorway with a tender smile that ended in ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... a very dear wife to me, but she was taken away from us when the child was young, and the child became precious as the apple of my eye to me, for she was all I had left to love. For her sake entirely I married as second wife a homespun woman who had been kind as a mother to her. In due time the question of her education came on, and I said, 'I will educate the maid well, if I live upon bread to do it.' Of her possible marriage I could not bear to ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... Rousing wood fires gave both warmth and light on winter nights. Pork, poultry, beef, and all the ordinary vegetables and grains were plentiful. Cider was the men's common drink, and used at meals. The clothes were mainly homespun. Journeys were made by both men and women on horseback. Both sexes labor'd with their own hands-the men on the farm—the women in the house and around it. Books were scarce. The annual copy of the almanac was ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... failing in some ladylike requirements, as the storekeeper's wife had indicated, and also came to visit her new neighbour in a homespun suit, the very antipodes of Mrs. Zack's attire of many colours, yet her loud cheery voice and sensible face—with a possible friendship in it—were exceedingly pleasing, in contrast with the first visitor's nasal twang and 'smart' demeanour. ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... no one knew where he was, for beneath the battered white felt and homespun clothes of a river boatman no one ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall
... glimmer of dawn they were on the march again, passing all day through the desolate flat country, where the women ran weeping to the doorways, and waved empty hands as they went by. Once a girl in a homespun dress, with a spray of apple blossoms in her black hair, brought out a wooden bucket filled with buttermilk and passed it along ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... are the three simple homespun tales. I believe they are true to life as I see it. I only wish my readers might hear the ripple of the Maine river running through them; breathe the fragrance of New England for-ests, and though never for a moment getting, through ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... might he seen wending from the woods, in every direction of the compass, flaxen-headed boys and girls, clad in homespun, brushing away the early dews, as they hied to the place, where the Hibernian, clothed in his brief authority, sometimes perpetrated applications of birch without rhyme or reason; but much oftener allowed his authority to be trampled upon, according as the ...
— The First White Man of the West • Timothy Flint
... Many openings under the eaves gaped windowless; but the congregation, sheltered from a July sun, enjoyed freely the lake air, bringing fragrance from their own fields and gardens. They seemed a bovine, honest people, in homespun and hickory; and youth, bright-eyed and fresh-cheeked, was not lacking. They sat on benches arranged in circles around a central platform which held the Prophet's chair and table. This was his simple plan for making ...
— The King Of Beaver, and Beaver Lights - From "Mackinac And Lake Stories", 1899 • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... up some steep stairs, leading from the kitchen to an unfinished room under the rafters. Here everything again was as neat as wax, but how desolate! An unpainted bedstead of pine wood, holding a round feather-bed covered with a blue-and-white homespun bed-quilt; a strip of rag carpet on a floor grown beautiful from the care bestowed upon it; a small table covered with a homespun linen towel, a Bible in exactly the middle of it; two old yellow chairs, and not ...
— Miss Ashton's New Pupil - A School Girl's Story • Mrs. S. S. Robbins
... beard, leathery, sun-tanned face and hooked nose, clasped the bars with both hands, gazing at us intently. I recognized his kind the moment I looked at him. He was like my Jonathan Gordon, my old fisherman who lived up in the Franconia Notch. His coarse, homespun clothes, dyed brown with walnut-shells, slouch hat crowning his shock of gray hair, and hickory shirt open at the throat, only heightened the resemblance; especially the hat canted over one eye. Why he wore the hat in ...
— The Underdog • F. Hopkinson Smith
... Halfman's mind, resemble nothing in the world so much as a boar's head on an ale-house sign. Yet the fellow stood his ground sturdily enough, and stared at Brilliana with no sense of distress at his dirty homespun or his dirty hands. ...
— The Lady of Loyalty House - A Novel • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... spittoons, filled with sea-shells instead of sand, on the floor; with the bare stone walls and the bare wooden floor, and the three patchwork rugs that were of yore its sole adornment—poor man's patchwork, the like of it unknown in cities, woven with homespun, and Sunday black, and sea-cloth polished on the bench of rowing. The room, like the house, had been a sort of wonder in that country-side, it was so neat and habitable; and to see it now, shamed by these incongruous additions, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... know not, but the door was opened wide, And the King's name a voice long silent cried, And Phoebus on the very threshold trod, And yet in nothing liker to a god Than when he ruled Admetus' herds, for he Still wore the homespun coat men used to see Among the heifers in the summer morn, And round about him hung the herdsman's horn, And in his hand he bore the herdsman's spear And cornel bow, the prowling dog-wolfs fear, ...
— The Earthly Paradise - A Poem • William Morris
... screech to disturb sleepers and frighten babies. The simplest of simple beds—in most cases merely a few boards with a straw mattress placed thereon—the straw sandal on the foot, wooden chopsticks in place of knives and forks, the small variety of foods and of cooking utensils, the simple homespun cotton clothing—much of this finds favor in the eye of the English traveler. The Chinese, of all Orientals, teach us how to live without furniture, without impedimenta, with the least possible ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... housewife trimm'd her fire, And drew the oaken settle nigher, And welcom'd home her own good man To his clean hearth, his pipe, and can; For Homespun and his bustling wife Were honest folks in humble life, Who liv'd contented with their lot, And lov'd the comforts of their cot. With willing hand and chearful heart, Each of life's burden bore their part, With patience all its ills withstood, ...
— Think Before You Speak - The Three Wishes • Catherine Dorset
... forms of social service are carried on,—district nursing, classes in sanitation and hygiene, social clubs and entertainments for people of all ages, and a department of fireside industries, through which is created an outside market for the beautiful coverlets, blankets and homespun, woven by the mountain women, as well as for ...
— Sight to the Blind • Lucy Furman
... you and I are not in love with her, dear madam, and Mr. Oakhurst is. And, even in the folds of her Parisian gown, I am afraid this poor fellow saw the same subtle strokes of purity that he had seen in her homespun robe. And then there was the delightful revelation that she could walk, and that she had dear little feet of her own in the tiniest slippers of her French shoemaker, with such preposterous blue bows, and Chappell's own stamp—Rue de ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... dining-room to partake of the annual feast for which the housewives have long been preparing. The table is usually tastefully and often elaborately trimmed with flowers and green leaves. The corners of the long snow-white homespun cloth are caught up into rosettes surrounded with long calla or other leaves; possibly the entire edge of the table is bedecked with leaves and flowers. The butter is moulded into a huge yellow rose resting on bright green leaves, ...
— Yule-Tide in Many Lands • Mary P. Pringle and Clara A. Urann
... wasn't much of an editor, even as editors go. The one useful quality he had was a homespun, ingratiating air which put nervous young geniuses at their ease, so that they could give a reasonably coherent verbal picture of what their books were about. This often saved Stein, Fine & Bryans a lot of reading ...
— Stairway to the Stars • Larry Shaw
... postmaster. The long-legged youth who carried the mail tarried an hour to talk, for there was no hurry; and in a little while the male population of the village had assembled to help. As a general thing, they were dressed in homespun "jeans," blue or yellow—here were no other varieties of it; all wore one suspender and sometimes two—yarn ones knitted at home,—some wore vests, but few wore coats. Such coats and vests as did appear, however, were rather picturesque than otherwise, for they were made of tolerably fanciful ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 1. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... toward evening that Ichabod arrived at the castle of the Heer Van Tassel, which he found thronged with the pride and flower of the adjacent country. Old farmers, a spare leathern-faced race, in homespun coats and breeches, blue stockings, huge shoes, and magnificent pewter buckles. Their brisk, withered little dames, in close crimped caps, long waisted short-gowns, homespun petticoats, with scissors and pincushions, and gay calico pockets hanging on the outside. Buxom lasses, almost as antiquated ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... now, he was interested. She was not tall, but her lithe slenderness gave her the appearance of tallness. Her hands, rough-nailed and sunburnt, were small and shapely; the bare foot in the wooden shoe might have worn without trouble Cinderella's magic slipper. Her clothes, coarse and homespun, were clean and variously mended. Her hair, in a thick braid, was the tone of the heart of a chestnut-bur, and her eyes were of that mystifying hazel, sometimes brown, sometimes gray, according to whether the sky was clear or overcast. And there was something above and beyond all ...
— The Goose Girl • Harold MacGrath
... blue coats the next," said an old woman clad in homespun grey, who came out of a low frame house as the troops slowly made their way past the teams through the ...
— Red-Tape and Pigeon-Hole Generals - As Seen From the Ranks During a Campaign in the Army of the Potomac • William H. Armstrong
... less in the rise and fall of princes than in the homely loyalty of shopkeepers and the sturdy gallantry of their apprentices. The lively, easy, honest improvisation of the opening scenes has a certain value in its very crudity and simplicity: the homespun rhetoric and the jog-trot jingle are signs at once of the date and of the class to which these plays must be referred. The parts of the rebels are rough-hewn rather than vigorous; the comic or burlesque part of Josselin is very cheap and flimsy farce. The peculiar ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... places like this is preserved the greater part of what we have left of the hard shrewd sense and the simpler manner of those homespun old worthies who planted the seed of the Republic. In our great cities we are cosmopolitans; but here we are Americans of the primitive type, or as nearly as may be. It was unimportant settlements like the one we are describing that sent their quota of stout ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... strong. His dress is homely but neat. Being a thorough-going Protectionist, he has no fancy for the gewgaws of foreign importation, and makes it a point to appear always in the village church, and on all great occasions, in a sober suit of homespun. He has no pride of appearance, and he needs none. He is known as the Squire throughout the township; and no important measure can pass the board of selectmen without the Squire's approval;—and this from no blind subserviency to his opinion,—because his farm is large, and he is reckoned ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... of 'A Lover in Homespun,' we are impressed with the fact that the author cannot only 'photograph' pictures but 'paint them'; all the characters live, breathe, act, feel and speak naturally. Mr. Smith gives individuality and charm to the personages of his stories, without involving any sacrifice ...
