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More "Trimming" Quotes from Famous Books



... the cook," she said as she came near him and went to trimming the rose bush again. "She understands. Her little boy is going to bring you something to ...
— Tom of the Raiders • Austin Bishop

... bow, and, opening a knife which hung at his waist, went forthwith towards the nearest bush. He cut himself a stout ash staff and fell to trimming it deftly. ...
— Robin Hood • Paul Creswick

... on the parapets. On either side of this same molo stretches a miniature beach of sand and pebble, covered with nets, which the fishermen are always mending, and where the big boats lade or unlade, trimming for the sardine fishery, or driving in to shore with a whirr of oars and a jabber of discordant voices. As the land-wind freshens, you may watch them set off one by one, like pigeons taking flight, ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds

... No matter how sweet and pretty she is, you at once decide that you never could afford to dress her. But that taffeta cost, perhaps, only a dollar a yard. The satin, possibly a dollar and a half. They require almost no trimming, because the material is so handsome and the effect must be as simple as possible. Such a gown never need be lined with silk unless you wish to do it. Many a girl gets up such a gown for fifty or sixty dollars. And then think of the service that there is in it. ...
— From a Girl's Point of View • Lilian Bell

... this execution took place the fleet abode two months, resting the crews, wooding, watering, and trimming the ships, and bringing the fleet into a more compact compass; destroying the Mary, a Portuguese prize, and arranging the whole of the crews in three ships, so that they might the more easily keep together. On August the 17th they ...
— Under Drake's Flag - A Tale of the Spanish Main • G. A. Henty

... explanation which you have given with regard to the necessity of trimming lamps, applies also to candles, which ...
— Conversations on Chemistry, V. 1-2 • Jane Marcet

... might, at need, have explained this free-and-easy demeanor. The old maid wore a merino gown of a dark plum color, of which the cut and trimming dated from the year of the Restoration; a little worked collar, worth perhaps three francs; and a common straw hat with blue satin ribbons edged with straw plait, such as the old-clothes buyers wear at market. On ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac

... the week of March 29 to April 4, 1920, the committee organized and financed the third national coffee week, which was observed by retailers throughout the country. The feature of this week was a window-trimming contest for which prizes of $2,000 were distributed among several hundred grocers. The contest resulted in displays of coffee in nearly 10,000 grocery windows, and greatly increased the sale and consumption of ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers

... bolder and bolder. In fact, so daring were their crimes that the home governments, stirred at last by these outrageous barbarities, seriously undertook the suppression of the freebooters, lopping and trimming the main trunk until its members were scattered hither and thither, and it was thought that the organization was exterminated. But, so far from being exterminated, the individual members were merely scattered north, south, east, and west, ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard Pyle

... the ribbon a bit, then held the trimming of roses close to her face in front of the mirror. Then she began to ...
— The Inferno • Henri Barbusse

... said Bob, enthusiastically. "And you haven't seen half of it yet. There's fortune-telling, and Punch and Judy, and the hat-trimming contest, and I don't ...
— Patty's Friends • Carolyn Wells

... the clay-bank toiled zealously at the important task of mixing and tempering it, while another came and went with pailfuls that were used up as fast as he could bring them. The stones were laid with their smooth faces inward, and there was not a minute wasted in trimming anything for the sake of appearances. Sile could hardly believe that so much could have been done is so short a time, and he was again astonished when the men returned from breakfast. The wall grew at a tremendous rate. He went from that work to the place ...
— Two Arrows - A Story of Red and White • William O. Stoddard

... with the fury of despair. Then the noise ceased suddenly, and the second engineer appeared, emerging out of the stokehold streaked with grime and soaking wet like a chimney-sweep coming out of a well. As soon as his head was clear of the fiddle he began to scold Jukes for not trimming properly the stokehold ventilators; and in answer Jukes made with his hands deprecatory soothing signs meaning: "No wind—can't be helped—you can see for yourself." But the other wouldn't hear reason. His teeth flashed angrily in his dirty face. He didn't mind, he said, the trouble of ...
— Typhoon • Joseph Conrad

... regained her even keel; though sorely strained, you may well believe. So, when on one side you hoist in Locke's head, you go over that way; but now, on the other side, hoist in Kant's and you come back again; but in very poor plight. Thus, some minds for ever keep trimming boat. Oh, ye foolish! throw all these thunder-heads overboard, and then you will float ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville

... need of such precaution, for the young man seemed wholly bent on getting up the trees, most of which she had selected and marked during recent rambles. She helped now vigorously, pulling on the young saplings as they loosened the roots, then trimming them into shape. More than once, however, she detected glances, and his thoughts were more flattering than she imagined. "What vigor she has in that supple, rounded form! Her very touch ought to put life into these trees; I know it ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe

... flat hat, plaited of straw. It had no trimming save a pretty bow and strings of brown ribbon, but Anne thought it was a ...
— A Little Maid of Massachusetts Colony • Alice Turner Curtis

... Phil at dinner-time; but in the afternoon, a little before his usual home-coming hour, he came seeking me, with a very relieved and happy face; and found me trimming a grape-vine in our back garden, near the palings that separated our ground from Mr. Faringfield's. On the Faringfield side of the fence, at this place, grew ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens

... as the great Tartarin, Prince Gregory had, over and above that, donned a queer but magnificent military cap, all covered with gold lace and a trimming of oak-leaves in silver cord, which gave His Highness the aspect of a Mexican general or a railway station-master on the ...
— Tartarin of Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet

... would not be callees if they did not: I have known a Gitana gain twenty ounces of gold, by means of the hokkano baro, in a few hours, whilst the silly Gypsy, her husband, would be toiling with his shears for a fortnight, trimming the horses of the Busne, and yet not be a dollar richer at ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow

... sensible in the highest degree of kindness, and eager for endearing attention, uttering a low plaintive cry when its sympathies are excited. It is particularly cleanly in its habits when domesticated, and spends much of its time in trimming its fur, and carefully divesting its ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent

... affectionately up to the little sitting room window, where her geraniums stood, and even thought kindly of Miss Webster herself, to whom it was not quite so easy to feel genial. She entered the shop. The apprentice sate there at work, busily trimming a fine rice straw bonnet for the lodger within. She looked up joyously at Emilie's approach. She thought how often that kind German face had been to her like a sunbeam on a dull path; how often her musical ...
— Emilie the Peacemaker • Mrs. Thomas Geldart

... center, and with this as a beginning he carved from each side of the hole blocks of the hard-packed snow, each block about two feet long and a foot and a half wide and ten inches thick. These he placed on edge around the circle, fitting their ends close together by trimming them as he found ...
— Bobby of the Labrador • Dillon Wallace

... raised a step or two from the wall. In one was placed a walnut-tree reading-desk, and a huge stuffed arm-chair, covered with Spanish leather. A little cabinet stood beside, with some of its shuttles and drawers open, displaying hawks-bells, dog-whistles, instruments for trimming falcons' feathers, bridle-bits of various constructions, and other trifles connected ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott

... in the pilot's favor, who proved to be a tiger of a fellow, keeping us hard at work, pulling and hauling the braces, and trimming the ship, to catch the least cat's-paw ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville

... notable example of this political indifference in an election which had taken place since their settlement at Cedar Creek. On the day of polling he and his retainer Andy went down to the 'Corner,' the latter with very enlarged anticipations of fun, and perchance a 'row.' His master noticed him trimming a sapling into a splendid 'shillelagh,' with a slender handle and heavy head as ever did execution in a faction fight upon Emerald soil. The very word election had excited his bump of combativeness. But, alas! the little stumpy street was dull and empty as usual; not even the ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe

... sheets of thick white paper, about the size of commercial note, so that when opened they will be heart-shaped. Dip them in melted butter and set aside. After trimming all the fat from lamb or mutton chops, season them with pepper and salt. Put three table-spoonfuls of butter in the frying pan, and when melted, lay in the chops, and cook slowly for fifteen minutes. Add one teaspoonful of finely-chopped parsley, one ...
— Miss Parloa's New Cook Book • Maria Parloa

... efforts to make the awkward new boy feel at home.... I feel doubly grateful to you and Mr. Irving for the light you shed from the lamp of art on life now that I begin to understand the labor and weariness the process of trimming the ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry

... and cold, coquet, be on the fence, straddle, bold with the hare but run with the hounds; nager entre deux eaux[Fr]; wait to see how the cat jumps, wait to see how the wind blows. Adj. changeful &c. 149; irresolute &c. 605; ductile, slippery as an eel, trimming, ambidextrous, timeserving[obs3]; coquetting &c. v. revocatory[obs3], reactionary. Phr. "a change came o'er the ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget

... which she tried to hide the loss. No deterioration of her complexion, no wrinkling of her skin, could have been so dreadful to look at as the rouge that lay thick on her cheeks, and the white enamel plastered on her forehead. The delicate lace, and the bright trimming on her dressing-gown, the ribbons in her cap, and the rings on her bony fingers, all intended to draw the eye away from the change that had passed over her, directed the eye to it, on the contrary; ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins

... hearts, and straining their energies to follow this phantom of fashion; the masses were kept poor because of it, and the youth and hope of the world was betrayed by it. In country villages poor farmers' wives were trimming their bonnets over to be "stylish"; and servant-girls in the cities were wearing imitation sealskins, and shop-clerks and sempstresses selling themselves into brothels for the sake of ribbons and ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair

... In his men cases he uses sometimes one gland, sometimes two; sometimes the whole gland, just as it came from the young goat, sometimes a part of the gland only, but he leans to the opinion that the gland of the three-weeks-old goat gives best results if used entire, without trimming. Sometimes he lays the gland upon the outside of the human testis, connecting part with part; sometimes he opens the testis by incision and lays the goat-gland within the cleft. Very often there are adhesions ...
— The Goat-gland Transplantation • Sydney B. Flower

... eve at home," murmured the young lad after he had said his prayers and tumbled into his narrow berth on the great ship. "I suppose they're trimming the Christmas tree now and hanging up the stockings. I wish ...
— And Thus He Came • Cyrus Townsend Brady

... he went to the city and came home with twenty-five dollars' worth of ostrich plumes for Nettie. He said he was bound that Nettie'd have a real hat once in her life, that he's tired of watching her making her own hats, even piecing out the shapes with bits of cardboard and trimming and retrimming. She got in the way of it the first ten years they were married, when Andy was having such poor luck and now, poor thing, I guess she can't get out of it, because the day after Andy brought the plumes Nettie ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds

... reputation, or at least the most part, goe naked, sauing an apron of a span long, and as much in breadth before them, and a lace two fingers broad before them, girded about with a string and no more: and thus they thinke them as well as we with all our trimming. Of the fruits and trees that be here I cannot now speake, for I should make another letter as long as this. For hitherto I haue not seene a tree here whose like I haue seene in Europe, the vine excepted, which neuerthelesse here is to no purpose, so that all the wines ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of - The English Nation, Vol. 11 • Richard Hakluyt

... might on the corners of the wall. The square contained a bowling-green of exquisitely-kept turf, that looked as if cut out of green velvet, and was edged on its four sides by a raised broad-paved walk, with a trimming of flower-beds, where the earliest blossoms were showing themselves. In the centre of each side another paved path intersected the green lawn, and the meeting of these two diameters was at a circular stone basin, presided over by another merman, blowing ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge

... that the hem is quite level all round; nothing is more untidy than a skirt that dips down at the back or sides—dropping at the back is a little trick a cotton skirt cultivates when it comes home from the laundry. A plain shirt without "frills or furbelows"—if any trimming at all, tucks are the neatest—a collar, tie, and waistband, go to make an outfit as comfortable and suitable as ...
— Lawn Tennis for Ladies • Mrs. Lambert Chambers