— A Lover in Homespun - And Other Stories • F. Clifford Smith
... government, should assume the responsibility of forming a cabinet, was equally novel. Such a check on reckless criticism was sadly needed. Of the process by which Thomson achieved his ends even his fullest biography gives little information. There must have been endless conferences of homespun, honest farmers like Willson, men of breeding like {42} Robinson, brilliant lawyers like Sullivan, plain soldiers like MacNab, with the little, sickly, understanding governor of the brilliant eyes, the charming ...
— The Winning of Popular Government - A Chronicle of the Union of 1841 • Archibald Macmechan
... very dear wife to me, but she was taken away from us when the child was young, and the child became precious as the apple of my eye to me, for she was all I had left to love. For her sake entirely I married as second wife a homespun woman who had been kind as a mother to her. In due time the question of her education came on, and I said, 'I will educate the maid well, if I live upon bread to do it.' Of her possible marriage I ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... reverent to royalty, they vented all their rage upon the minister, while maintaining still a conventional respect for the sovereign. The prelate had already become the constant butt of the "Rhetoric Chambers." These popular clubs for the manufacture of homespun poetry and street farces out of the raw material of public sentiment, occupied the place which has been more effectively filled in succeeding ages, and in free countries by the daily press. Before the invention of ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... brains is the only mode of securing genuine freedom. If our daring logicians would grant that every man should have liberty to lead his life as he chooses, so long as he hurts neither himself nor any other individual nor the State, then one might follow their argument; but a plain homespun proposal like that of mine is not enough for your advanced thinker. In England he says, "Let us have deliverance from all restrictions;" in Russia he says, "Anarchy is the only cure for existing evils." For centuries past the earth has been deluged with blood and the ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... occasionally, a meditative sow with her litter, or a slouching boy, passed them; or a canvas-covered wagon drawn by a steer would lumber slowly along, stop, and a woman get out of it with a bag of ginseng or angelica to barter for sugar and shoes; or a farmer in butternut homespun would jog up the street on his mule, his gun and bag of rations strapped behind, on his way to the higher peaks to salt his wild cattle; or a party of Cherokees from Qualla would come in with baskets ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... that looked as if it were cut out of marble, a red mouth, and intelligent blue eyes. She was also dressed with more care than when in the forest with the hunting party. Around her neck she had a necklace of red beads; she wore a fur jacket opened in front and covered with green cloth, a homespun skirt and new boots. Even old Macko noticed this beautiful attire, and having looked at her ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... young man of very homespun extraction, who hovered in Boston on the ambiguous verge between the social and the scholastic worlds; the sort of young man whom one asked to tea rather than to dinner. He was an earnest student, and was attached to the ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... Wilson's appearance with that of her father; the former, well dressed in the style of a gentleman of the time, in broadcloth, with fine linen, and a tall silk hat carefully placed on the floor of the pew; while Deacon Baxter wore homespun made of wool from his own sheep, spun and woven, dyed and finished, at the fulling-mill in the village, and carried a battered felt hat that had been a matter of ridicule these dozen years. (The ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... indulged in, and homespun was the principal material used for clothing. Mrs. Washington had sixteen spinning-wheels in her house. Her husband often wore homespun while at home, and on rainy days sometimes placed a pair of home-made trousers of the barn-door variety in the ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye
... into the parlor, already shadowed into twilight: a neat, compact little person, dressed in soft gray homespun, with a pale pink bow on her throat, and another in her cap—a pretty little fabric of lace and cambric, which, being now the fashion, her girls had at last condescended to let her wear. She had on a black silk apron, with pockets, into one of which she had hastily ...
— The Laurel Bush • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... but smiling ran away to do her bidding, as he always did. He had no clothes besides the worn suit of homespun which he was then wearing, except one other of buckskin, gayly fringed on the sleeves and on the outer seam of the breeches. This had been his pride till of late. But he now took it down from its peg behind his cabin door and eyed it with new dissatisfaction. ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks
... costumes had been worked out for the various classes. They were adapted both to the purse and to the pursuit. They were fitting—that is, silk was not worn in huts or homespun in palaces; slippers were for carriages and sabots for streets. The garments of a class were founded on good sound principles on the whole—but they marked the class. Democracy sought to destroy outward distinctions. The proscribed costumes ...
— The Business of Being a Woman • Ida M. Tarbell
... of dawn they were on the march again, passing all day through the desolate flat country, where the women ran weeping to the doorways, and waved empty hands as they went by. Once a girl in a homespun dress, with a spray of apple blossoms in her black hair, brought out a wooden bucket filled with buttermilk and ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... had been the easy custom to dump the sawdust into the stream, but the fish-wardens had lately interfered and put a stop to the practice. Now, a tall young fellow, in top boots, gray homespun trousers and blue shirt, was busy carting the sawdust to a swampy hollow near the lower end of the ...
— Earth's Enigmas - A Volume of Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... street. The 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 ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... close up the cracks and keep the warmth within the room. The floors were made of oak and were white and clean. Several old-fashioned split-bottom chairs graced the room, a long table was placed in the center, upon which was spread a snow-white linen cloth of homespun, and woven by the women. While the wraps were being removed the women had placed upon the table the best that could be prepared for the pastor's welcome. I'll never forget the delicious roast chicken; baked sweet potatoes, baked in the ashes, for cook stoves were not known; ...
— Sixty Years of California Song • Margaret Blake-Alverson
... a way that would have prevented a town-bred child from sleeping, and up in those bare rooms there was cold enough to pinch you black and blue; but Elsie and Duncan had never thought much of that, for they had been accustomed to it from babyhood, and only threw on their thick homespun ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... her peasant ornaments, worth, if her family is well-to-do, a hundred dollars or more—gold pendants in her ears, large gold chains of some antique Moorish design falling in a triple row over her gay bodice. The men wear long hooded cloaks of brown homespun, which they sometimes retain for convenience after the rest of the peasant-dress has been thrown aside for the regulation coat and trousers. There is no tendency to eccentricity in the national costume of Portugal, but the Portuguese colony of Madeira have ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... used to "stick" pale-blue flowers in his wife's belt, and whose love of delicate fabrics and tints made him courageous enough to lead her draped in Canton crape into the unpainted Cape Cod meeting-house, where her fellow-women bristled in homespun, that Mercy inherited all the artistic side of her nature. She knew this instinctively, and all her tenderest sentiment centred around the vague memory she retained of a tall, dark-bearded man, who, when she was only three years old, lifted her in his arms, called her his "little ...
— Mercy Philbrick's Choice • Helen Hunt Jackson
... hour of Sabbath talk, The vale with peace and sunshine full Where all the happy people walk, Decked in their homespun flax and wool! Where youth's gay hats with blossoms bloom; And every maid with simple art, Wears on her breast, like her own heart, A bud whose depths are all perfume; While every garment's gentle stir Is ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various
... pining for frills, eh? Well, if it will make you feel more comfortable, we'll go down to Stewart's and get fitted out to your satisfaction. But don't forget that you can be a gentleman in homespun as well as broadcloth, Dick. Real diamonds don't need to borrow any luster from their setting; only ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black
... must go up, and homespun must come down;" and the question is "How does the coat fit?"—not, "Who wears it?" The power that bears the tides of excited population up and down our streets, and rocks the world of commerce, and thrills all nations, Transatlantic and Cisatlantic, ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage
... particularly devoted to your Service. This would have agreeably prevented me in an attempt to which I find myself in all Respects but too unequal. Yet relying on your good Sense and Candour, I venture to lay at your Feet a few well-intended Sentiments, which tho' in a plain homespun Garb, I hope will not offend. I am convinced that at this present it is not only in your Inclination and Will, but also in your Power, to effect more in favour of your Country, than an Army of an Hundred Thousand Men; and indeed more than all the armed Men on this vast Continent.—Can ...
— The Olden Time Series: Vol. 2: The Days of the Spinning-Wheel in New England • Various
... of arms, Arba; I won the decoration when I retired from hard work at the age of fifty. That was about the time you were starting in life by selling fake mining stock around this State. My coat of arms is two patches on a homespun background, surrounded by looped galluses. And I can show you the mile of stone walls I ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... broad-shouldered man, in a suit of homespun and a featherless hat, thrust his way rudely trough the crowd and broke into the space within the belt of trees. The combatants had fallen apart at this commanding cry, and the newcomer now dashed forward, flushed and out of ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... well pleased with the pieces of fine English cloth; and as their own homespun robes rasped like hair shirts, they silently but uniformly congratulated themselves ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... now, hit war a weddin' dress," she exclaimed as she held it excitedly up to the light and appraised the fineness of the ancient silk with eyes more accustomed to homespun. ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... upon the river in the morning sunlight, we could almost fancy that the centuries between us and that ever-to-be-famous June morning of 1215 had been drawn aside, and that we, English yeomen's sons in homespun cloth, with dirk at belt, were waiting there to witness the writing of that stupendous page of history, the meaning whereof was to be translated to the common people some four hundred and odd years later by one Oliver Cromwell, ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome
... settler of Tazewell County, says he used to see Lincoln when passing through Washington, in that county, on his way to attend court at Metamora; and he remembers him as "dressed in a homespun coat that came below his knees and was out ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... than Chinese in cut. On their heads they wore the Tam o' Shanter-like cap of black stuff, common among these people, bound on with their long braids, and their coats were of the usual felt. Their skirts, homespun, were made with what we used to call a Spanish flounce. According to Baber, the Lolo petticoat is of great significance. No one may go among the independent Lolos safely save in the guardianship of a member of the tribe, ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall
... and such admirers, fall in love with heroes and heroines who make war without a glimpse of provocation. I do like our makincy peace, whether we had provocation or not. I am forced to deal in European news, my dear lord, for I have no homespun. I don't think my whole inkhorn could invent another paragraph; and therefore I will take my leave, with (your lordship knows) every kind wish ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... the forest are interwoven like threads of purple and crimson with the pleasant homespun of colonial story; and, ere the reader has ceased to smile over the antics, adventures and sports of the odd specimens of early Yankee character that fill the foreground, he is charmed into silence by the poetic ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... him was my old adversary, his Lordship, sword in hand. Near by, the squad of British, now surrounded, were giving up their arms. They had backed to the river's edge; I could hear it lapping their heels. His Lordship sneered, looking at the veteran who stood in a gray frock of homespun, for all the world, I fancy, like one of those old yeomen who ...