... chamber, and undertook the task of keeping the consecrated lamp alight. There was an accuracy and a certainty about Hilda's movements, as regarded all matters that lay deep enough to have their roots in right or wrong, which made it as possible and safe to rely upon the timely and careful trimming of this lamp (if she were in life, and able to creep up the steps), as upon the rising of to-morrow's sun, with lustre-undiminished ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... her lee bow, was breasted up to her course in a way that showed she would come out to windward of the island again without any difficulty. This whole evolution was made with the greatest facility, not a sheet being touched, the sails trimming themselves, the rudder alone controlling the admirable machine. The object appeared to be a reconnoissance. When, however, the Scud had made the circuit of the entire island, and had again got her weatherly position in the channel by which she ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper

... laughed Johnson. Presently, he saw her quietly closet herself in the cupboard, only to emerge a few minutes later dressed for the night. Over her white cambric gown with its coarse lace trimming showing at the throat, she wore a red woollen blanket robe held in at the waist by a heavy, twisted, red cord which, to the man who got a glimpse of her as she crossed the room, made her prettier, even, than she had seemed at ...
— The Girl of the Golden West • David Belasco

... above group we have a white double-breasted waistcoat, high chemisette of lace, and collar of English embroidery; cap of silk stuff, forming a calotte, trimmed with lace of Alencon point; and ribbon for the wrist. At the top of the first trimming is fastened a slight silk fringe under several bunches of silk or velvet ribbon. For indoors, and for dress parties, the lace lappets are replaced by ribbon like the bunches. A little ribbon ornament is used round the gloves, fastened by a gold ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various

... may be produced by frequent transplanting, thorough trimming of the roots, and repeated heading-in. The fruit on such dwarfs must be well thinned out when young, or it will be smaller than is natural. The effect of heading in is to cause the sap to mature an abundance of fruit-buds. This will ...
— Soil Culture • J. H. Walden

... between the guns, chiefly those abreast of the fore-hatchway, there have been groups assembled to scrape and polish themselves ever since breakfast-time, and even before it. Some are washing themselves; others cutting, and combing, and trimming their hair; for, now-a-days, there are none of those huge long tails, or club ties, which descended along the back of the sailors who fought with Benbow and Rodney. The dandyism of Jack has now taken another turn, and the knowing thing at present is to have a parcel ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall

... isn't strong of you, dear Mrs. Thorpe. You mustn't—you mustn't. [AGNES brings the tray with the cut flowers to the nearer table; calmly and methodically she resumes trimming the stalks.] ...
— The Notorious Mrs. Ebbsmith • Arthur Wing Pinero

... turned the next corner she met Maudie Ducker. Maudie Ducker had on a new plaid dress with velvet trimming, and Maudie ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung

... reckon. But my lunacy took the form of light-headedness with a strange, almost persistent, sense of exaltation. I kept my strength so much better than they that almost unconsciously they left most of the trimming and steering in my hands. And I sat and steered as a god, in a world blank of all but miserable happenings. I looked on Santa, and she was the woman I loved but should never enjoy. I looked on Farrell: and he was here, brought ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... in houses are the trimming of lamps and the care of the books. The condition of many libraries in large country houses is most lamentable. In such neglect are they that it would take months, and in some cases years, working day and night, to restore them to a healthy condition. For, poor things! they are really ...
— The Private Library - What We Do Know, What We Don't Know, What We Ought to Know - About Our Books • Arthur L. Humphreys

... determination prevails. Mr Cobden himself, and some of his colleagues, are not unaware of the fact, and have, in the factious and political sense, latterly trimmed their course accordingly. But, notwithstanding, confidence they have recovered not—never will, because apostacy or trimming cannot inspire confidence; they are endured—to be used, and to be laid aside, "steeped in Lethe" and forgotten, as ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various

... manure. This protects the roots and ensures a vigorous growth the coming season. Allow no weeds or even grass to encroach on the young hedge until it is strong and established. For the first year no trimming will be necessary beyond cutting back an occasional branch or top that is growing stronger than the others; and this should be done in early October. During the second season the plants should grow much more strongly; and now the shears are needed in summer. Some branches ...
— The Home Acre • E. P. Roe

... trimming his boat. E'en that frail skiff from all danger might tear me, And to the dwellings of friends it might bear me. Scarcely his earnings can keep life afloat. Richly with treasures his lap I'd heap over,— Oh! what a draught should ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... habitually under the Old Procuratie, beside a basket of small puppies in that snuffling and quivering state which appears to be the favorite condition of very young dogs, and occupies himself in conversation with an adjacent dealer in grapes and peaches, or sometimes fastidiously engages in trimming the hair upon the closely shaven bodies of the dogs; for in Venice it is the ambition of every dog to look as much like the Lion of St. Mark as the nature of the case will permit. My vagabond at times ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells

... garden was like playing at "hide-and-seek." There were the tall hollyhocks beginning to flower and dazzle the eye with their pink, white, and yellow; there were the syringas and Guelder roses, all large and disorderly for want of trimming; there were leafy walls of scarlet beans and late peas; there was a row of bushy filberts in one direction, and in another a huge apple-tree making a barren circle under its low-spreading boughs. But what signified a barren patch or two? The garden was so large. ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot

... Turkes. Their armour is a coate of plate, with a skull, on their heads. Some of their coates are couered with veluet or cloth of gold: their desire is to be sumptuous in the field, and especially the nobles and gentlemen: as I haue heard their trimming is very costly, and partly I haue seene it, or else I would scarcely haue beleeued it: but the Duke himselfe is richly attired aboue all measure: his pauilion is couered either with cloth of gold or siluer, and so set with stones that it is wonderfull to see it. I haue seene the Kings ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, • Richard Hakluyt

... and beseeching him with honeyed endearments, to be a good boy and obey his father. But the little figure seemed to have turned to stone in her arms. In less than the five minutes Mr. Allan was back in the room, trimming a long switch cut from one of the trees in the garden ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard

... me; as I started forth this morning I saw a gardener upon the upper terrace trimming about some bushes of wonderful grace and beauty, and as I stepped among them I saw an ancient sundial; 'tis the first I've yet seen, and I made bold to ask him to plant some rare rose near it, that its leaves and blossoms might enfold ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne

... crop, and the total sales from that crop amounted to $750, but about half of this had been expended for trimming and spraying the trees, a spraying outfit, barrels, picking, packing, freight and cold storage. A good bunch ...
— The Story of the Soil • Cyril G. Hopkins

... sordid, brutal, sickening! Dull callousness to smug contrition quickening Under the spur of an ignoble terror, A hope scarce less ignoble—in expression, At least. Yes, calm judicial self-possession Is difficult, most easy trimming error; But compromise with claims conflicting here, Is scarce the course of equity ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, 19 April 1890 • Various

... the wide space of those Long Island fields and the row of frame cottages. There was the little house, rather more spick and span than when we had known it, freshly painted in its brown and white, the privet hedge very handsomely shaven, and its present occupant busily engaged in trimming some tufts of grass along the pavement. We did not linger, and that cheerful-looking man little knew how many ghosts he was living among. All of us, we suppose, dwell amid ghosts we are not aware of, and this gentleman would be startled if he ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley

... I dare say, for which of you ever heard of trimming cows with their own horns and ears? How should you like to see a cow with her ears—poor thing!—cut to the shape of a leaf with notched edges, and horns trained in some queer shape, twisted into curls, or divided into four, with two ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, May, 1878, No. 7. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various

... prevent him from accomplishing what he deemed his duty, in secretly denouncing his plans, It is also true that he, at the same time, gave the Prince private information concerning the government, and sent him intercepted letters from his enemies, thus easing his conscience on both sides, and trimming his sails to every wind which might blow. The Duke now, however, reminded his Highness of the contumely with which he had been treated at Brussels, of the insolent threats with which the citizens had pursued his servants and secretaries even to ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... with her most wondering expression. Her hair still as she had plaited it for the night; one plait had touched him on the nose and awoke him before she spoke. She stood bending over him, in her long white nightgown with its dainty lace trimming, and with bare feet. She would never have come in like that if something terrible had not happened. Why did she not speak? only look and look—or was she ...
— Absalom's Hair • Bjornstjerne Bjornson

... the books are prepared for trimming by "jogging up" in bunches of the proper thickness, for the cutting machine. If the work is large or the paper highly sized and slippery, a light coating of glue is applied to the centre of the back, to keep ...
— The Building of a Book • Various

... illumination, dawn; the lantern rays fade in the growing brightness, and the lanterns that shone so brightly are becoming smoky and dim. To many men this is no more than a waning of the lanterns, and they call for new ones, or a trimming of the old. They blame the day for putting out these flares. And some go apart, out of the glare of life, into corners of obscurity, where the radiation of the lantern may still be faintly traced. But, indeed, with the new light there ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells

... shagbark on the contrary makes slow recovery and many years are required for a cut-back shagbark hickory to regain normal equilibrium between top and root. The pignut and mockernut apparently stand midway between the bitternut and the shagbark in respect to the trimming of the top. My experience with shagbark includes the top working of trees ranging from a few inches in diameter up to fifteen or twenty inches in diameter, and the cutting back has included all stages from actual felling of the tree to cutting off half of the top or less than half of the top. The ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Eleventh Annual Meeting - Washington, D. C. October 7 AND 8, 1920 • Various

... an odd-looking fellow, tall and thin, with a lean face from which a pair of pale and near-sighted eyes peered forth from behind rubber-rimmed spectacles. His hair was almost black and was always in need of trimming, and his garments—he seldom wore trousers, coat and vest that matched—always seemed about to fall off him. Clint's first glimpse of Penny came one afternoon. The door of Number 13 was open as Clint returned to his room after football practice and lugubrious sounds ...
— Left Tackle Thayer • Ralph Henry Barbour

... have to be pruned—perhaps the ivy around the fountain will need trimming—maybe the narcissi will need thinning out when they're through blossoming—I'm stupid about narcissi. I've been living so long where there weren't any—" Her thoughts had raced longingly toward the back yard of her childhood while Margot had ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke

... time finished trimming the aspen sticks; and by the fading light of day and the red light of the fire they set to work to mend the broken leg. Between them they knew something of surgery: she by recollecting all that she had seen in her father's ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham

... sight met her eye. It was the axe and the coil of rope which had fallen from the wagon during its descent, and now lay within easy reach. Passing the rope several times around his body so as to form a sling she cut a stout bush, and trimming it, made a stake which she firmly fastened into a crevice, and with, an exertion of strength, such as her loving and resolute heart could have alone inspired her to put forth, she extricated him from his position, and laying the ends of the rope over ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler

... depth. There is a danger when teaching becomes mainly practical of its losing sight of the fundamental laws amid the multitude of details, and attaching itself to trifles. There is a superstition in philosophy as well as in religion. Epictetus gives directions for the trimming of the beard in a tone as serious as if he were speaking of the summum bonum. And stoicism from the very first, by its absurd paradox that all faults are equal, obviously fell into this very snare, which, the moment it was popularized, could not fail ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell

... Davenant had pronounced the words, "Set my mind at rest, Granville," as she felt it must then be embarrassing to him to speak, and to herself to hear. Her retreat, had not, however, been effected with considerable loss, she had been compelled to leave a large piece of the crape-trimming of her gown under the foot ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth

... a noble enthusiasm, inspired his monks to their task. He even provided lamps of ingenious construction, that seem to have been self-trimming, to aid them in their work. He himself set an example of literary diligence, astonishing in one ...
— A Short History of Monks and Monasteries • Alfred Wesley Wishart

... that, however, the sky cleared a little, and Bill got sight of part of the constellation of the Great Bear. Although the pole-star was not visible, he guessed pretty nearly its position, and thus ascertained that the breeze came from the south-west. Trimming the lug-sail accordingly, the tars turned the prow of the little craft to the northward, and steered for ...
— The Battle and the Breeze • R.M. Ballantyne

... extra work that occupies me so much, we must do without; you shall be content with clean white linen, and Isabel's frocks and things must go with less trimming—she is pretty enough without them, you know—then I can take in sewing, and earn enough to pay for what the poor little thing will eat. Perhaps she knows how to sew a little; at any rate, she and Isabel will be handy about the house, and give me more time. There, now, isn't my plan a good ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens

... authorities prefer spruce for ordinary usage, but in rough water and in shooting rapids a harder wood is best. The weak part of a paddle is where the blade joins the handle, and this part should not be too slender. If you use spruce paddles keep them smooth by trimming away all roughness and keep them well shellacked, else they may become water-soaked. Paddles range in price from one dollar and fifty ...
— On the Trail - An Outdoor Book for Girls • Lina Beard and Adelia Belle Beard

... day, a full day's pay being from 50 to 60 cents.[23] In other cases a day's work brought in but 25 cents, and seventeen overalls of blue denim gave a return of 75 cents. Two and a half cents each is paid for the making of boys' gingham waists, with trimming on neck and sleeves, including the button-holes; and the women who made these sat sixteen hours at the sewing-machine, with a ...
— Women Wage-Earners - Their Past, Their Present, and Their Future • Helen Campbell

... house and out of it she was capable of everything. How beautiful her skill was as a dressmaker, the exquisite lines in her own black or gray or white dresses testified to every one who ever saw her. She never wore any other colors, nor was anything like "trimming" ever seen about her; there were only the fine, free outlines, and a white handkerchief folded carefully ...
— Authors and Friends • Annie Fields

... up dead, from the graveled drive of a gentleman's place, where he had been trimming the high trees that shaded it. An unsound limb—a heedless movement—and Peter went straight down, thirty feet, and out of life. Out of life, where he had a trim, comfortable young wife—one happy little child, ...
— Faith Gartney's Girlhood • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney

... I told him that his secret was safe with me, and I asked him if he had heard that you were laid by the heels. He answered that he knew it, and that he would be answerable that no harm befell you, though in truth it seemed to me that he had his hands full in trimming his own sails, without acting as pilot to another. However, there I left him, and there I shall find him again if so be as he has done ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle

... deceased warriors of the church. He considered himself as fulfilling a sacred duty, while renewing to the eyes of posterity the decaying emblems of the zeal and sufferings of their forefathers, and thereby trimming, as it were, the beacon-light, which was to warn future generations to defend their religion ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... Wells, of the City Hall squad, entered, pausing abruptly at sight of Anderson. Giving the latter no time for words, Mr. Burns issued his instructions. On the instant he was the trained newspaper man again, cheating the clock dial and trimming minutes: his ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach

... daughter's room only by a wooden partition. Still, it was bliss to be alone with her for a few moments, as long as she appeared to be asleep. She did not see me, and I could gaze on her at will. So pale was she that she seemed as white as her muslin dressing-gown, or as her satin slippers with their trimming of swan's down. Her delicate, transparent hand was to my eyes like some unknown jewel. Never before had I realized what a woman was; beauty for me had hitherto meant youth and health, together with a sort of manly hardihood. ...
— Mauprat • George Sand

... Virginia, dropping in her excitement her last year's bonnet, which she was trimming ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... into the woods, he came up and told me to stop my cart, and that he would teach me how to trifle away my time, and break gates. He then went to a large gum-tree, and with his axe cut three large switches, and, after trimming them up neatly with his pocketknife, he ordered me to take off my clothes. I made him no answer, but stood with my clothes on. He repeated his order. I still made him no answer, nor did I move to strip myself. Upon this he rushed at me with the ...
— The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass - An American Slave • Frederick Douglass

... manners, unable to conceive one peculiar to itself,—this "what-'ll-Mrs.-Grundy-say" devotion to conformity in small things and great, which pervades the American body-social from the matter of church-going to the trimming of women's petticoats,—this dread of singularity, which has eaten up all individuality amongst them, and makes their population like so many moral and mental lithographs, and their houses like ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble

... day. She was clipping and trimming the late roses in the bright autumnal afternoon, when Lady Laura Armstrong's close carriage drove up to the gate, with my lady inside it, in deep mourning. The visit was unexpected, and startled Clarissa a little, with a sensation that was not all pleasure. She could scarcely be otherwise than ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon

... Bourrienne, collect a few more thrones, and then we'll get to work on a new map of Europe. Russia never did look well or graceful on the existing maps. It makes the continent look lop-sided, and Germany and Austria need trimming down a bit. I propose to shove Russia over into Asia, annex Germany and Austria to France, drop Turkey into the Bosporus, and tow England farther north and hitch her on to the north pole. Wire the Italians ...
— Mr. Bonaparte of Corsica • John Kendrick Bangs

... out the young shoots, for if they grow too close to each other they are liable to mildew. Tea Roses can he pruned during the same season with good results, though they do not require so severe a trimming down as the Hybrid Perpetuals. With the teas the important part is the cutting back and removing of all old and weak wood, dead twigs and unhealthy limbs. Spraying should be done just after the winter pruning, just before growth begins in the early spring. A careful spray at ...
— The Mayflower, January, 1905 • Various

... was plainly on the other side, and he saw it. But then the same weakness in his character carried him, as it would have done his great-uncle Gaston in the same case, to keep measures with the Chevalier. His double-trimming character prevailed on him to talk with the Duke of Ormond, but it carried him no farther. I question not but he did, on this occasion, what you must have observed many men to do: we not only endeavour ...
— Letters to Sir William Windham and Mr. Pope • Lord Bolingbroke

... the housework, before and after school, making beds, trimming lamps, and washing dishes. The heaviest work was done by a strong Irish girl, my mother always attending to the cooking herself. She was, however, a better caterer than the circumstances required or permitted. She liked to make nice things for the table, and, having been accustomed ...
— A New England Girlhood • Lucy Larcom

... giving of undue prominence to one fact brings others inexorably on the head of the student to avenge his neglect of them, so it happened with Tom in his practical study of the science of rowing that by thinking of his hands he forgot his seat, and the necessity of trimming properly. Whereupon the old tub began to rock fearfully, and the next moment, he missed the water altogether with his right scull, and subsided backwards, not without struggles, into the bottom of the boat; while the half stroke which he had pulled with his left hand sent ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes

... spreads far abroad, and is unfathomably deep. It fits like a circus tent, and a woman's head is hidden away in it like the man's who prompts the singers from his tin shed in the stage of an opera. There is no particle of trimming about this monstrous capote, as they call it—it is just a plain, ugly dead-blue mass of sail, and a woman can't go within eight points of the wind with one of them on; she has to go before the wind or not at all. The general style of the capote is the same in all ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... chamber, indolently trimming his nails. A tall swash-buckler, with a red nose and a black patch over his eye, was with him, also seated and conversing with familiar earnestness, as the ...
— St George's Cross • H. G. Keene

... alcoves, far withdrawn, He turned with measured steps and slow, Trimming his lantern as he went; And there, among the shadows, bent Above one ponderous folio, With whose miraculous text were blent Seraphic faces: Angels, crowned With rings of melting amethyst; Mute, patient Martyrs, cruelly bound To blazing fagots; here and there, Some bold, serene Evangelist, ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... forest you know, Yet who can describe all the wonders below? On a soft bed of sponge in the deep sea I lie, And watch the huge shark and the grampus glide by; Or amidst groves of coral I play at bo-peep, Or I float where the porpoise and flying-fish leap. I have seen the thin nautilus trimming her sail, And the Geyser-like waterspout made by the whale; To this lord of the ocean there clung a whole bevy Of parasite barnacles waiting his 'levee.' I have seen the small soldier-crab coated in red, With the shell of a whelk for a home overhead; And ...
— The Quadrupeds' Pic-Nic • F. B. C.

... 'whose girl' that was before night. Everything was fair in love and war; and Bat considered he had run down a case of both. According to his lights, he had; but his lights were smutty and in need of trimming. ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut

... their several instruments for the disquisition of arts. Now there are certain scioli or smatterers that are busy in the skirts and outsides of learning, and have scarce anything of solid literature to commend them. They may have some edging or trimming of a scholar, a welt or so; ...
— Discoveries and Some Poems • Ben Jonson

... with visiting, myself," said Mrs. Torney, who was becoming something of a philosopher as she went into old age. "But you can't get that through a young one's skull!" she added, trimming the dangling pastry from a pie with masterly strokes of her knife. "Either you have such a good time that your own home is spoiled for you, for dear knows how long, or else you set around wondering why on earth you ever come. And then you've got to have the folks back to visit you, and ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris

... he had scarcely seen her, much less spoken with her, since his arrival from Londinium, he followed the man to the door of her apartments. Here he passed a second slave, a tall fellow with a shock of black, unkempt hair, who was trimming a lamp near by. This one turned his head to watch him as he entered, with fierce wolf eyes into which leaped sudden jealous distrust. But a slave was a slave to Marius; and so heedless was he of the man's ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor

... entered the room, Harriet began to admire the lace trimming of Anne's dress, asking many questions about it, to all of which Anne replied with great good nature. As soon as the lace had been sufficiently discussed, Harriet turned round to Elizabeth, exclaiming, 'Why, Lizzie, why in the world have you ...
— Abbeychurch - or, Self-Control and Self-Conceit • Charlotte M. Yonge

... wanted trimming again. He took up the snuffers—but paused suddenly on the very point of using them, and looked attentively at the candle—then back, over his shoulder, at the curtained bed—then again at the candle. It had been lighted, for ...
— The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices • Charles Dickens

... of trimming the combs of capons, adds (V, 302) an interesting account of an experiment which he says he had made "une espece de greffe animale": after trimming the comb of a growing cockerel his budding spurs were cut out and grafted on the roots of the ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato

... the trimming of branches and knots and "rossing" of bark, to lessen the friction in sliding along ...
— Handwork in Wood • William Noyes

... western mountaineer, with bearskin shirt, fringed leggings, and the long, deadly rifle, carried one back to the days of Boone and the "dark and bloody ground." The dirty gray and tarnished silver of the muddy-complexioned Carolinian; the dingy butternut of the lank, muscular Georgian, with its green trimming and full skirts; and the Alabamians from the coast, nearly all in blue of a cleaner hue and neater cut; while the Louisiana troops were, as a general thing, better equipped and more regularly uniformed than any others ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon

... planters to come down, and then went ashore. He soon after sent on board a hogshead of rum, and ordered all the men prisoners to be close shaved against the next morning, and the women to have their best head-dresses put on, which occasioned no little hurry on board; for, between the trimming of beards, and putting on of caps, all hands ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Bampfylde Moore Carew • Unknown

... fidgety person that has rustle in it, rustles. It chafes against the walls of silence as a caged bear chafes, with feverish restlessness, against the walls of his cell; and as if the annoyance of one sense were not sufficient, she seems to have adopted a bob-and-sinker style of trimming, for hat and dress, and hair and cloak, and every thing that goes to make up her externals. Little pendants are everywhere—little tassels, and little balls, and little tufts—at the end of little cords; and these are all the time bobbing up and down, and trembling, ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb

... was a pink gingham, and when it was nicely finished, aunt Jane gave Rebecca a delightful surprise. She showed her how to make a pretty trimming of narrow white linen tape, by folding it in pointed shapes and sewing it down very ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... temperament, or allow ourselves to drift wherever the mind bears us. Just as the skilled sailor can tack up against the wind, and use ingenuity to compel a contrary breeze to bring him to the haven of his desire, so we must be wise in trimming our sails to the force of circumstance; while there is an eager delight in making adverse conditions help us to ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson

... purchasers—as, for instance, the grant held by this Capitain Jean-Baptiste Grandissime—could be bought back now for half what he had got for it. Certainly, as to that, the Capitain might well have that quietude of mind which enabled him to find occupation in perfecting the edge of his penknife and trimming his nails ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable

... to the coverside and cut a good staff of ground oak, straight, without new, and six feet in length, and came back trimming away the tender stems from it, while the stranger waited for him, leaning upon his staff, and whistling as he gazed round about. Robin observed him furtively as he trimmed his staff, measuring him from top to toe from out the corner of his eye, and thought that he had never seen a ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle

... Townshend, we conclude, Will be very ill that day; if one could pity the poor toad, one should: there is jealousy of your brother,—fear of your brother,—fear of Mr. Pitt,—influence of his own brother,— connexions entered into both with Lord Bute and Mr. Grenville, and a trimming plan concerted with Lord George Sackville and Charles Yorke, all tearing him or impelling him a thousand ways, with the addition of his own vanity and irresolution, and the contempt of every body else. I dined with him yesterday at Mr. Mackinsy's, where his whole ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole

... also used for caulking. They gather it in the forest, especially during the dries, collect it in hollow bamboos, and prepare it by heating in the neptune, or brass pan. The odour is pleasant, but fragments of falling fire endanger the hut, and trimming must be repeated every ten minutes. The sexes are not separated; as throughout intertropical Africa, the men are fond of idling at their clubs; and the women, who must fetch water and cook, clean the hut, ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton

... Smalley. "Everybody's clothes are too young for 'em nowadays. The only difference between the dresses we make for girls of sixteen and the dresses we make for their grandmothers of sixty is that the sixty-year-old ones want 'em shorter and lower, and they run more to rose-bud trimming." ...
— Emma McChesney & Co. • Edna Ferber

... the family was more helpful than little Harold, who, after school time, worked side by side with his father, trimming the ready made review slips which publishers send out with books, and seeing that the paste pot never got empty or the paste too thick. Harold, as his father often proudly observed, was a born book reviewer. From infancy it was observed that the outside of a book always interested him more than ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor

... temper. Indeed there was nothing native about her but the skin; and the type abounds, and is everywhere respected nearer home. It did us good to see her scour the grounds, examining the plants and chickens; watering, feeding, trimming them; taking angry, purpose-like possession. When she neared the house our sympathy abated; when she came to the broken chest I wished I were elsewhere. We had scarce a word in common; but her whole lean body spoke for her with indignant eloquence. "My ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... to be happy in the state in which God has placed her," said Mrs. Lyman, trimming ...
— Little Grandmother • Sophie May

... writing of the Yankee in King Arthur's Court. Intended as a fierce heart-cry against human injustice—man's inhumanity to man—as such it will live and find readers; but, more than any other of Mark Twain's pretentious works, it needs editing—trimming by a fond ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... very simple disguise, just altering my complexion and sticking on a moustache with spirit gum, hair by hair, and trimming it down military fashion. Everything ran smoothly, and I seemed to make a fairly favourable impression upon Lala Huang, the Chinaman's daughter, who evidently interviews prospective customers before they ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer

... it cease, nor yield to any trumpet-blast, but rolled on in spreading waves down every street and alley; it reached the ships in the port, and rang through the halls of the rich and the hovels of the poor; it even found a dull echo in the light-house at the point of Pharos, where the watchman was trimming the lamp for the night; and in an incredibly short time all Alexandria knew that Caesar had dealt a death-blow to the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... the policy group looked not one whit better. Dr. Pilar had been worriedly rubbing at his face, so that his normally neat beard had begun to take on the appearance of a ruptured mohair sofa; Dr. Petrelli, the lean, waspish chemist, was nervously trimming his fingernails with his teeth: and the M.D., Dr. Smathers, had a hangdog expression on his pudgy face and had begun drumming his fingers in a staccato tattoo ...
— Cum Grano Salis • Gordon Randall Garrett

... an elevation and Fig. 7b a plan of the tool for performing the seventh operation. P P are the punches for trimming the outside and Q Q those for trimming the inside of the ends of the links. The links adjacent to the one to be operated on are brought together into the position shown in dotted lines, the bed-die having an aperture in it to admit of this, ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 819 - Volume XXXII, Number 819. Issue Date September 12, 1891 • Various

... Delaware and Sullivan. They are described in New York State Museum Bulletin 61 by Harold T. Dickinson. There is a great variety in color and physical properties of stone from these quarries. It is used as building stone and for trimming, and some of it is especially valuable for large platforms. A large proportion of the output is in the form ...
— New York at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis 1904 - Report of the New York State Commission • DeLancey M. Ellis

... paper—coming back at last as straight as out of a fairy-tale and with you as an attendant fairy." Milly hereupon replied appreciatively that such a description of herself made her feel as if pink paper were her dress and lavender its trimming; but Aunt Maud was not to be deterred by a weak joke from keeping it up. Her interlocutress could feel besides that she kept it up in perfect sincerity. She was somehow at this hour a very happy woman, and a part ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2 • Henry James

... righteous black satin trimmed with bugles and fringe, and a small flat bonnet whose strings indifferently supported her chins. She fixed her sharp small eyes immediately on Madeleine's beautiful house gown of nile green camel's hair, made with her usual sweeping lines and without trimming of any sort. ...
— Sleeping Fires • Gertrude Atherton

... when they opened the doors they found Cleopatra stark dead, laid upon a bed of gold, attired and arrayed in her royal robes, and one of her two women, who was called Iris, dead at her feet, and the other woman (called Charmion) half dead, and trembling, trimming the diadem which Cleopatra ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... physical reality; while Peony expanded in breadth rather than height, and rolled along on his short and sturdy legs as substantial as an elephant, though not quite so big. Then the mother resumed her work. What it was I forget; but she was either trimming a silken bonnet for Violet, or darning a pair of stockings for little Peony's short legs. Again, however, and again, and yet other agains, she could not help turning her head to the window to see how the children got on with ...
— The Snow Image • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... RAINBOW. A footman: from the variety of colours in the liveries and trimming of gentlemen of ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.

... time now. Bud, you and Tim and Dough-head give them guys a singe, their hair's getting too long. The rest of you boys just content yourselves doing a fancy decoration on the canvas all around 'em. I'll deevote my entire attenshun to trimming them lugshuriant whiskers, Mister Harris is a-sporting. All ready now,—one, two, three, ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... her grimy decks. There was a thin, eddying coil of bluish smoke hurrying from the galley chimney under the high-arching foot of the fore-course and out over the port cat-head; and the watch, having no sail-trimming to attend to, were squatted upon their hams on the fore deck, playing cards. The hooker needed no looking after in such weather as this, and the only individual, beside ourselves, abaft the mainmast ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood

... up to him through the dull afterglow was a slightly built youth in the uniform of the regular cavalry, yellow trimming on collar, yellow welts about the seams of the jacket, yellow stripes on the breeches; and, as the youth drew bridle, saluted, and turned to ride forward beside him, he caught sight of a lieutenant's shoulder straps ...
— Special Messenger • Robert W. Chambers

... ship of 229,450 cubic feet capacity and was driven by twin Chenu engines of 210 horse-power each. She carried a crew of six, and was equipped with wireless and machine guns. The car could be moved fore and aft for trimming purposes, either by power or by hand. This was, however, ...
— British Airships, Past, Present, and Future • George Whale

... Clerical Character" in "Political Essays" (Works, III, 276): "This same shuffling divine is the same Dr. Paley, who afterwards employed the whole of his life, and his moderate second-hand abilities, in tampering with religion, morality, and politics,—in trimming between his convenience and his conscience,—in crawling between heaven and earth, and trying to cajole both. His celebrated and popular work on Moral Philosophy, is celebrated and popular for no other reason, than ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin

... eagerly accepted his offer. The mixed grey cloth English clothes were passed by in scorn, but the bright trimming of a cloak was much admired by the young ladies, though they would have liked James to have been dressed in red, like his two pages and kinsfolk, Willy and Mungo Graham. Still, even in the despised grey suit they thought he made a brave show as he rode away from the ...
— The Red Book of Heroes • Leonora Blanche Lang

... dress necessitated by the exigencies of war gave the crowd a very striking appearance. In single suits I saw sleeves of one color, the waist of another, the skirt of another; scarlet jackets and gray skirts; black waists and blue skirts; black skirts and gray waists; the trimming chiefly gold braid and buttons, to give a military air. The gray and gold uniforms of the officers, glittering between, made up a carnival of color. Every moment we saw strange meetings and partings of people from all over the South. Conditions of time, space, locality, and ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable

... bank it. You can get four per cent. on deposits. Even at the salary I've been earning, I've figured out that in ten years I'd have an income of about $50 a month just from the interest alone. Well, I might invest some of the principal in a little business—say, trimming hats or a ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry

... her without a sound, only shuddering once and again, and holding her with a convulsive grip. The other women moved around, and busied themselves with little offices, like the making of tea and the trimming of lamps, and talked among each other in a quiet way with the odd little upward inflections with which women simulate cheerfulness and hope, telling tales of children who had been lost and had been found again all safe and unscathed, ...
— Jersey Street and Jersey Lane - Urban and Suburban Sketches • H. C. Bunner

... front porch endeavoring to readjust the bows upon the old straw bonnet. She had taken them off, and sponged both ribbon and straw, and she was now trying her best to make the bows hold up their heads with the spirit and grace which distinguish a milliner's trimming. She looked up from time to time to enjoy the reflection of the trees in the lake surrounding the house. For her grass was being flooded to-day, and that was always a pretty sight. "It looks almost as pretty as Watkins' pond out on the Goodham turnpike," she reflected, as the ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller

... fall and winter of 1895 was spent in cleaning up, trimming the trees, transplanting shrubs and vines, including border beds of hydrangeas which were planted around the walls of the house and out-buildings. When spring came and the garden had been plowed, rolled and planted, the grounds ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt

... the garden. She had swept every inch of the deep adobe house, had fixed over the arrangement of Indian baskets on the mantel, had filled all the lamps with coal-oil. She was very careful with the lamps, trimming the wicks to smokeless perfection, for oil was scarce and precious in Lost Valley, as were all outside products, since they must come in at long intervals and in small quantities. And as she worked she sang, wild, wordless melodies in a natural ...
— Tharon of Lost Valley • Vingie E. Roe

... of hundred pounds, maybe," said Alex. "The green head, this way, might make fifty of that, I don't know. We'll have to make two trips down to the bivouac, that's one thing sure. Maybe we can lighten the heads by trimming out to-night." ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Trail • Emerson Hough

... this time got together in a corner of the garden, and were lovingly occupied in trimming the same pot ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various

... The flowers were like new acquaintances; she approached them in a familiar spirit, and made herself at home among them. The garden walks were damp, and Edna called to the maid to bring out her rubber sandals. And there she stayed, and stooped, digging around the plants, trimming, picking dead, dry leaves. The children's little dog came out, interfering, getting in her way. She scolded him, laughed at him, played with him. The garden smelled so good and looked so pretty in the ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin

... could scarce set one foot before the other crawled painfully along the road. Many of these were slain by the Turks, but not the less did the rest brave the dangers of the journey. And in the camp there was a great furbishing of arms and armour, and trimming of the plumes of helmets, for it was counted an unseemly thing that any man should enter such a place as the Holy City ...
— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie

... gold branches, on the table of this hut. The commissaire praised our philanthropy, the women watched us in awed silence, and the tallow candle melted and ran down the iron candle-stick in spite of the efforts of the garde, who kept trimming the wick with his fingers. We attended to the old woman first. The cut had been given conscientiously; the bare arm showed the bone, and a triangle of flesh about four inches long hung over it like ...
— Over Strand and Field • Gustave Flaubert

... the freshest end of this breadth, and should go down; this other had a darn that might be cut across, and a straight piecing made, for which the slope of the skirt would allow,—she should do it so; that hem might be taken off altogether and a new one turned; this was a very nice trimming, and plenty of it, and the wrong side was brighter than the right; she knew a way of joining worsted braid that never showed,—you might have a dozen pieces in the binding of a skirt and not be noticed. This little blue frock had no trimming; they would finish that at ...
— A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life. • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney

... joined to the oppressiveness of the air, occasioned, was choking the baron. After a short pause he said resolutely to De Chemerant, "Faith, sir, one must accommodate oneself to one's situation. I must ask permission to take off my coat. This trimming of gold and silver weighs ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue

... cluster, Pointling, aiming, Pont, bridge, Port, gate, Posseded, possessed, Potestate, governor, Precessours, predecessors, Press, throng, Pretendeth, belongs to, Pricker, hard rider, Pricking, spurring, Prime, A.M., Prise, capture, Puissance, power, Purfle, trimming, Purfled, embroidered, Purvey, provide, ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume I (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory

... the maple boughs we sat, Annie Leslie and I together; She was trimming her sea-side hat With leaves—we talked ...
— Point Lace and Diamonds • George A. Baker, Jr.