— D'Ri and I • Irving Bacheller
... clothes. He felt them an intolerable burden. He did not mind his new homespun, home-made flannel check shirt of mixed red and white, but the heavy fulled-cloth suit made by his Aunt Kirsty felt like a suit of mail. He moved heavily in it and felt queer, and knew that he looked as he felt. The result was that he was in no genial mood, and was on the alert for any indication ...
— Glengarry Schooldays • Ralph Connor
... think that we had reached the last purpose for which the homespun woolen yarn was required? We were mistaken, for here is the entry: "To-day dyed the yarn for back-hall carpet. Remember to tell the weaver that I prefer it ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... came into the room, her thin face set and grim, her rusty dress of old black satin all cracking, and her great cairngorm brooch marking her from the rest in capes and homespun. They drew away from her; she had never tried to associate with them; in her detachment she had never been human to them as Andrew had been in his wildness and his weakness, and now she walked silently across the room and sat down. The firelight shone out fiercely as she savagely ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... spoke of Burns: men rude and rough Pressed round to hear the praise of one Whose heart was made of manly, simple stuff, As homespun as ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... father sent I was not told; but two days later, a little before sundown, I saw a plain, honest-looking man ride slowly up the road in a great pother of dust. He was clad in homespun, with a broad straw hat; wore a patriarchal beard; and had an air of a simple rustic farmer, that was, in my eyes, very reassuring. He was, indeed, a very honest man and pious Mormon; with no liking for his errand, though neither he nor any one in Utah dared to disobey; and it was with every mark ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... Against so homespun a background the magnificence of the Ambersons was as conspicuous as a brass band at a funeral. Major Amberson bought two hundred acres of land at the end of National Avenue; and through this tract he built broad streets and cross-streets; paved them ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... accidentally. She and Sally had always been chums, and now she spent most of her time helping her. It became the order of the day for them to have a cup of tea about four o'clock. Piney would take a candle-stand by the west window and make it look so inviting with a little strip of homespun linen and a spray of flowering almond that no one could resist tea from the old blue ware which Mrs. Peckham ...
— Kit of Greenacre Farm • Izola Forrester
... one hand; with the other she is guiding the old horse. Bev walks at her side, with one hand on the bridle. He is a very handsome boy of about fourteen, with a gay, happy manner. He is barefoot, dressed in a soft white cotton shirt and blue homespun trousers. He is without hat or coat, and seems in the best of spirits. They stop at the ...
— The Southern Cross - A Play in Four Acts • Foxhall Daingerfield, Jr.
... ranged against the wall, she began her house-wifery directly, singing as she went. Before John had put his oxen in the small barn, sheltered the cart and the tools in it, and shaken down hay into the manger, Hannah had made a fire, hung on the kettle, spread up her bed with homespun sheets and blankets and a wonderful cover of white-and-red chintz, set the table with a loaf of bread, a square of yellow butter, a bowl of maple sugar, and a plate of cheese; and even released the cock and the hen from their uneasy prison in a splint basket, and was ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... firelight falling upon her face, the ranger was able to see it quite plainly. She had lost the cute little homemade cap in the flurry, and her luxuriant hair hung loosely about her shoulder. She was neatly clad in homespun, though the dress, the stockings, and the shoes were of ...
— The Phantom of the River • Edward S. Ellis
... from her fine place! What a tawdry figure she makes! And how well that garb becomes her poor parents' circumstances!—And how would they look upon me, thought I to myself, when they should come to be threadbare and worn out? And how should I look, even if I could purchase homespun clothes, to dwindle into them one by one, as I got them?—May be, an old silk gown, and a linsey-woolsey petticoat, and the like. So, thought I, I had better get myself at once equipped in the dress that will become my condition; and though it may look ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... She would be of about my own age, or perhaps a little younger, and from her garb it was plain that she belonged to the peasant class. She wore a spotless bodice of white linen, which but indifferently concealed the ripening swell of her young breast. Her petticoat, of dark red homespun, stopped short above her bare brown ankles, and her little feet were naked. Her brown hair, long and abundant, was still fastened at the nape of her slim neck, but fell loose beyond that, having been disturbed, no doubt, in her ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... van Rensburg, and he runs through this Government report like a scarlet thread through gray homespun. It is around his influence that the uprising of Sept. 15 is built. It is under his roof that all manner of lurid conspiracies are hatched. Not only do his words carry with the crowds that gather before his house to hear his prophecy, but his warnings shape the actions ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... people ax 'em, 'where are all them 'ere fine things you promised us?' 'Why,' they say, 'we'd a had 'em all for you, but for that etarnal Council, they nullified all we did.' The country will come to no good till them chaps show their respect for it, by covering their bottoms with homespun. If a man is so tarnation lazy he won't work, and in course has no money, why he says it's all owin' to the banks, they won't discount, there's no money, they've ruined the Province. If there bean't a road ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... also a snug farm, adjoining the brown house, together with some fresh, juicy pasture-lots on neighboring islands, where he raised mutton, unsurpassed even by the English South-down, and wool, which furnished homespun to clothe his family on ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... whose grave was close beside Daisy's in the Olney cemetery. John had had his romance and buried it with his heroine, since which time he had said but little to womankind, though never was there a truer heart than that which beat beneath the homespun frock Ethelyn so despised. Richard had bidden him to be kind to Ethie, and John had said he would; and after that promise was given had the farmhouse been on fire the sturdy fellow would have periled life and limb to save her for Dick. To James, too, Richard had spoken a word ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes
... that these thrilling passages, which the boys of two generations have ever been delighted to declaim in their shrillest tones, are strictly illustrative of the main purpose of the speech in which they appear. They are not mere purple patches of rhetoric, loosely stitched on the homespun gray of the reasoning, but they seem to be inwoven with it and to be a vital part of it. Indeed we can hardly decide, in reading these magnificent bursts of eloquence in connection with what precedes and follows them, whether the effect is due to the logic of the orator becoming suddenly morally ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... you waited for a homing ship? My father might with reason spend his hours Scanning the far horizon; for his Swan Whose outward lading was full half a vintage Is now months overdue." She turned on me Her languor knit and, through its homespun wrap, Her muscular frame gave hints of rebel will, While those great caves of night, her eyes, faced mine, Dread with the silence of unuttered wrongs: At last she spoke as one who must be heeded. Truly I am not clear Whether ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... entering Politics?" Mr. Crewe, with his usual gracious hospitality, showed the reporters over the place, and gave them suggestions as to the best vantage-points in which to plant their cameras. He himself was at length prevailed upon to be taken in a rough homespun suit, and with a walking-stick in his hand, appraising with a knowing eye a flock of his own sheep. Pressed a little, he consented to relate something of the systematic manner in which he had gone about to secure this ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... his childhood he became familiar with hunters and with Indians, for even the red men came often in friendly fashion to his grandfather's house. Squire Boone enlarged his farm by thrift. He continued at his trade of weaving and kept five or six looms going, making homespun cloth for the market and ...
— Pioneers of the Old Southwest - A Chronicle of the Dark and Bloody Ground • Constance Lindsay Skinner
... see as good as I wanted," was the hesitating reply; "but 'peared to me they were men, all right. And they seemed to be dressed in gray homespun, too, like some of ...
— The Strange Cabin on Catamount Island • Lawrence J. Leslie
... never have been constrained to swear allegiance to the flag he both hated and despised, or have been obliged to exchange the garb of the son of a true Irish gentleman for that which had so lowered him, in the eyes of her relatives at least. But rich or poor, in scarlet or homespun, he was all the same to her; and now that he was almost at her side, and master, in a measure, of his own fate, she only looked forward to the period when she should have a legal right to his protection, and to call him by that name which, beyond all others is the one ...
— Ridgeway - An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada • Scian Dubh
... that had aforetime walked in fine linen and purple, and precious stones, were clad in homespun and went to indigenous parties; When the Mississippi was blockaded by the Preble and Vincennes, and ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... directed at him. If so it passed harmlessly over his broad shoulders. In his immaculate evening dress he looked strangely out of place there. Enid had escaped the prevailing dilapidation, but her gown of grey homespun was severe as the garb ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White
... of thy native land, Returnest back and seekest true repose. Oh, what more pleasant than the short-breathed sigh When laying down your burden at the gate, And dizzy with long wandering, you embrace The cool and quiet of a homespun bed." "Alas," said Dalica, "though all commend This choice, and many meet with no control, Yet none pursue it! Age by Care oppressed Feels for the couch, and drops into the grave. The tranquil scene lies ...