... with purple, [3]fringed[3] mantle [4]folded about him[4] amongst them in their midst. [5]Fairest of the forms of men was his form.[5] A salmon-shaped brooch of gold in the mantle over his breast; a [6]bright, hooded[6] tunic of royal silk with red trimming of red gold next to his white skin; a bright shield with intricate figures of beasts in red gold upon it; a boss of gold on the shield; an edge of gold around it; a small, gold-hilted sword at his waist; a sharp, light lance cast its shadow over him." "But, ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown

... your self but observe, & you'l quickly see that a lying-in requireth so much trimming, that she hath really care enough upon her! the Child-bed linnen alone, is a thing that would make ones head full of dizziness, it consists of so many sorts of knick-knacks; I will not so much as name all the other jinkombobs that are dependances to it. Therefore, ought you to be ...
— The Ten Pleasures of Marriage and The Confession of the New-married Couple (1682) • A. Marsh

... got it from Wolfgang's mamma. Just look, Laemke"—the woman lifted the doll's pink dress up and showed the white petticoat trimmed with a frill edged with narrow lace—"such trimming. Just like that I sewed round the dress Frida wore at her christening. She was the first one; bless you, and you think at the time it's something wonderful. Oh dear!"—she sighed and laid the doll back ...
— The Son of His Mother • Clara Viebig

... full and 'andsome. Just another two yards!" There was nothing else for it, so I promised to go up to town next morning (I couldn't possibly go that day), and impressed upon the wretch to finish the bodice first,—as, if necessary, we could do with less trimming on the skirt. My dear, the worst is still to come! The shop was sold out of the shade of voile, and could not get it again, and when I went back to Miss Green, she had finished the skirt, and had nothing left for sleeves! "Yes, I remember you did say do the bodice first, but I thought ...
— Betty Trevor • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey

... been torn, or trimming or braid ripped and left trailing after contact with the nails in a packing-box on the sidewalk, or from some similar accident, it is polite to call her attention to the disaster. A gentleman may do this with perfect propriety if he sees that she is not aware ...
— Etiquette • Agnes H. Morton

... his estate. The peasants were all collected to stare at their master. Vassily Nikolaitch came out to them. The peasants looked at him— strange to relate! the master wore plush pantaloons like a coachman, and he had on boots with trimming at the top; he wore a red shirt and a coachman's long coat too; he had let his beard grow, and had such a strange hat and such a strange face—could he be drunk? No, he wasn't drunk, and yet he didn't seem quite right. "Good health to you, lads!" he says; "God keep you!" The peasants ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Works of Ivan Turgenev, Vol. I • Ivan Turgenev

... and winter of 1895 was spent in cleaning up, trimming the trees, transplanting shrubs and vines, including border beds of hydrangeas which were planted around the walls of the house and out-buildings. When spring came and the garden had been plowed, rolled and planted, the grounds were ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt

... but the Queen is to surprise him with it. Mr. Secretary will be a lord at the end of the session; but they want him still in Parliament. After all, it is a strange unhappy necessity of making so many peers together; but the Queen has drawn it upon herself, by her confounded trimming and moderation. Three, as I told you, ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift

... horse-power, built by the American Engine Co., Bound Brook, N.J. It drives all the machinery of the establishment, including drug mills, pill machines, packing machinery, a large number of printing presses, folding machines, stitching, trimming, and many other machines, located on the different floors, and used in the manufacture of medicines, books, pamphlets, circulars, posters, and other printed matter. On this floor is located steam bottle-washing machinery, and also the shipping department. Here may be seen huge piles ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce

... dress, that doesn't matter—though I can imagine you in trailing purple velvet with a trimming of sable." ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow

... the most beautiful and most interesting unprotected birds of the world. The extent of this cold-blooded industry, supported by vain and hard-hearted women, will presently be shown in detail. Paris is the great manufacturing center of feather trimming and ornaments, and the French people obstinately refuse to protect the birds from extermination, because their slaughter affords employment to a certain numbers of French ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday

... which had only one hundred men really fit for duty. The rest were sick. Grenville, who had sworn he would cut down the first man who touched a rope while there still seemed a chance to escape, now refused the Spanish summons to surrender and prepared to fight to the last. Trimming his sails as carefully as if for a yacht race he ran down close-hauled on the starboard tack, right between the two divisions of the Spanish fleet, till the flagship, three times the size of the Revenge, ranged up on his weather side, thus blanketing his ...
— Flag and Fleet - How the British Navy Won the Freedom of the Seas • William Wood

... striking—sophisticated or innocent, who could tell? Ash-blonde, tall, Grecian, in a black frock without trimming. How quiet and retiring she was! Of course she was a tart, but what a gentle one—a nun of vice, with a face as pure as that of a repentant ...
— Look Back on Happiness • Knut Hamsun

... any coffee. She had seated herself apart, with a somewhat wearied expression on her face. Her black velvet gown, unrelieved by any trimming, gave her an air of austerity. In this small drawing-room smoking was allowed, and several boxes of cigars were placed beside her on the pier-table. The doctor drew near; as he selected a cigar he asked her: "Is ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola

... drop in at afternoon tea-time. Certain women might have attempted an apology for their appearance, but Miss Rebecca seemed rather to glory in the shears which dangled down from her apron-strings as she rose to greet her visitor; they told so unmistakably that she had been enjoying herself trimming vines. Miss Carry—who was still kittenish in spite of her forty years—as she gave one of her hands to Mr. Walker held out with the other a basket of seckel pears she ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant

... nape of his neck and sat blinking at the fire, with the puzzled expression of a woman pondering over a life-question or the trimming of a hat. Steelman took his chin in his hand ...
— On the Track • Henry Lawson

... return with a haughty composure which seemed to draw the eyes of the passers-by after it like a magnet. She was very tall and slender, and her unusual height made her garish dress the more conspicuous. The small hat perched on her black hair was all bright scarlet, both the felt and the trimming; under her jacket, which was purposely thrown back, there was a scarlet bodice, and there was a broad band of scarlet round the edge of her ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... yet fainter. Margaret went, and proceeded to trim it. The virgins that arose must have looked very lovely, trimming their lamps. It is a deed very fair and womanly — the best for a woman — to make the lamp burn. The light shone up in her face, and the hands removing the globe handled it delicately. He saw that the good hands were very beautiful hands; not small, but admirably shaped, ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald

... peculiarity was well known to all her friends, and Liston, who certainly was one of them, used to agonize the poor woman by standing at the side scene, while the symphony of her pathetic ballads was being played, and indicating by his eyes and gestures that something was amiss with the trimming or bottom of her dress; when, as invariably as he chose to play the trick, poor Miss Stephens used to begin to twitch and catch at her petticoat, and half hysterical, between laughing and crying, would enchant and entrance her listeners with her exquisite voice ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble

... trees set out in a proper manner, of such varieties as you desire, the next important step is to bring the trees into usefulness. My plan is to use bone—fine bone—very freely about every three years. Another important matter is that of trimming. "Fire purifies," and the knife regulates the grand balance or equilibrium between roots and tops. In most cases the top outgrows the roots, the consequence of which is an ultimate weakness of the tree. It is thrown into excessive fruiting, disease, and premature decay. To avoid ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 433, April 19, 1884 • Various

... word is derived from Lat. buculus, a young bull. "Bugle," meaning a long jet or black glass bead, used in trimming ladies' dresses, is possibly connected with the Ger. Bugel, a bent piece of metal. The English name "bugle" is also given to a common labiate plant, the Ajuga reptans, not to be confused with the "Bugloss" ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various

... selection could be made; it was impossible to be bewildered with too many fineries, and "This or nothing" offered a unique simplicity in the way of choice. Miss Pearson, the postmistress, decided for them that the ribbon was the right width and quality, and even offered a few hints on the subject of trimming. ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil

... ready. In a moment I had on the cloak. Falling below the knee, with its rich trimming of sables, and enriched with gold, it became me excellently. So clad I made my way up and down with ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Horatio Pater

... at each step, a change of hue with a change of value. This is more complicated, but also more interesting, showing how the character of the gray-green dress will be set off by a lighter hat of Leghorn straw, and further improved by a trimming of darker blue-green. The sequence can be made still more subtle and attractive by choosing a straw whose yellow is stronger than the green of the dress, while a weaker chroma of blue-green is used in the trimming. This is clearly expressed by ...
— A Color Notation - A measured color system, based on the three qualities Hue, - Value and Chroma • Albert H. Munsell

... energy, and with fine possibilities of temper. Indeed, there was nothing native about her but the skin; and the type abounds, and is everywhere respected, nearer home. It did us good to see her scour the grounds, examining the plants and chickens; watering, feeding, trimming them; taking angry, purpose- like possession. When she neared the house our sympathy abated; when she came to the broken chest I wished I were elsewhere. We had scarce a word in common; but her whole lean body spoke for ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson

... came a second billet: "There hath been a great battle in Council; Lord Treasurer hath broke his staff, and hath fallen never to rise again; no successor is appointed. Lord B——receives a great Whig company to-night at Golden Square. If he is trimming, others are true; the Queen hath no more fits, but is a-bed now, and more quiet. Be ready against morning, when I still ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray

... you: you must stick to your husband. I don't like them, or any of their sort, barring about three or four, for the reason that they despise me and all my sort. But, Ethelberta, for all that I'll play fair with them. No half-and-half trimming business. You have joined 'em, and 'rayed yourself against us; and there you'd better bide. You have married your man, and your duty is towards him. I know what he is and so does father; but if I were to help you to run ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy

... of shock. The shagbark on the contrary makes slow recovery and many years are required for a cut-back shagbark hickory to regain normal equilibrium between top and root. The pignut and mockernut apparently stand midway between the bitternut and the shagbark in respect to the trimming of the top. My experience with shagbark includes the top working of trees ranging from a few inches in diameter up to fifteen or twenty inches in diameter, and the cutting back has included all stages from ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Eleventh Annual Meeting - Washington, D. C. October 7 AND 8, 1920 • Various

... and other trees. The hunters and trappers in America formerly killed vast numbers for their skins, which were in great demand, as they were used in making hats, but as the only use they are now put to is for trimming, and for men's gloves and collars, the demand has ...
— A Catechism of Familiar Things; Their History, and the Events Which Led to Their Discovery • Benziger Brothers

... is coming to dress itself for Saturday. My Lady Coventry showed George Selwyn her clothes; they are blue, with spots of silver, of the size of a shilling, and a silver trimming, and cost—my lord will know what. She asked George how he liked them; he replied, "Why, you will be ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole

... after midnight, leaned against the taffrail with Trask, watching Shope and Pennock trimming the sails. Bevins had the wheel but Locke was asleep below, having ...
— Isle o' Dreams • Frederick F. Moore

... should start from each end of this flat cut, and extend to the upper edge of the log, the guiding line being made on the sides of the log by a piece of chalk. The adze will come into good use in trimming off the wood on these curves. When this upper outline is accomplished, the log may be turned bottom side up, and the sides of the extremities rounded off. This may be done with an axe and adze, and when performed, the bottom curves should be made by chopping away the wood ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson

... new to you, I dare say, for which of you ever heard of trimming cows with their own horns and ears? How should you like to see a cow with her ears—poor thing!—cut to the shape of a leaf with notched edges, and horns trained in some queer shape, twisted into curls, or divided into four, with two meeting overhead, and two turned ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, May, 1878, No. 7. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various

... a golden lamp for the Temple of Minerva at Athens, with a wick composed of asbestos, which burned day and night for a year without trimming or replenishing with oil. If this was true, the font of the lamp must have been large enough to have contained a year's supply of oil; for, though some profess that the economical inventions of the ancients have been forgotten, the least knowledge ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner

... from puffing doubtful enterprises, the literary paper that depends upon the approval of publishers, are poor affairs, and, in the long run or short run, come to grief. Some newspapers do succeed by sensationalism, as some preachers do; by a kind of quackery, as some doctors do; by trimming and shifting to any momentary popular prejudice, as some politicians do; by becoming the paid advocate of a personal ambition or a corporate enterprise, as some lawyers do: but the newspaper only becomes a real power when it is ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... obeys; and with a few turns of the wheel brings the Condor's head round, till she is right to meet the steamer. The officers, with the negro assisting, loose tacks and sheets, trimming her sails for the ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid

... close my eyes: the text that dwelt in my mind was, "My soul is among lions." I thought of Madame Laccassagne and the other poor women wandering in the fields, and pictured a thousand distressing circumstances. Our solitary oil-lamp was beginning to languish for want of trimming, and I thought, "What if it should leave us in darkness altogether, and we should never know when it is day?" and dwelt on the Egyptians in the plague of darkness, when none of them rose from his place ...
— Jacques Bonneval • Anne Manning

... the main to the policy of his predecessors. It was fortunate for him and for the Holy See that the basis of his character was caution combined with tough tenacity of purpose, capacity for dilatory action, diplomatic shiftiness and a political versatility that can best be described by the word trimming. These qualities enabled him to pass with safety through perils that might have ruined a bolder, a hastier, or a franker Pope, and to achieve the object of his heart's desire, where stronger men had failed, in the foundation of a ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds

... am not alone, with the servants here. Besides, John is just outside, trimming the lawn ...
— The Motor Girls on Waters Blue - Or The Strange Cruise of The Tartar • Margaret Penrose

... yet," smiled Hal, "but I won't give him a chance to lick me on the money score; it's too good fun having you all here, and a royal holiday ahead of us, without hunting for a trimming from dad because I play the la-de-da or think I'm the ...
— The Shagganappi • E. Pauline Johnson

... course is easily extended to include drawing, an art which is closely connected with taste in dress; but I would not have them taught landscape and still less figure painting. Leaves, fruit, flowers, draperies, anything that will make an elegant trimming for the accessories of the toilet, and enable the girl to design her own embroidery if she cannot find a pattern to her taste; that will be quite enough. Speaking generally, if it is desirable to restrict a man's studies to what is useful, this is even more necessary for women, whose life, though ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau

... there came a messenger to King Arthur saying that King Ryons of North Wales, a strong man in body, and passing proud, had discomfited and overcome eleven kings, and each of these to do him homage had cut his beard clean off as trimming for King Ryons' royal mantle. One place of the mantle still lacked trimming; wherefore he sent for Arthur's beard, and if he did not receive it he would enter England to burn and slay, and never would he leave till he had ...
— Stories of King Arthur and His Knights - Retold from Malory's "Morte dArthur" • U. Waldo Cutler

... lad," said Robin, trimming the candle as his nephew Walter entered, "we'll ha' to make the most of our time to-day, for we dine at sharp five p.m., an' our dinner—leastwise the most of it—is at this moment alive an' kickin', if it's not sleepin', in the forest, and has got to be found and shot yet. Hallo! ...
— Silver Lake • R.M. Ballantyne

... know that when we were in cantonments on the Vistula the marshal happened to send Dannel to Warsaw for provisions, and I commissioned him to get the trimming of black astrachan taken from my pelisse, and have it replaced by grey, this having recently been adopted by Prince Berthier's aides-de-camp, who set the fashion in the army. Up to now, I was the only one of Augereau's officers ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various

... had worked to the westward, to rain and misty weather, and all day we had been working ship in sight of the Irish coast, making little headway against the wind. It was dreary work, this laggard setting out—hanging about the land, tack and tack, instead of trimming yards to a run down Channel. Out on the open sea we could perforce be philosophic, and talk of 'the more days, the more dollars'; but here in crowded waters, with the high crown of Innistrahull mocking at our efforts, it was difficult not to think of ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone

... enigma, for he set the men to cutting and trimming tall sapling poles. To these were tied (how reverently!) the twenty stands of colors which loving Creole hands had stitched. The boisterous day was reddening to its close as the Colonel lined his little army in front of the wood, and we covered the space of four thousand. For the men were ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... Science confirming wot I always held. Blow me tight, If I don't rayther cotton to HUXLEY; he's racy, old pal, and he's right. The skim-milk of life's for the many, the lardy few lap up the cream, And all talk about trimming the balance is ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, February 22nd, 1890 • Various

... to box the ship off by backing and swinging the yards and trimming the sails, but all to no purpose, and then flares and torches to summon help were lighted. These at once caught the notice of the look-out men on the lightships, and drew from those vessels the guns and rockets, the usual signals of ...
— Heroes of the Goodwin Sands • Thomas Stanley Treanor

... jarring sound aroused her, and she found she had been awakened by the clock striking twelve. Her lamp required trimming and burnt dimly, but by its imperfect light she saw the arras move. This could be no fancy, for the next moment the hangings were raised, and a figure looked from behind them; and this time it was not the monk, ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth

... then opened the case for the prosecution," said she. "You are going to cross-examine me, Clara, so don't deny it. I do wish you would have that grey satin foulard of yours done up. With a little trimming and a new white vest it would look as good as new, and ...
— Beyond the City • Arthur Conan Doyle

... when I hear that New England is drawing away, I cannot help thinking to myself how much more prosperous the farms look than they did when I was young; how much more neat is the farming, how much greater the attention to what will please the eye about the farm, as the planting of flowers and trimming the grass, which seems to me a very good sign. I had an opportunity, by a strange accident, of becoming very intimate with the outward appearance of New England during my youth by going about when a little boy with my father when he went on exchanges. ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various

... that had been grafted had three different kinds of fruit on them, and others had three kinds of apples on them besides the pears. This grafting I did myself, and the trees were considered very fine by Boss. Another part of my work was the trimming of the hedge and the ...
— Thirty Years a Slave • Louis Hughes

... by his duty to the visitors. The pie left to Jimmie's care had an unfortunately tempting fringe of loose pieces about it that marred its symmetry. Jimmie proceeded to trim it into shape. So absorbed did he become in this trimming process, that before he realized what he was about, he woke suddenly to the startling fact that the pie had shrunk into a comparatively insignificant size. It would be worse than useless to save the mutilated remains for Aleck; there was ...
— Glengarry Schooldays • Ralph Connor

... tell us: What did Charity wear? Was her dress of moire antique, or satin; Or was it plain muslin—just like that in Which love-lorn maidens on the stage Go raving crazy?—and had she a page? Did she wear hoops? and what sort of a bonnet? And tell us, what kind of trimming was on it? What—" Stop, stop, dear ladies, it isn't fair To question thus closely a modest young man. If I could tell the items, I would, I declare; For I always oblige you whenever I can. I know that of dresses she has a ...
— Nothing to Say - A Slight Slap at Mobocratic Snobbery, Which Has 'Nothing - to Do' with 'Nothing to Wear' • QK Philander Doesticks

... never have chosen that trimming. However, the "under the circumstances" is not so bad. A good cut, too—yes. Aha! Just you wail ...
— Three Comedies • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson

... quickening. "One does not forget entirely in three short years, and I—I caught that one glimpse of you in the box. It was that—that look upon your face which gave me courage to send my card to your room." She paused, dropping her eyes to the carpet, her fingers nervously playing with the trimming of her waist. "It may, perhaps, sound strange, yet in spite of my exhibit of feeling at first discovering your presence, I had faith all day that ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish

... and straight, with a pleasant country farm-house face, a roguish black eye, even teeth, and a head of brown straight hair, that looked as if the only attention it ever received was an occasional trimming with a reap-hook, and a brush with ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris

... that gay clothing, to please his honour and my young mistress (great folks will have their fancies), he has done naething but dance up and down about the TOUN, without doing a single turn, unless trimming the laird's fishing-wand or busking his flies, or maybe catching a dish of trouts at an orra-time. But here comes Miss Rose, who, I take burden upon me for her, will be especially glad to see one of the house of Waverley at her father's mansion ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott

... sight—too shy to sport an eyeglass, too much of a poet to wear spectacles, and dreading lest, at the slightest movement, I should bruise my knee against the corner of some piece of furniture, or plunge my nose into the trimming of a bodice. Soon hunger and thirst interfered in the matter; but for a kingdom I should never have dared to approach the buffet with all the rest of the world. I anxiously watched for the moment when it should be deserted; and while waiting, I joined the groups of political talkers, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VIII (of X) - Continental Europe II. • Various

... which is very broad, and covered with silver coins arranged in the form of a cross. A coloured silk kerchief is wound round the fez, and a wreath made of short black silk fringe is fastened on the top. This wreath looks like a handsome rich fur-trimming, and is so arranged that it forms a coronet, leaving the forehead exposed. The hair falls in numerous thin tresses over the shoulders, and a heavy silver chain hangs down behind from the turban. It ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer

... had told him that she had lived. One by one he passed the old houses of brick and stone, sheltered behind their solid walls. There had been no change in the years since he had been there. Half-way up the hill to the base of the mountain he saw an old gardener trimming ivy about an ancient cannon near a ...
— Isobel • James Oliver Curwood

... of March 29 to April 4, 1920, the committee organized and financed the third national coffee week, which was observed by retailers throughout the country. The feature of this week was a window-trimming contest for which prizes of $2,000 were distributed among several hundred grocers. The contest resulted in displays of coffee in nearly 10,000 grocery windows, and greatly increased the sale and consumption ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers

... in trimming the balance of power on the other side of the Alps, their deliberations were interrupted by the arrival of a scullion, who came to receive their orders touching the bill of fare for dinner, and his majesty found much ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett

... Tess slaved in the morning frosts and in the afternoon rains. When it was not swede-grubbing it was swede-trimming, in which process they sliced off the earth and the fibres with a bill-hook before storing the roots for future use. At this occupation they could shelter themselves by a thatched hurdle if it rained; but if it was frosty even their thick leather gloves could not prevent the frozen masses they handled ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy

... in plants extended to the care of the house plants which heretofore had been the sole concern of Mrs. Emerson and Mrs. Morton. Now the girls begged the privilege of trimming off the dead leaves from the ivies and geraniums and of washing away with oil of lemon and a stiff brush the scale that sometimes came on the palms. They even learned to kill the little soft white creature called aphis by putting under ...
— Ethel Morton's Enterprise • Mabell S.C. Smith

... so much that he finally jumped into a creek, intending to commit suicide, but was rescued by bystanders. He has made several other attempts at suicide in later life. In describing these he elaborates them with a lot of fanciful trimming, dilates on the importance of the various situations attending them, and how much uproar they caused among those who knew of them. At the age of fourteen he had a quarrel with another boy. Upon being reprimanded by the latter's father, he could not rest until he had obtained ...
— Studies in Forensic Psychiatry • Bernard Glueck

... of the women should add their brightness and perfume to the rooms. The great number of bouquets sent to a d,butante is often embarrassing. The present fashion is to have them hung, by different ribbons, on the arm, so that they look as if almost a trimming ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood

... anticipated, owing to the fact that our carpenter had used cypress for the framework. We stretched the material taut and then tacked it fast with sharp-pointed, large-headed brass tacks, and while inserting these we measured carefully the distances between the tacks in order to keep this trimming uniform. The two walls supplied by the framework were quickly covered, but the rough wall of the attic necessitated some cutting, as we had to tack the burlap to the uprights and these had not been placed with yard-wide material in view. Above the screen-door frame was a hiatus of space ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer

... the day after the ministerial reception and Madame Rabourdin's evening party, just as Antoine was trimming his beard and his nephews were assisting him in the antechamber of the division on the upper floor, they were surprised by the unexpected arrival of one of ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac

... Christ-child touched the spider's webs, and turned them all to gold! Wasn't that a lovely trimming? They shone and shone, all over the beautiful tree. And that is the way the Christmas Tree came to have golden cobwebs ...
— How to Tell Stories to Children - And Some Stories to Tell • Sara Cone Bryant

... two hours, they had got up to within half a cable's length of her, when, trimming their sails as well as they were able, they ranged up alongside with double-shotted guns and ...
— Will Weatherhelm - The Yarn of an Old Sailor • W.H.G. Kingston