— Gebir • Walter Savage Landor
... only school he ever attended, and that was all he learned at it. His widowed mother, with her seven young children, her little farm, and two or three slaves, could do no more for him. Next, we see him a tall, awkward, slender stripling of thirteen, still barefoot, clad in homespun butternut of his mother's making, tilling her fields, and going to mill with his bag of corn strapped upon the family pony. At fourteen, in the year 1791, a place was found for him in a Richmond drug-store, where he served as errand-boy and youngest ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... Abe," she added, "you have some rights. We've been good friends all these years, and you've been all right out here. You said some nice things about me just now, and I liked it, even if it was as if you'd learned it out of a book. I've got no po'try in me; I'm plain homespun. I'm a sapling, I'm not any prairie-flower, but I like when I like, and I like a lot when I like. I'm a bit of ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... represents the scene so well known in the early history of our country, and contains twenty-five figures, thirteen of which should be dressed in crimson uniform, to personate the British soldiers, six in continental costume, three in coarse homespun suits, three in sailor's costume. The stage must be formed to represent a hill, which can be done by using boxes and boards, and covering them with green cloth. The hill should rise from the footlights to within four feet of the ceiling in the background. The first ...
— Home Pastimes; or Tableaux Vivants • James H. Head
... with that jetsam and flotsam of humanity that New York's mighty sewers throw in armies upon her inland beaches at every sunrise: Here a sodden brute sleeping off a prolonged debauch, there a lad whose frankness of face and homespun clothes and bewildered eyes spelt, "from the farm and mother's watchful love." On another bench an Italian woman who had a half-dozen future dollar kings and social queens about her, and whose clothes told of the immigrant ship ...
— Friday, the Thirteenth • Thomas W. Lawson
... unnecessary to attempt to set her at ease; her composure was perfect. The flaunt-ing-patterned calico must have been a matter of full dress. It had been replaced by a blue-and-white-checked homespun gown—a coarse cotton garment short and scant. Her feet were bare, and their bareness was only a revelation of greater beauty, so perfect was their arched slenderness. Miss Dunbar crossed them with unembarrassed freedom, and looked at the stranger as if she found ...
— Lodusky • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Then when he had risen she gave him down the armour piece by piece, dusting each with her kerchief with a sort of reverent action, as one might touch the face of the dead. In Sholto's hands it proved indeed light almost as woven cloth of homespun from Dame Barbara's loom, and flexible as the spun silk of Lyons which the great wear ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... without hatred or fanaticism, educated though not learned, industrious though not energetic, quiet and peaceful, making linen and cheese, growing potatoes, importing corn, coming into the world, marrying, begetting children, and dying in the wholesome homespun fashion which is so sweet to us in that mood of philosophy which teaches us to love the country and to despise the town. Whether it be better for a people to achieve an even level of prosperity, which is shared by all, but which makes none ...
— The Golden Lion of Granpere • Anthony Trollope
... you need say that to me, Jack! As for respectability, that homespun word hardly applies; we do have lineage here, and in the European sense, even if without the European power. But that's no matter. It's the pressing down on me of this alien standard, whether expressed or not, that stifles me. I could feel mama's ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... was wrung from him by his eyes settling on Saskia and noting her apparel. Gone were her thin foreign clothes, and in their place she wore a heavy tweed skirt cut very short, and thick homespun stockings, which had been made for some one with larger feet than hers. A pair of the coarse low-heeled shoes which country folk wear in the farmyard stood warming by the hearth. She still had her russet jumper, but round her neck hung a grey wool ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... might well be confident in it. His is a homespun style, not a manufactured one; and what a difference is there between its homeliness, and the flippant vulgarity of the Roger L'Estrange and Tom Brown school! If it is not a well of English undefiled to which the poet as well as the philologist must repair, if they would ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XVII. No. 469. Saturday January 1, 1831 • Various
... excitement was over. The Boy picked up the two big white cats, Melindy and Jim, and placed them in the arms of old Billy Smith, where they settled themselves, looking about with an air of sleepy wisdom. From smallest kittenhood the smell of a homespun shirt had stood to them for every kind of gentleness and shelter, so they saw no reason to find fault with the arms of Billy Smith. By this time old Butters, the woodchuck, disturbed at the scattering of the Family, had retired in ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... Within the streamlet's soft cool arms Delight and love and gracefulness Sport till a flock of tiny waves Swamps all the beds of floating cress; And on his shining face are seen Great yellow lilies drifting down Beyond the ringing apple-tree, Beyond the empty homespun gown. Did ever Orpheus with his lute, When making melody of old, E'er find a stream in Attica So ripely full of ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... backwoodsmen gathered sixteen hundred strong, each man carrying a long rifle, and mounted on a tough, shaggy horse. They were a wild and fierce people, accustomed to the chase and to warfare with the Indians. Their hunting-shirts of buckskin or homespun were girded in by bead-worked belts, and the trappings of their horses were stained red and yellow. At the gathering there was a black-frocked Presbyterian preacher, and before they started he addressed the tall riflemen in words of burning zeal, urging them ...
— Hero Tales From American History • Henry Cabot Lodge, and Theodore Roosevelt
... or Holland a good while ago, and died when their time came. Some of them may have had fine equipage and caparisoned postillion, but the most of them were only footmen. My father started in life belonging to the aristocracy of hard knuckles and homespun, but had this high honor that no one could despise. He was the son of a father who loved God, and kept His commandments. What is the House of Hapsburg or Stuarts, compared with being son of the Lord God Almighty? Two eyes, two hands, and two feet, were the capital my father started with. For fifteen ...
— Forty Years in South China - The Life of Rev. John Van Nest Talmage, D.D. • Rev. John Gerardus Fagg
... part of the travelling mob. When I see women whom, in their drawing rooms or elsewhere, I have been accustomed to respect and treat with every suitable deference—when I see them, I say, elbowing their way through a crowd of dirty emigrants or lowbred homespun fellows in petticoats or breeches in our country, in order to reach a table spread for a hundred or more, I lose sight of their pretensions to gentility and view them as belonging to the plebeian herd. To restore herself to ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... turf fire gave out a prosperous steam. The son, a grown man, waited from his turf-cutting to help in our discussion; the wife was abroad that day, and one daughter was just starting for market with a web of homespun cloth which they had dressed in the household. The spinning wheel stood in the corner; but another girl was busy near the fire with more modern work, hemming shirts with a machine for a Derry factory, and the bleached linen was the only ...
— Irish Books and Irish People • Stephen Gwynn
... Congress at Lahore with a presidential address which lasted for two hours and a quarter, and wound up with an apology for its brevity on the ground that he had had no time to prepare it—testified, at any rate more loudly, to the sternness of his patriotic convictions than the equally swadeshi homespun, cut at least in European fashion, of another "advanced" politician, Mr. Bhupendranath Bose, of Bengal. More worthy of attention was the keen, refined, and intellectual face of Mr. G.K. Gokhale, the Deccanee Brahman with the Mahratta cap, who, by education, belongs to the West quite as much ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... is not the only hallucination the North labors under, judging from present appearances; by closing our ports it is thought we can be subdued by the want of accustomed luxuries. These rich young men were dressed in coarse gray homespun! We have the best horsemen and the best marksmen in the world, and these are the qualities that will tell before the end of the war. We fight for existence—the enemy for Union and the freedom of the slave. Well, let the Yankees ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... to me, even when we were alone. One difference I noticed about her, however; that she was clothed in garments such as I had never seen her wear before. They were close fitting, save for a flowing cape, and made of some grey material, not unlike a coarse homespun or even asbestos cloth. Still they became her very well, and when I remarked upon them, all she answered was that part of our road would be rough. Even her feet were shod with high buskins ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard
... long to explore the woods again In my own aboriginal way, As before I knew how culture could frown On a hoydenish gait and a homespun gown Or dreamed that the strata of proud "upper-ten" Would smile at ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... now,—his form, and face, and motions, His homespun habit, and his silver hair,— And hear the language of his trite devotions Rising behind ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... his men for the attack. All were yeomanry, in homespun, rudely equipped with pouches and powder-horns, and armed with the old brown firelocks, without bayonets, they had brought from their homes. Some had served in the preceding campaign, but not one in fifty had ever fired a shot in anger; while many were mere lads, in whom enthusiasm ...
— Burgoyne's Invasion of 1777 - With an outline sketch of the American Invasion of Canada, 1775-76. • Samuel Adams Drake
... "She is a homespun little thing," laughed the colonel's fashionable wife, "and quite unfit to go among people of our condition. But she adores you, Dick; and she will be passably happy with a house to manage, and a visit from you when ...
— The Bow of Orange Ribbon - A Romance of New York • Amelia E. Barr
... been added to from time to time, as necessity demanded, until it had become an imposing and not uncomely pile. Below this were two or three dilapidated saw-mills, a grist-mill in daily use, and a fulling-mill—a remnant of the old times when homespun went its pilgrimage to town—to be fulled, colored, and dressed—from all the ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... her knees. She had a level, curious gaze upon him, and Jean had never met one just like it. Her eyes were rather a wide oval in shape, clear and steady, with shadows of thought in their amber-brown depths. They seemed to look through Jean, and his gaze dropped first. Then it was he saw her ragged homespun skirt and a few inches of brown, bare ankles, strong and round, and crude worn-out moccasins that failed to hide the shapeliness, of her feet. Suddenly she drew back her stockingless ankles and ill-shod little feet. When Jean lifted his gaze again he found her ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... President of the United States, the whole annual expenditures of which did not exceed $2,500,000, being about sixty cents per head of the population. Not a single steam engine had yet been built or erected on the American continent; and the people were clad in homespun, and were characterized by the simple virtues and habits which are usually associated with that primitive garb. I need not tell you what the country now is, and what the habits and the garments of its people ...