... from the opposite side of the room; Geoffrey fidgeted about, and finally seated himself—not by her side, as had obviously been his first impulse—but some little distance away, where he could watch the expression of her face. Mrs Ramsden pushed the tea-table aside, and fidgeted with the jet trimming ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... sunburnt calves), slouch about or sleep face downwards on the parapets. On either side of this same molo stretches a miniature beach of sand and pebble, covered with nets, which the fishermen are always mending, and where the big boats lade or unlade, trimming for the sardine fishery, or driving in to shore with a whirr of oars and a jabber of discordant voices. As the land-wind freshens, you may watch them set off one by one, like pigeons taking flight, till the sea is flecked with twenty sail, all scudding in the ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds

... the right of his nation to enslave the Indians, among other things, on their smoking tobacco, and not trimming their beards a l'Espagnole. At least, this is Montesquieu's interpretation of it. (Esprit des Loix, lib. 15, chap. 3.) The doctors of the Inquisition could hardly have found a ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott

... had been wondering for many days what trimming she should put on her dresses, so that they should outshine the dresses of the other ladies at the court balls. Nothing that she thought of seemed good enough, so, when the message was brought that the ogre and his wares were below, she at once ordered that he should ...
— The Orange Fairy Book • Andrew Lang

... up there that used to hold the flag-pole. Two or three fellows have been kind enough to haul a tree up there, and they're trimming it ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy

... rankly in the gravel underfoot, the rose bushes which bordered the walk thrust their branches here and there in untrained freedom, a dark yew hedge which formed the background bristled with rough shoots and sadly needed trimming. But I did not see any of these things. The grace, the noble air, the distinction of the two women who paced slowly to meet me—and who shared all these qualities, greatly as they differed in others—left me ...
— Under the Red Robe • Stanley Weyman

... now abdicated in the pilot's favor, who proved to be a tiger of a fellow, keeping us hard at work, pulling and hauling the braces, and trimming the ship, to catch the ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville

... I went on trimming. "Well, he thought that if this saved the tree, why should it not save the life of the man?" and he grew so excited that he went in at once and had a look at the patient, and then went in to the prior, ...
— Brownsmith's Boy - A Romance in a Garden • George Manville Fenn

... difficulty in finding the Sand-fairy, for the day was already so hot that it had actually, for the first time, come out of its own accord, and was sitting in a sort of pool of soft sand, stretching itself, and trimming its whiskers, and turning its snail's ...
— Five Children and It • E. Nesbit

... establishment, while Gilda was complacent; but otherwise the two women were identical. Their dresses were largely similar—Amity's a dun, Gilda Penny's grey, moire silk, high with a tight lace collar, and bands of jet trimming from shoulder to waist, there spreading over crinoline to the floor. Lace fell about their square, capable hands, and Gilda wore broad, locked bracelets checked in ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer

... volatile is but to say that she was woman. To say that she was in the bonnet-trimming is feebly to express the taste which ...
— Somebody's Luggage • Charles Dickens

... from north-west to south-east. It was a bare rock, low and flat, without water, and without any natural soil. The iron coast was surrounded on three sides, the north, the west, and the south, by a number of rocks and small islets, which fringed it like the trimming of a shawl. Its Phoenician occupiers early converted this debatable territory, half sea half shore, into solid land, by filling up the interstices between the rocks with squared stones and a solid cement as hard as the rock ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson

... and we discover the lovers preparing for their wedding. Figaro is taking the dimensions of a room, and the first motive of a duet illustrates his measured paces; Susanna is trimming a hat, and her happiness and her complacent satisfaction with her handiwork are published in the second motive, whose innocent joy explodes in scintillant semi-quavers in the fiddles at the third measure. His labors ended, Figaro joins ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... had on its shelves, colored calico, a small amount of flannel, some broadcloth, and a small parcel of silk valued at one pound. There was also thread in brown and other colors, knitting-needles, pins, horn-combs, combs made of ivory and knives of various descriptions. For trimming garments, there was guimpe, colored tape, Holland tape and Hamburg, the latter an embroidered edging, buttons, some silk covered. Other items included skeins of twine, whalebone, scissors, ...
— Domestic Life in Virginia in the Seventeenth Century - Jamestown 350th Anniversary Historical Booklet Number 17 • Annie Lash Jester

... wounded, and has lately had his leg amputated. It is not doing very well. Right opposite me is a sick soldier boy, laid down with his clothes on, sleeping, looking much wasted, his pallid face on his arm. I see by the yellow trimming on his jacket that he is a cavalry boy. He looks so handsome as he sleeps, one must needs go nearer to him. I step softly over to him, and find by his card that he is named William Cone, of the 1st Maine Cavalry, and his folks live ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs

... a soap box waiting for Farrar to finish his preparations, Yeager became aware that Lennox was watching him closely. He did not know that the leading man would cheerfully have sacrificed a week's salary to see Harrison get the trimming he needed. The handsome young film actor was an athlete, a trained boxer, but the ex-prizefighter had given him the thrashing of his life two months before. He simply had lacked the physical stamina to weather ...
— Steve Yeager • William MacLeod Raine

... house and pounds like an evil spirit seeking rest and finding none. He stood for some time gloomily watching the four gardeners, who were busily at work laying strips of turf, mowing the lawn, rolling the gravel paths and trimming the trees and bushes. The boy Bert, Philpot, Harlow, Easton and Sawkins were loading a hand-cart with ladders and empty paint-pots to return to the yard. Just as they were setting out, Misery stopped them, remarking that the cart was not half loaded—he said it would ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell

... the fat old hypocrite was trimming her sails with hands hardened from long experience. Her embraces and gratitude were a veer in a new direction. In a measure I was to be held to account for the present situation; in a sense to be social sponsor for Mrs. Thomas Cressy. A homeless Harrie, disapproved of by family and friends, would ...
— People Like That • Kate Langley Bosher

... to behold Patricia in the procession. She was leaning on Lost Sister's arm, and there was a lump on her forehead as though she had been struck most brutally. Then came the warriors and Ward. Dale was roughly thrown to the ground. Several men began trimming the branches from a stout sapling. Others became busy searching the fallen timber for ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter

... constantly perfecting it and reducing the cost of its production. The ready-made silk dress which the American woman of small means now buys for a few dollars is of the very latest style and as tasteful in its lines, color scheme, and trimming as a high-class designer can make it. A ten-dollar gown is copied from ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan

... small snap-shot picture of the girl. Petka looked at the picture and did not know what to say. To judge from her photograph, she was a frail spinster, with high cheekbones, a long neck and a nose like a frozen potato. But the trimming of her hair, her city hat with flowers, and her whole American bearing made her interesting enough to the ambitious tailor. For a long time he was gazing ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy

... remain absolutely quiet and see no one on the day of the performance, so as not to be enervated by the effort of talking much, to say nothing of tiring the vocal chords. One prima donna of my acquaintance occupies herself in trimming hats on the day when she sings, believing that this provides a distraction and rests her nerves. It is just as well not to "pass through" the role that is to be sung on the day of the appearing, but ...
— Caruso and Tetrazzini on the Art of Singing • Enrico Caruso and Luisa Tetrazzini

... little den on the first floor happily engaged in trimming a new hat. Georgina swept in upon her, shut the door, and stood with her ...
— Helena • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... with a beautiful apostrophe to the memory of his son, the gallant Earl of Ossory. The Bishops of London and Rochester; Mulgrave our author's constant patron, now reconciled with Charles and his government; the plausible and trimming Halifax; and Hyde, Earl of Rochester, second son to the great Clarendon, appear in this list. The poet having thus arrayed and mustered the forces on each side, some account of the combat is naturally expected; and Johnson complains, that, after all the interest excited, the story is but lamely ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott

... himself on that Eastern side, impregnable henceforth, all readers can believe. Friedrich has been building various Fortresses in this interim, though we have taken no notice of them; building and repairing many things;—trimming up his Military quite to the old pitch, as the most particular thing of all. He has his new Silesian Fortress of Silberberg,—big Fortress, looking into certain dangerous Bohemian Doors (in Tobias Stusche's Country, if readers recollect an old adventure now mythical);—his ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... came, risking their lives rather than sacrifice the next year's vintage. Captain Sweeney of the Foreign Legion told me that when the French soldiers were not firing they amused themselves watching these women pruning and trimming as fatalistically as if guns were not thundering east and west of them, shells singing overhead. For the most part they were safe enough, and nerves had apparently been left out of them; but once in a while the Germans would amuse themselves raking the valley with the ...
— The Living Present • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

... or more in width. The second cut should extend from the base of the ear in front, somewhat obliquely, to intersect the other cut within a few lines of the point of the flap. These two cuts will shape the ear in such a style as to please the most fastidious eye, and will require no further trimming. The pieces taken from the first ear will answer as guides in cutting the other. The mother should not be allowed to lick the ears of the puppies, as is generally done, under the supposition that she assists in the healing process, when, in fact, she irritates them, and occasions ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt

... it hath done; but such as kings love neither to acknowledge nor to reward. It was the service which the knife renders to the tree when trimming it to the quick, and depriving it of the superfluous growth of rank and unfruitful suckers, which ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott

... when Miss de Haldimar completed her sad narrative; and already the crew, roused to exertion by the swelling breeze, were once more engaged in weighing the anchor, and setting and trimming the sails of the schooner, which latter soon began to shoot round the concealing headland into the opening of the Sinclair. A deathlike silence prevailed throughout the decks of the little bark, as her bows, dividing the waters of the ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson

... the Church Litten Coppice under some hazels near the foot-bridge, in Trimming's garden hedge, and on the dry wall opposite ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 2 • Gilbert White

... accordingly conveyed. It is the policy of the Spanish laws, to render the punishment of criminals subservient to public utility; and this is in some degree effected even by solitary confinement. The prisoners confined in these towers are employed in turns, night by night, in trimming the lamps—which are a beacon to the vessels at sea. From each chamber, there is a separate ascent to the summit of the tower; so that the prisoners never see each other, and each in his turn is obliged to remain from night until day-break upon the summit,—part of his punishment for the destruction ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 20, No. 567, Saturday, September 22, 1832. • Various

... square the ends of all the rails and posts. Lay out the lap joints for the back rails and posts. Use a knife line for this and saw exactly to the line to avoid trimming with the chisel. When sawing be careful to cut exactly halfway through the thickness of each piece. In the same way make the lap joints between the front rail and posts. Have the two end rails exactly the same length and proceed to fasten the front and back posts ...
— Mission Furniture - How to Make It, Part 3 • H. H. Windsor

... horse, he flew down the track, the gravel flying in all directions, his sure- footed animal keeping the ties, nor did he pull rein or slack his speed until the large tank of the water station rose above him. Jumping from his horse, he walked to the keeper's shanty. The man was awake and trimming his lantern, nor did he exhibit any surprise at the ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton

... Constitution, by having neither male nor female, had left it an open question. No, Mrs. Cady Stanton, Miss Susan B. Anthony, Mrs. Lucy Stone, and Miss Olympia Brown are the "foreign emissaries" that will alone have the credit of emancipating women in Kansas. Your trimming politicians left them in the lurch. Not one of you was honest. (Applause.) Even those who assumed to be their friends by saying nothing on the woman, and everything on the negro, are worse than you and Kalloch. (Applause.) Mr. Kalloch ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... this assurance, and the fact that they had voluntarily come to help him put the place in order, they did very little beyond lending a cheering expression of unqualified praise and unstinted advice. At the end of four hours' weeding and trimming the boundaries of the garden, they unanimously gave their opinion that it would be more systematic for him to employ Chinese labor ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte

... hour the mate and six hands from the barque were on board, assisting the crew, cutting away the wire rigging and trimming the cargo, the shifting of which had nearly sent her to the bottom. I went with the boat to lend a hand, and the second mate of the brigantine told me that the young captain had refused to listen to the mate's suggestion to shorten sail, when the officer told him that the wind would certainly ...
— "Pig-Headed" Sailor Men - From "The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton and Other - Stories" - 1902 • Louis Becke