— Peter Cooper - The Riverside Biographical Series, Number 4 • Rossiter W. Raymond
... unmarried woman; so called because unmarried daughters worked at spinning and weaving for the household, making 'homespun' ...
— The History of London • Walter Besant
... had but one thought in mind—to make his departure less abrupt for Rosa. If he left her without a word, what would she think? Then, with an officer's uniform, he could be of much more help to Jack and the party than in the rough civilian homespun furnished at the cabin. Besides, he knew of certain blank headquarter passes lying on Vincent's desk. He would get a few of these; they might extricate the party in the ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... fancied he had robed himself in the plain homespun of a natural philosopher at the age of twenty-three journeyed limping leisurely in the mountain maid Carinthia's footsteps, thankful to the Fates for having seen her; and reproving the remainder of superstition within him, which ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... and the carded wool like a snow-drift Piled at her knee, her white hands feeding the ravenous spindle, While with her foot on the treadle she guided the wheel in its motion. * * * * * She, the Puritan girl, in the solitude of the forest, Making the humble house and the modest apparel of homespun Beautiful with her beauty, and rich with the ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... white woman wearing a homespun dress and slat-bonnet, came down the road from the other side of the creek, and lifting her skirts slightly, waded with bare feet across the shallow stream. Reaching the clay-bank she stooped and gathered from it, with the aid of a convenient stick, a quantity of the ...
— The Conjure Woman • Charles W. Chesnutt
... unsmiling face, and only betrayed his irony with a slow wink when he was sure you were not deceived. He knew much about the gentry around, those bored and weary youths in check coats, riding breeches, and large pipes, and the young ladies in pale homespun costumes who had rude and familiar words to all they judged were their equals, and were accompanied ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson
... developed her in concentration and in inventive ability. Housekeeping at that time was crude, and most of the necessary articles used were made at home. There were no matches. The flint snapped by the lock was the only way of lighting a fire. Garments were homespun, and home-made food was dried, canned and cooked in large quantities by the busy housekeeper. Although there was always a fire blazing on the hearth of the home, it was thought to be a religious duty to have the meeting-house unheated on the Sabbath ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... was a great clamour, and I found that "The Battle of the Books" had begun raging anew. Two figures entered in lively dispute. One was dressed in plain homespun and the other wore a scholar's gown over a suit of motley. I gathered from their conversation that they were Cotton Mather and William Shakspere. Mather insisted that the witches in "Macbeth" should be caught and hanged. Shakspere replied that the witches had ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... summer time by the slaves, he said they mostly went barefooted. The men and boys wore homespun, three-quarter striped pants and sometimes a large funnel-shaped straw hat. Some wore only a shirt as a covering ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Maryland Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... were his heritage, raised himself in bed, and knowing no fear looked steadily. What he saw thrown into relief against the shadows was the figure of a hillman of the west, and one that in an instant he knew. The Covenanter was dressed in rough homespun hodden gray, stained heavily with the black of the peat holes in which he had been hiding, and torn here and there where the rocks had caught him as he was crawling for shelter. Of middle age, with hair hanging over his ears and beard ...
— Graham of Claverhouse • Ian Maclaren
... parlor, would have given him half-glad, half-indifferent greeting, and then found either occasion to laugh at him or would have turned elsewhere for amusement. We looked, I say, in vain. Before me stood my pattern of neatness in a rough uniform of brown homespun. A dark flannel shirt replaced the snowy cambric one, and there was neither cravat nor collar to mark the boundary line between his dark face and the still darker material. And the dear little boots! O ye gods ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... figure, waning from middle age, clad in a pair of tow homespun pantaloons, and a very soiled shirt, barefoot, and with one of his feet maimed by an axe; also an arm amputated two or three inches below the elbow. His beard of a week's growth, grim and grisly, with a general effect of black; altogether a disgusting object. Yet he ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the midst of a strange, wild scene: his clothes, originally of some homespun cloth, now patched so freely with dressed deerskin as to leave little of the original material; moccasins on his feet, a beaver cap upon his head, his leather belt stuck round with hunting knives, and the pistol to be used at close quarters should ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green
... the doctor's dress, but indeed it would have filled any townsman with amazement. Black he wore once a year, on Sacrament Sunday, and, if possible, at a funeral; topcoat or waterproof never. His jacket and waistcoat were rough homespun of Glen Urtach wool, which threw off the wet like a duck's back, and below he was clad in shepherd's tartan trousers, which disappeared into unpolished riding boots. His shirt was grey flannel, and he was uncertain about a collar, but certain as to a tie which he never had, his beard doing ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... at his pocket, and finally succeeded in extracting a huge blue stocking, evidently of home-manufacture, with which he proceeded to wipe his forehead very energetically and very conspicuously. I suppose the truth was that the poor man's handkerchiefs were "on a strike," and thrust forward this homespun stocking to bring him ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... make up the cost of these, together with the warm cloak for him, and the linen for her child that she had been purchasing. I tell you, sir, the babe must have no linen but the finest fabric of Cambrai—yes, and even carnation-coloured ribbons—though, for herself, I saw the homespun she was sewing. As she mused over what she could throw back, I asked if she had no other gauds to make up the price, and she said, almost within herself, "They are my child's, not mine." Then remembering that I had been buying the hair of the peasant maidens, she suddenly offered me her tresses. ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... eighteenth-century borderers was an adaptation to local conditions, being in part borrowed from the Indians. Their feet were encased in moccasins. Perhaps the majority of the corps had loose, thin trousers of homespun or buckskin, with a fringe of leather thongs down each outer seam of the legs; but many wore only leggings of leather, and were as bare of knee and thigh as a Highland clansman; indeed, many of the pioneers were Scotch-Irish, some of whom had been ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... Village," where world-famed palaces have their echoes aroused at seven in the morning by a gentle shepherd like the shepherd of the remotest provincial hamlets, a strapping peasant in a scarlet cotton blouse and blue homespun linen trousers tucked into tall wrinkled boots, and armed with a fish-horn, which he toots at the intersection of the macadamized streets to assemble the village cattle; where the strawberry peddler, recognizable by the red cloth spread over the tray borne upon his head, and the herring ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... score of prisoners were several women, all of whom were old hags with the exception of one, who was really good looking considering that she wore the same homely, gray homespun dress and black shawl that did service for headwear, worn by all ...
— The Trail of the Tramp • A-No. 1 (AKA Leon Ray Livingston)
... 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 Leavitt, ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... was afraid she might break down before we could leave home; but she did not. I got her away. By roundabout ways we travelled to the North Carolina mountains. We found a deserted cabin in the woods, some distance from the road. We dressed ourselves in the rough homespun of the country. She went barefooted, as most of the women did. We so secluded ourselves that it was some time before it was known that our cabin was inhabited. The women have a habit of wearing deep sunbonnets when about their work. Margery always wore one and kept within doors. We were thought ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Horse Guards Parade at the garden-gate of 10 Downing Street. He got out of the phaeton, unlocked the gate and, turning round, stood with his hat off and his grey hair blowing about his forehead, holding a dark, homespun cape close round his shoulders. He said with great grace that he had enjoyed his drive immensely, that he hoped it would occur again and that I had a way of saying things and a tone of voice that would ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... these jewels make up the cost of these, together with the warm cloak for him, and the linen for her child that she had been purchasing. I tell you, sir, the babe must have no linen but the finest fabric of Cambrai—yes, and even carnation-coloured ribbons—though, for herself, I saw the homespun she was sewing. As she mused over what she could throw back, I asked if she had no other gauds to make up the price, and she said, almost within herself, "They are my child's, not mine." Then remembering that I had been buying the hair of the peasant maidens, ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... playmates soon turned up. Bert was at first not very much inclined to be sociable with them. Not only did they seem to have no shoes and stockings, but their entire clothing was usually limited to a battered straw hat, an unbleached cotton shirt, and a pair of rough homespun trousers; and the city boy was inclined to look upon the country lads with some contempt, until his Aunt Martha cured him effectually one day by a remark ...
— Bert Lloyd's Boyhood - A Story from Nova Scotia • J. McDonald Oxley
... and swung theatrically round on his heel. Between him and the saloon-door there was a solid barricade of heavy Dutch bodies, in moleskin, tan-cord, and greasy homespun, topped by lowering Dutch faces. Brawny right hands that could have choked the reedy crow out of the little bantam gamecock, clenched in the baggy pockets of old shooting-jackets. Others gripped leaded sjamboks, and others crept to hip-pockets, where German army revolvers were. ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... massive human interests. The pleasures which lie beneath it are ignored, and the ideals which lie above it are not perceived. Aversion to an empirical or naturalistic philosophy accordingly expresses a sort of logical patriotism and attachment to homespun ideas. The actual is too remote and unfriendly to the dreamer; to understand it he has to learn a foreign tongue, which his native prejudice imagines to be unmeaning and unpoetical. The truth is, however, that ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... chilled her, though she had felt vaguely their splendid pulse and swing. This was the girl's first venture from a sheltered life. She had not rubbed elbows with the world enough to find that Truth may be rough, unshaven, and garbed in homespun. The book confirmed her analysis of the ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... progresses languidly. Its interest was reserved for the other girls, pig tailed and in limp-hanging rain-coats, who also sought the back door, but with that absence of ostentation and self-consciousness which invariably marks the truly great. The crowd singled out its "heroes in homespun," and one line or the other applauded, according to the color that was known to be sewed on the blue sleeve beneath ...
— Betty Wales, Sophomore • Margaret Warde
... kitchen to an unfinished room under the rafters. Here everything again was as neat as wax, but how desolate! An unpainted bedstead of pine wood, holding a round feather-bed covered with a blue-and-white homespun bed-quilt; a strip of rag carpet on a floor grown beautiful from the care bestowed upon it; a small table covered with a homespun linen towel, a Bible in exactly the middle of it; two old yellow ...
— Miss Ashton's New Pupil - A School Girl's Story • Mrs. S. S. Robbins
... golden buckles to his shoes and golden hilts to sword and dagger. His beard was trimmed to a dainty point, and curling locks slightly flecked with white hung down to his broad shoulders. The admiral, in his gray homespun, his short, frizzled hair bared to the breeze, turned at the sound of approaching footsteps, caught sight of the gentleman in blue, and sprang up ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... exchange for her labor. The luxuries of life on the island were air and water, and the glories of evening and morning. People who could buy them got such gorgeous clothes as were brought by the Company. But usually Jenieve felt happy enough when she put on her best red homespun bodice and petticoat for mass or to go to dances. She did wish for shoes. The ladies at the fort had shoes, with heels which clicked when they danced. Jenieve could dance better, but she always felt their eyes on her moccasins, and came to regard shoes ...
— The Chase Of Saint-Castin And Other Stories Of The French In The New World • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... round, rubicund face, from which the weight of an odious duty had probably banished the smirk of self-satisfaction that dwelt there at other times.[276] Nevertheless, he had manly and estimable qualities. The congregation of peasants, clad in rough homespun, turned their sunburned faces upon him, anxious and intent; and Winslow "delivered them by interpreters the King's orders in the following words," which, retouched in orthography and syntax, ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... which, with unintentional coquetry, was perched on one side of her head. Her hair was short, and fell as it pleased about her neck. She was bare-footed, and apparently clad in a single garment, a blue homespun gown, gathered loosely at her uncorseted waist, and showing the outline of the bust and every movement of the tall, supple form beneath. Her appearance had quickened the interest of the spectators, and apparently was a disturbing influence among the contestants, who were gathered together, ...
— A Mountain Europa • John Fox Jr.
... master of fiction, but the stranger's felicity of quotation and illustration staggered me. It is true, that his thought was not always clothed in the best language, and often appeared in the slouching, slangy undress of the place and period, yet it never was rustic nor homespun, and sometimes struck me with its precision and fitness. Considerably softened toward him, I tried him with other literature. But vainly. Beyond a few of the lyrical and emotional poets, he knew nothing. Under the influence and enthusiasm of his own speech, ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... fiddle-bow. How many a time she had heard her husband play it on the homely fiddle made by himself from birch and cherry-wood! how many a time she had seen it danced on the floor of their one room, to the patter of wooden clogs and the rustle of homespun petticoat! how many a time she had danced it herself!—and did she not remember once, as they joined clasps for right-hands-round, how it had lent its gay, bright measure to her life? And here she was singing it alone, in the forest, at midnight, to a wild beast! As she sent her voice ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... from the hills he already felt very hungry, his fingers tenderly fondling the slices of oaten bread he had put away in the pocket of his grey homespun coat. But he checked the impulse to eat, the long jaw of his swarthy face set, his strong teeth tight together awaiting the right hour to play their eager part. If he ate all the oaten bread now—splendid, dry, hard stuff, ...
— Waysiders • Seumas O'Kelly
... Fridays, and a pigeon or so extra on Sundays, made away with three-quarters of his income. The rest of it went in a doublet of fine cloth and velvet breeches and shoes to match for holidays, while on week-days he made a brave figure in his best homespun. He had in his house a housekeeper past forty, a niece under twenty, and a lad for the field and market-place, who used to saddle the hack as well as handle the bill-hook. The age of this gentleman of ours was bordering on fifty; he was of a hardy habit, spare, gaunt-featured, a very ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... in another; and people will cry shame on you, when, as they say, you are pampering up your sailors, in such manner as will cause discontent among all others in the port, while your wife and daughters are walking about in homespun!" ...
— By Right of Conquest - Or, With Cortez in Mexico • G. A. Henty
... short cropped hair and profiles like birds of prey, all clad in dark steel armor, and some displaying the white Maltese cross. From portrait to portrait the countenances grew more refined, but without losing the prominent forehead and the imperious family nose. The wide, soft collar of the homespun shirt became transformed into starched folds of plaited ruffs; the cuirasses softened into jackets of velvet or silk; the stiff broad beards in imperial style changed to sharp goatees and to pointed mustaches, ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... good illustrations of Bunyan. Their spirit, in defect and quality, is still the same as his own. The designer also has lain down and dreamed a dream, as literal, as quaint, and almost as apposite as Bunyan's; and text and pictures make but the two sides of the same homespun yet impassioned story. To do justice to the designs, it will be necessary to say, for the hundredth time, a word or two about ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Service. This would have agreeably prevented me in an attempt to which I find myself in all Respects but too unequal. Yet relying on your good Sense and Candour, I venture to lay at your Feet a few well-intended Sentiments, which tho' in a plain homespun Garb, I hope will not offend. I am convinced that at this present it is not only in your Inclination and Will, but also in your Power, to effect more in favour of your Country, than an Army of an Hundred Thousand Men; and indeed more than all ...
— The Olden Time Series: Vol. 2: The Days of the Spinning-Wheel in New England • Various
... packed up her baskets one in the other, and stowed them away in the cart. She had sold everything but a few bundles of beans, and was well content. So she trudged off to buy some yarn and some homespun tweed where she could get the most for ...
— Little Folks (November 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... will, Mr. Swiper. You may have escaped from jail, the authorities of a dozen states may be after you. But just the same you are going to stop when a little trembling pioneer scout in homespun pantaloons tells you to. Look ahead, where that dim light is, Mr. Swiper, with the cropped hair. Do you see something shining there, held in a little trembling hand? That is a knife, Mr. Swiper. The trembling ...
— Pee-wee Harris on the Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... said, "and in them are homespun and jeans. One can't lead his 'fluttered folk and wild' ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... such fury. "But yes, Abe," she added, "you have some rights. We've been good friends all these years, and you've been all right out here. You said some nice things about me just now, and I liked it, even if it was as if you'd learned it out of a book. I've got no po'try in me; I'm plain homespun. I'm a sapling, I'm not any prairie-flower, but I like when I like, and I like a lot when I like. I'm a bit of hickory, ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... dawn they were on the march again, passing all day through the desolate flat country, where the women ran weeping to the doorways, and waved empty hands as they went by. Once a girl in a homespun dress, with a spray of apple blossoms in her black hair, brought out a wooden bucket filled with buttermilk and passed it ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... him now,—his form, and face, and motions, His homespun habit, and his silver hair,— And hear the language of his trite devotions Rising ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... an editor, even as editors go. The one useful quality he had was a homespun, ingratiating air which put nervous young geniuses at their ease, so that they could give a reasonably coherent verbal picture of what their books were about. This often saved Stein, Fine & Bryans a lot of reading of unpublishable ...
— Stairway to the Stars • Larry Shaw
... supplied domestic comfort. Lawyers, doctors, merchants, traders, Preachers, artisans, and idlers, From afar and near flocked hither; And the "continental coppers" Were in speedy circulation. Spinning, weaving, sewing, knitting, Filled the women's dextrous fingers, And the homespun and the linsey Were the choice and boasted fabrics, Furnished strong and useful garments, In the day of early settlers. Social gatherings were frequent, 'Round log fires and tallow candles, And the quaint old invitations To some public house or "tavern," Call a smile ...
— The Song of Lancaster, Kentucky - to the statesmen, soldiers, and citizens of Garrard County. • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... to school for the first time is very clear in my memory. I can see myself, a stout little fellow about eight years old, clad in gray homespun, with breeches, low shoes, and a low, flat beaver hat. I can hear my mother say, "Here are two big apples for thy master," it being the custom so to propitiate pedagogues. Often afterward I took eggs in a little basket, or flowers, and ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... were waiting, a white woman wearing a homespun dress and slat-bonnet, came down the road from the other side of the creek, and lifting her skirts slightly, waded with bare feet across the shallow stream. Reaching the clay-bank she stooped and gathered from it, with the aid of a convenient stick, a quantity ...
— The Conjure Woman • Charles W. Chesnutt
... the coach-and-four, and forth from it came Lady Belamour in a magnificent hoop, the first seen in those parts, managing it with a grace that made her an overwhelming spectacle, in contrast with Betty, in her close-fitting dark-grey homespun, plain white muslin apron, cap, kerchief, and ruggles, scrupulously neat and fresh, but unadorned. The visit was graciously designed for "good cousin Harry," but his daughter was obliged, not unwillingly, though quite truly, to declare him far too ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... whom, in their drawing rooms or elsewhere, I have been accustomed to respect and treat with every suitable deference—when I see them, I say, elbowing their way through a crowd of dirty emigrants or lowbred homespun fellows in petticoats or breeches in our country, in order to reach a table spread for a hundred or more, I lose sight of their pretensions to gentility and view them as belonging to the plebeian herd. To restore herself ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... comfortable room, with strings of red peppers hanging from the ceiling, and boards of sliced apples drying on upturned flour barrels near the door. The bright homespun carpet left a strip of bare plank by the stove, and on this stood two hampers of black walnuts ready for storing. A few coloured prints, culled from garden magazines, were tacked on the wall, and these, ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... table was covered with a clean cloth of the finest of homespun, and everything set out with the same nicety as if the meal had been spread in the dining-room. The old lady, who had sought to please her son by putting on her best cap for the occasion, but who had in truth forgot what day it was until reminded by Grizzie, sat already at the head ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... awoke, she thought she must still be dreaming; for, standing a little way down the path, was a tall man leaning on a musket. He wore a flannel blouse, and his homespun trousers were tucked into high ...
— A Little Maid of Ticonderoga • Alice Turner Curtis
... 1641, just before the Civil War, Abingdon possessed a Sergeant-at-Mace in the person of Mr. John Richardson, who also appears to have been a poet, as he dedicated what he described as a poem "of harmless and homespun verse to the Mayor, Bayliffs, Burgesses, and others," in which are portrayed the proceedings at the celebration of the peace between the King and the Scots. Early in the morning the inhabitants ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... aforetime walked in fine linen and purple, and precious stones, were clad in homespun and went to indigenous parties; When the Mississippi was blockaded by the Preble and Vincennes, and many more ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... square, ten high, and open at the top, into which these neighbors of my companion were casting ears of corn as fast as they could shuck them. Cheerfully they performed their task. The men were large and hardy; the damsels plump and rosy, and all dressed in good warm homespun. The sheriff informed me that he owned about two thousand acres around his dwelling, and that his farm was worth about one thousand dollars or ...
— Daniel Boone - The Pioneer of Kentucky • John S. C. Abbott
... embarrassment, "I—I'm afraid I can't pay you that money. But you know that big flock of sheep down in the back pasture? Well, tell you what we'll do. Over at Beaverton I've got an uncle who's a tailor. I can give you a suit of full cloth of homespun and call it square," and though the boy wanted the money for fifty things he had to ...
— Deep Furrows • Hopkins Moorhouse
... lips; she stifled a sob, lifted saddle, saddlebags, and bridle and carried them up the rocky bank of the stream to a little hollow. Here she dropped them, unstrapped her revolver and placed it with them, then drew from the saddlebags a homespun gown, sunbonnet, and a pair of coarse shoes, and laid them ...
— Special Messenger • Robert W. Chambers
... way off. "Old maid? I should say not! We had a man. We nearly always do. Then everybody comes, and there's more glow. He was an English socialist—I guess he was a socialist. Burne-Jones hair, and a homespun jacket,—loose, and all that,—and a heavy ribbon on his glasses. He talked about the ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... not be induced to use a cart with movable wheels which was imported from America, nor will they even grease their axles, because the noise is held to drive away witches. Some other arts are a little more advanced, as any visitor to Mr. Harper's pleasant Fayal shop in Boston may discover. They make homespun cloth upon a simple loom, and out of their smoky huts come beautiful embroideries and stockings whose fineness is almost unequalled. Their baskets are strong and graceful, and I have seen men sitting in village doorways, weaving ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... my folks stayed on with Capt. Posey, and I washed and ironed with them later when I was big enough. I done some cooking, too. I could card and spin and make homespun dresses. My ma ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves • Works Projects Administration
... theme, to write. For this a British author bids again The heroine rise, to grace the British scene: Here, as in life, she breathes her genuine flame, She asks, What bosom has not felt the same? Asks of the British youth—is silence there? She dares to ask it of the British fair. To-night our homespun author would be true, At once to nature, history, and you. 20 Well pleased to give our neighbours due applause, He owns their learning, but disdains their laws; Not to his patient touch, or happy flame, 'Tis to his British heart he trusts ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... was a little, dumpy woman, with a complexion burned perfectly red by the sun, and hair of an exact tow-color, braided up from her forehead in front and from her neck behind. These tails, meeting on the top of her head, were fastened with a small tin comb. Her dress was of checkered homespun, a "very tight fit," and, as she wore no ruff or handkerchief around her neck, she looked as if just prepared for execution. She was evidently awestruck at the sight of visitors, and seemed inclined to take her departure at once; but the boy, not ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
... still the housewives, who had not benefited by her counsel. She fixed that eye benevolently upon Loveday now; the lady stately in her black silk, the locket containing the hair of her departed parent, one-time a canon of Exeter, lying upon her matronly bosom; the girl awkward in her homespun wrapper, her feet fearful of standing upon ...
— The White Riband - A Young Female's Folly • Fryniwyd Tennyson Jesse
... say that to me, Jack! As for respectability, that homespun word hardly applies; we do have lineage here, and in the European sense, even if without the European power. But that's no matter. It's the pressing down on me of this alien standard, whether expressed or not, that stifles ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... lands. Witness their Constitution, their Parliament, their 30,000 schools in active operation; witness their museums and hospitals; witness their colleges and universities. 'But,' you would also have said, 'give us a race whose women are homespun and refined, courteous and winsome, not tottering on tortured feet, nor immured in zenanas and harems, but who freely mingle in social life, and adorn all they touch;' and such, without controversy, are the women of Japan. Above all, 'give us a reverent ...
— Religion in Japan • George A. Cobbold, B.A.
... tired now, Bron. Lots of responsibilities and such. Take a rest. You and your Cousin Oliver get together and fix those new gadgets on my ship. I'll take the other boys for a run over to this spaceport town. The boys need a run ashore, and there might be some loot. Your grandmother's fond of homespun. I'll try to ...
— The Pirates of Ersatz • Murray Leinster
... all made of the very finest and fairest Meissen china, tripped up to him, and smiled, and gave him her hand, and led him out to a minuet. And he danced it perfectly,—poor little August in his thick, clumsy shoes, and his thick, clumsy sheepskin jacket, and his rough homespun linen, and his broad Tyrolean hat! He must have danced it perfectly, this dance of kings and queens in days when crowns were duly honored, for the lovely lady always smiled benignly and never scolded him at all, and danced ...
— The Nuernberg Stove • Louisa de la Rame (AKA Ouida)
... his pocket and to scribble upon them furiously. When Susan happened to glance at him, his head was bent so low and his straw hat was tilted so far forward that she could not see his face. She observed that he was dressed attractively in an extremely light summer suit of homespun; his hands were large and strong and ruddy—the hands of an artist, in good health. Her glance returned to the magazine. After a few minutes she looked up. She was startled to find that the man was giving her a curious, searching inspection—and that he ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... through the mud in the rain, or filing in on horseback—riding double sometimes—two men or two women, or a man with his wife or daughter behind him, or a woman with a baby in her lap and two more children behind—all dressed in homespun or store-clothes, and the paint from artificial flowers on her hat streaking the face of every girl who had unwisely scanned the heavens that morning. Soon the square was filled with hitched horses, and an auctioneer was bidding off cattle, sheep, hogs and horses to the ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.
... but it has to be heaped up very high to cover a wife's defects, if they be as radical as those in Caroline Everett. Why, to speak out the plain, homespun truth, the girl's ...
— Heart-Histories and Life-Pictures • T. S. Arthur
... edged with white lace, the shirt buttoned about midway down his breast, the big lapels of the collar thrown open, the points touching his shoulders, and exposing the upper portion of his hirsute chest. He wore a vest of gray homespun, but it was unbuttoned almost to the bottom. He had no coat on, and his shirt sleeves were turned up above the elbows, exposing most beautifully shaped arms, and flesh of the most delicate whiteness. ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... to the residence of President Hayden, and inquired for Dr. Robinson, he was decidedly homespun in appearance. He probably was dressed in his best, but his best was shabby enough. His trousers were of coarse satinet, and might have fitted him a season or two before, but now were far outgrown, reaching only half-way down from the tops of his cowhide boots. His waistcoat also was much ...
— From Canal Boy to President - Or The Boyhood and Manhood of James A. Garfield • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... were quite sapless and brittle, and without bothering my brains too much about the matter, I set to work to rid myself of them. After stripping the woody covering off, I found that my tourist suit of rough Scotch homespun had not suffered much harm, although the cloth exuded a damp, moldy smell; also that my thick-soled climbing boots had assumed a cracked rusty appearance as if I had been engaged in some brick-field operations; while my felt hat was ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson
... were homespun-clad mountain children. A high-shouldered, elderly man sat at a table near the deep fireplace, where a huge backlog was smouldering. Through the cobwebbed window-panes ...
— The Young Mountaineers - Short Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... stormed, thick woollen stockings and sabots; and another skirt of the Mere Bourron's fastened around a chemise of coarse homespun linen, its colour faded to a delicious pale mazarine blue, showing the strength ...
— A Village of Vagabonds • F. Berkeley Smith
... years Weaned from the bosom of thy native land, Returnest back and seekest true repose. Oh, what more pleasant than the short-breathed sigh When laying down your burden at the gate, And dizzy with long wandering, you embrace The cool and quiet of a homespun bed." "Alas," said Dalica, "though all commend This choice, and many meet with no control, Yet none pursue it! Age by Care oppressed Feels for the couch, and drops into the grave. The tranquil scene lies further still from Youth: Frenzied Ambition and desponding Love ...
— Gebir • Walter Savage Landor
... and of charity. As for the restrictions upon domestic industry, they were not severely felt among a people devoted, in the country to agriculture, and in the towns to local traffic and shipping, and the American farmer who wore homespun attire, did not realize the harshness or appreciate the purpose of the statute which prohibited the export of wool, or woolen manufactures. As for the Southern planter, the question of fostering domestic ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann
... however, to make certain admissions. It is true that in the fragment as we possess it there are certain passages which pass beyond any legitimate idealization of the actual world in which Jonson chose to lay his scene, and which contrast jarringly and irreconcilably with the coarser threads of homespun. Thus Aeglamour, in so far as it is possible to form an opinion, keeps too much of the artificial Arcadianism of the Italians about him, and is hardly of a piece with the rest of the personae. The same may be said of the name ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... bed, and knowing no fear looked steadily. What he saw thrown into relief against the shadows was the figure of a hillman of the west, and one that in an instant he knew. The Covenanter was dressed in rough homespun hodden gray, stained heavily with the black of the peat holes in which he had been hiding, and torn here and there where the rocks had caught him as he was crawling for shelter. Of middle age, with hair hanging over his ears and beard uncared for, his face bore all the signs ...
— Graham of Claverhouse • Ian Maclaren
... on the streets gadding. They found plenty of occupation, for the air was thick with rumors. A besieged city must perforce be a nest of gossip, a hive of cock-and-bull stories. The regulars looked smart in their regimental uniforms. The militia wore such toggery as they could get—grey homespun coat with red sash, cowskin boots, and the traditional tuque bleue. The trappers not being allowed into the town, furs were rare, and women of the lower classes were obliged to go without them altogether. ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance
... nearly knee-deep it didn't keep folks from singing school. Already they were crowding in. So by the time old Whiffet was ready to begin every bench was filled. Young men and old in homespun and high boots, mothers and young girls in shawls and fascinators, talking and laughing at a lively clip as they took their places: sopranos in the front benches opposite the bass singers; behind ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... black as tar, and to-day was clothed in a yellow homespun frock. Her hair was twisted and bound into two upright tags that projected above her temples. Altogether, she was not unlike a gigantic black-and-tan moth, a resemblance heightened by the aforementioned antennae, albeit lessened by the baby she always ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... her name, received us with that mixture of respect and ease, which shewed she was accustomed to converse with her superiors. She was dressed in a blue homespun gown, (the sleeves of which were drawn up to her elbows and the lower part tucked through her pocket-hole,) a black stuff petticoat, black stockings and shoes with the soles more than half an inch thick. She wore also, a large white apron, ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... scene so well known in the early history of our country, and contains twenty-five figures, thirteen of which should be dressed in crimson uniform, to personate the British soldiers, six in continental costume, three in coarse homespun suits, three in sailor's costume. The stage must be formed to represent a hill, which can be done by using boxes and boards, and covering them with green cloth. The hill should rise from the footlights to within four feet of the ceiling in the background. ...
— Home Pastimes; or Tableaux Vivants • James H. Head
... who fancied he had robed himself in the plain homespun of a natural philosopher at the age of twenty-three journeyed limping leisurely in the mountain maid Carinthia's footsteps, thankful to the Fates for having seen her; and reproving the remainder of superstition within him, which would lay him open to smarts ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... wore gowns of very coarse homespun and home-woven cloth, composed of linen and wool, and called linsey-woolsey, very coarse shoes, and sometimes with buckskin gloves of their own manufacture. If any one chanced to have a ring or pretty buckle, it was ...
— David Crockett: His Life and Adventures • John S. C. Abbott
... Jandol and climbed the Lowari Pass among the fir trees and the pines, and on the very summit he met three men clothed in brown homespun with their hair clubbed at the sides of their heads. Each man carried a rifle on his back and two of them carried swords besides, and they wore sandals of grass upon their feet. They were talking as they went, and they were talking in the Chilti tongue. Shere Ali hailed ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason
... Wales, Norway, Iceland, and similar countries, are most likely to be able to afford this description of information—many native lichens being still used by the peasantry of these countries to dye their homespun yarn, &c. ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... misgivings that he had been rather hasty in the affair of the boots, and that he was likely enough ere long to envy the guide his light and roomy moccasins, to say nothing of his loose leggings and the well-worn frock of grey homespun that had evidently seen service in the woods. Even the gay wampum belt spoke of an ease and comfort to which the young French soldier's stiff sword-belt could not pretend. In fact Jean Baptiste Boulanger, or "J'n B'tiste" as he was familiarly ...
— The King's Warrant - A Story of Old and New France • Alfred H. Engelbach
... frugality, diligence, punctuality, veracity,—the grand fountains from which money, and all real values and valors spring for men. To Friedrich Wilhelm in his rustio simplicity, money had no lack of value; rather the reverse. To the homespun man it was a success of most excellent quality, and the chief symbol of success in all kinds. Yearly he made his own revenues, and his people's along with them and as the source of them, larger: and in all states of his revenue, he had contrived ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume IV. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Friedrich's Apprenticeship, First Stage—1713-1728 • Thomas Carlyle
... clerical, will not do much to prevent this, especially if it be pitched (as it commonly is) upon too high a key. Preventing means, or used to mean, when words had a meaning, getting beforehand with anything. And if young Homespun have from the outset something he likes better, he will not take to the ivory balls in pleasant weather, and in rainy weather will be apt to prefer even quite a stupid book to the board of green cloth. Therefore, boys, go,—and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... stared at her poor, plain, blushing face, and the Adonis in cinnamon and crimson bowed low, as if she had been a duchess, that being his conqueror's way with gentle or simple, maid, wife, or widow, beauty or homespun uncomeliness. ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... looking up where the hills are all so blue, or off across the wide bay. The white houses are very small and they crowd along the road, and the farms are narrow, and there is not much money in the homespun clothes or in the old clock, but the good world is wide about them and the people are not sad like those who ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... treasured as relics of past industry by their fortunate owners deserve special mention. They are rare because nowadays no one will expend the large amount of time necessary to complete one. The foundation of such a quilt is fine white muslin, or fine homespun and woven linen, with a very thin interlining. The beauty of the quilt depends upon the design drawn for the quilting and the fine stitches with which the quilting is done. There is usually a special design planned for ...
— Quilts - Their Story and How to Make Them • Marie D. Webster
... wove jeans any more—but a good carpet-loom now, that might be made useful. Unwilling to hang the bedding on bushes for fear of a chance tear from twig or thorn, she rigged a line in the back yard, and spread quilt and homespun blanket, coarse white sheets and pillowcases that were yellowing with age, out for the glad gay wind to play with, ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan
... merchants bought foreign goods and drained the state of specie to pay for them, while they drank Madeira wine and dressed their wives in fine velvets and laces. So said the farmers; and city ladies, far kinder than these railers deemed them, formed clubs, of which the members pledged themselves to wear homespun,—a poor palliative for the deep-seated ills of the time. In such mood were many of the villagers when in the summer of 1786 they were overtaken by the craze for paper money. At the meeting of the legislature in May, a petition came in from Bristol ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... running roses. The summer-house had four entrances, opening on four paths that divided the ground into quarter-sections occupied by vegetables and small fruits, and around these, like costly embroidery on the hem of a homespun garment, ran a wide border of flowers that blossomed from early April to late November, shifting from one beauty to another as each ...
— Aunt Jane of Kentucky • Eliza Calvert Hall
... Jean, starting like a whipped dog. He took his red cap from under his arm, sighing, and slouched away from the bluff edge, the coarse homespun which he wore revealing knots and ...
— Old Kaskaskia • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... the postmaster. The long-legged youth who carried the mail tarried an hour to talk, for there was no hurry; and in a little while the male population of the village had assembled to help. As a general thing, they were dressed in homespun "jeans," blue or yellow—here were no other varieties of it; all wore one suspender and sometimes two—yarn ones knitted at home,—some wore vests, but few wore coats. Such coats and vests as did appear, however, were rather picturesque than otherwise, for ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 1. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... dream, Or that they woke to it as some might deem, I know not, but the door was opened wide, And the King's name a voice long silent cried, And Phoebus on the very threshold trod, And yet in nothing liker to a god Than when he ruled Admetus' herds, for he Still wore the homespun coat men used to see Among the heifers in the summer morn, And round about him hung the herdsman's horn, And in his hand he bore the herdsman's spear And cornel bow, the prowling dog-wolfs fear, Though ...
— The Earthly Paradise - A Poem • William Morris
... European than Chinese in cut. On their heads they wore the Tam o' Shanter-like cap of black stuff, common among these people, bound on with their long braids, and their coats were of the usual felt. Their skirts, homespun, were made with what we used to call a Spanish flounce. According to Baber, the Lolo petticoat is of great significance. No one may go among the independent Lolos safely save in the guardianship of a member of the tribe, ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall
... overtook them, from which, as quickliest they might, they took shelter in the house of a husbandman, a friend and acquaintance of both of them. After awhile, the rain showing no sign of giving over and they wishing to reach Florence by daylight, they borrowed of their host two old homespun cloaks and two hats, rusty with age, for that there were no better to be had, and set out again upon ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... coat of arms, Arba; I won the decoration when I retired from hard work at the age of fifty. That was about the time you were starting in life by selling fake mining stock around this State. My coat of arms is two patches on a homespun background, surrounded by looped galluses. And I can show you the mile of stone walls I ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... table stood in one corner of the room, a mahogany gateleg occupied the centre, its beauty largely concealed by a cover of yellow and white checked homespun linen, upon which rested a glass oil lamp with a green paper shade, a wide glass dish filled with pictures, an old leather-bound album with heavy brass clasps and hinges. A rag carpet, covered in places with hooked rugs, added a proper note of harmony, while the old walnut chairs ...
— Amanda - A Daughter of the Mennonites • Anna Balmer Myers
... sort of laughter and wonder that is excited by the human doings of a trained chimpanzee. But Craig—the wild man, the arch foe of effeteness, the apostle of the simple life of yarn sock and tallowed boot and homespun pants and hairy jaw—Craig accepted the service with heartfelt thanks in his shaking ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... the Downs amid I'd found a folded bit of Britain, Laid by in lavender and hid The year—let's say—Tom Jones was written; An old farm manor-house it is With fantails fluttering on the gables, A place of men and memories And solid facts and homespun fables. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 29, 1914 • Various
... was a wizened, bent, and thin old man, draped from head to foot in coarse butternut-colored homespun, and called "Old Woollen" by the funny fellow, who walked from car to car ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
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