... bright, sunny days, those trade-wind days, and wonderful nights. The ship practically sailed herself. A slackening and tightening of sheets, night and morning, and a watch-end trimming of yards, was all the labor required of ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer

... to a room in Tickletext's lodging, and discovers Mr. Tickletext a trimming, his Hair under a Cap, a Cloth before him: Petro snaps his fingers, takes away the Bason, and goes ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. II • Aphra Behn

... the long bench, and round it sat the neat-handed little maidens gluing, tacking and trimming, while they sang and chatted at their work as busy and happy ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott

... the workers left in the evening, Aaron would give each a drink out back, scharifer cider, feeling that they'd steamed hard enough to earn a sip of something volatile. There are matters, he mused, in which common sense can blink at a bishop; as in secretly trimming one's beard a bit, for example, to keep it out of one's soup; or plucking a guitar to ...
— Blind Man's Lantern • Allen Kim Lang

... suppose to represent the person of the Queen; the latter the manner by which she popped all at once into the House, made a duck at the throne, another to the Peers, and a concluding jump into the chair which was placed for her. Her dress was black figured gauze, with a good deal of trimming, lace, &c., her sleeves white, and perfectly episcopal; a handsome white veil, so thick as to make it very difficult to me, who was as near to her as anyone, to see her face; such a back for variety and inequality of ground as you never beheld; with a few straggling ringlets ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey

... at need, have explained this free-and-easy demeanor. The old maid wore a merino gown of a dark plum color, of which the cut and trimming dated from the year of the Restoration; a little worked collar, worth perhaps three francs; and a common straw hat with blue satin ribbons edged with straw plait, such as the old-clothes buyers wear at market. On looking down at her kid shoes, ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac

... determination to make for Randy a dainty party gown which should at the same time be sufficiently simple in style to please Mrs. Weston, Janie chose a thin white muslin with white ribbons for its only trimming. ...
— Randy and Her Friends • Amy Brooks

... another lesson in sliding. He came out, and as they ran along they found numbers of things to admire. Every blade of grass was fringed with the white frost-work, and the leaves of all the weeds that grew near the hedges looked quite pretty with their new trimming. But, above all, the mosses in the little wood that skirted the field were most lovely. When winter strips the trees of their leaves, then the little bright green mosses come and clothe the roots and stems, as if to do all they can to comfort them; and to-day they ...
— The Goat and Her Kid • Harriet Myrtle

... stay, and that's the truth.' She rose from her chair. 'Where do you think I've been, Mary? Mrs. Isaacs sent round this morning to ask if I could give her a bit of help. She's going to Margate on Monday, and there we've been all the afternoon trimming new hats for herself and the girls. She's given me a shilling, and I'm sure it wasn't worth half that, all I did. You'll come ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing

... old house among the Kentish hop-gardens," I went on; "no one lives there at present except a care-taker, but it is within the bounds of probability that I may go to stay there—some day. Now the gardens need trimming, and I'm very fond of flowers; do you suppose you could make the place look ...
— My Lady Caprice • Jeffrey Farnol

... three tiers of berths; and the blankets, etc., are not to be thought of. A cooking stove, wherein was burning some of the coal—excellent fuel, burning as freely as wood, and without the bituminous melting of Newcastle coal. The cook of the vessel, a grimy, unshaven, middle-aged man, trimming the fire at need, and sometimes washing his dishes in water that seemed to have cleansed the whole world beforehand—the draining of gutters, or caught at sink-spouts. In the cessations of labor, the Irishmen in the hold would poke their ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop

... some. Don't stir. Sit just where you are." She ran out of the room swiftly—a light-footed, warm-spirited, dramatic little thing, set off so garishly in the bodice with the plush trimming; but she had a big heart, and the man knew it. It was the big-heartedness which was the touch of the man in her that made her companionable ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... members of the Imperial Parliament like Verdi. They were "poor devils" like Haydn. Porpora was a great man, no doubt, in his own metier. But it is surely odd to hear of Haydn acting the part of very humble servant to the singing-master; blackening his boots and trimming his wig, and brushing his coat, and running his errands, and playing his accompaniments! Let us, however, remember Haydn's position and circumstances. He was a poor man. He had never received any regular tuition such as Handel received from Zachau, Mozart from his ...
— Haydn • J. Cuthbert Hadden

... else it needs to correct the smokiness. Yet He waits. That first natural instinct is restrained. The candlesticks are not yet moved out of their place. The light still tries to get out through them. The human candlestick may yet do the needful trimming and cleaning. With ...
— Quiet Talks on the Crowned Christ of Revelation • S. D. Gordon

... father continued, "suppose your frock was so covered by trimming that the material could scarcely ...
— Patty Fairfield • Carolyn Wells

... also. She wears a white India muslin, a marvel of delicate embroidery and exquisite texture, and a great deal of Valenciennes trimming. She has a pearl and turquoise star fastening her lace collar, pearl and turquoise drops in her ears, and a half dozen diamond rings on her plump, boneless fingers. A blue ribbon knots up the loose yellow hair, and you may search the big city from end to ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming

... were, but the majority of the readers living in the country just continued to pin their faith to the printed declarations of their oracles, while Grimes kept up the delusion of sincerity by every now and then fulminating a tremendous denunciation against his trimming, vacillating, inconsistent opponent on the Tuesday, and then retaliating with equal vigour upon himself on the Saturday. He wrote his own 'leaders,' both Whig and Tory, the arguments of one side ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees

... written on the model of the ancient Greek Tragedy; a delicate exotic, not made to thrive in our "cold septentrion blasts," and which, when it was long after transferred to the theatre by Colman, was unable to endure the rough aspect of a British audience. The poet complained of some trimming and altering that had been thought requisite by the manager on the occasion; and Colman, it is said, in return, threatened him with a chorus of Grecian washerwomen. Matters were no better when Mason himself undertook to prepare it ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary

... sticking up for the Jews. Did I care? Ten years ago every time the men got a raise through their union, the girls had their salaries cut. Different now. We've enough sense to give the easy jobs to the old ladies—and there's lots of old ones trimming hats." ...
— The Nine-Tenths • James Oppenheim

... Indian maids upon the banks of the Ganges who light a tiny taper, and, on a frail little chip, set it afloat upon the river. It twinkles and dwindles, and flashes and expires. Mr. Stedman watches the minor poets trimming their tapers and carefully launching their chips upon the brimming river. "Pleasant journey," he cries cheerily from the shore, as if he were speaking to hearty Captain Cook going up the side of his great ship, and shaking out ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis

... attempting to undermine our native tongue; another, as modernizing; a third, as antiquating it. Wheras" (Landor's spelling) "I am trying to underprop, not to undermine; I am trying to stop the man-milliner at his ungainly work of trimming and flouncing; I am trying to show how graceful is our English, not in its stiff decrepitude, not in its riotous luxuriance, but in its hale mid-life. I would make bad writers follow good ones, and good ones accord with themselves. If all cannot be reduced into order, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various

... Cautions. Stoves and Grates. Cautions. Stovepipes. Anthracite Coal. Bituminous Coal. Proper Grates. Coal Stoves. On Lights. Lamps. Oil. Candles. Lard. Pearlash and Water for cleansing Lamps. Care of Lamps. Difficulty. Articles needed in trimming Lamps. Astral Lamps. Wicks. Dipping Wicks in Vinegar. Shades. Weak Eyes. Entry Lamps. Night Lamps. Tapers. Wax Tapers for Use in Sealing Letters. To make Candles. Moulds. Dipped Candles. ...
— A Treatise on Domestic Economy - For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School • Catherine Esther Beecher

... dingy black. Looking at the awkward creature, no one would suspect that under its ungainly wings it carried the most exquisite and fairy-like little plumes, so airy that it takes basketfuls of them to weigh an ounce. They are pure white, and so much desired for trimming that the bird is vigorously hunted by the natives, who sell these dainty feathers to traders ...
— Harper's Young People, May 11, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... is a MS. poem in the Brit. Mus. (Bibl. Sloan. 1489) entitled "The Trimming of Tom Nash," written in metre-ballad verse, but it does not relate to our author, though written probably not very long after 1600, and though the title is evidently borrowed from the tract by Gabriel Harvey. Near the opening it contains some notices of romances and works of ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various

... and double crown as well as the beautiful double wall-and-crown knots are made exactly like the single crown or wall but instead of trimming off or tucking the ends they are carried around a second time following the lay of the first, as shown in Fig. 121, which shows the construction of a double crown at A, and a double wall at B. When finished, the ends may be tucked or trimmed ...
— Knots, Splices and Rope Work • A. Hyatt Verrill

... uttering many threats and imprecations, withdrew from Whiteladies. When he considered himself quite alone, Richard Pendrell ventured forth, taking with him a billhook, that if observed he might seem engaged in trimming hedges; and drawing near the spot where his majesty lay, assured him of his safety. Later on he besought an old woman, his neighbour, to take victuals into the wood to a labourer she would find there. Without hesitation the good woman carried some eggs, bread, butter, ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy

... others inexorably on the head of the student to avenge his neglect of them, so it happened with Tom in his practical study of the science of rowing that by thinking of his hands he forgot his seat, and the necessity of trimming properly. Whereupon the old tub began to rock fearfully, and the next moment, he missed the water altogether with his right scull, and subsided backwards, not without struggles, into the bottom of the boat; while the half ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes

... mechanical sounds, no such artists as are "like a mirror turning all about." There were vulgarities of nature, you see, in the youth of ideal Athens even. Time, of course, as such, is itself a kind of artist, trimming pleasantly for us what survives of the rude world of the past. Now Plato's method would promote or anticipate the work of time in that matter of vulgarities of taste. Yes, when you read his precautionary rules, you become fully aware that even in Athens there were young men who affected ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater

... neglected in houses are the trimming of lamps and the care of the books. The condition of many libraries in large country houses is most lamentable. In such neglect are they that it would take months, and in some cases years, working day and night, to restore them to a healthy condition. For, poor things! they are ...
— The Private Library - What We Do Know, What We Don't Know, What We Ought to Know - About Our Books • Arthur L. Humphreys

... parole, grew so despotic and so great, that his thirst for conquest knew no bounds. The more young Joe submitted, the more absolute old John became. The ell soon faded into nothing. Yards, furlongs, miles arose; and on went old John in the pleasantest manner possible, trimming off an exuberance in this place, shearing away some liberty of speech or action in that, and conducting himself in his small way with as much high mightiness and majesty, as the most glorious tyrant that ever had his statue reared in the public ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens

... Stewart in black and white lace, and her head and shoulders dressed with diamonds, and the like many great ladies more (only the Queene none;) and the King in his rich vest of some rich silk and silver trimming, as the Duke of York and all the dancers were, some of cloth of silver, and others of other sorts, exceeding rich. Presently after the King was come in, he took the Queene, and about fourteen more couple there was, ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys

... had the advantage of one of those very accommodating faces, that could shine with equal lustre on his victorious visitants, whether Britons or buckskins. Marion soon found him out; and as soon gave him a broad hint how heartily he despised such 'trimming'; for at a great public meeting where the old gentleman, with a smirking face, came up and presented his hand, Marion turned from him without deigning to receive it. Everybody was surprised at this conduct of the general, and some spoke of it in terms of high displeasure. However, ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems

... entered the kitchen, "I'll put the finishing stitch to my cap, and go to bed, for master will want nothing more to-night." She sat down quietly to work, and conversed quietly with Betty, not disclosing a word of her new prospects, Betty, however, observed that she took off the trimming with which her new cap had been already half-adorned. "Why, bless me, Molly!" she cried, "you are not going to put on that handsome white satin bow, are you?"—"Why, yes! I think I shall," replied Molly, "for now I look at your cap, with that there yellow ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, No. - 288, Supplementary Number • Various

... low 200 body, trimmed with Honiton lace, body and sleeves; one piece of silk to match, unmade, intended for high body, and bons; sleeves slashed open and lined with white satin 1 rose-colored robe, with $250 flounces; high and low body, having fringe and trimming woven to imitate Russian fur; both bodies trimmed with fringe ribbons and narrow lace 1 mauve-colored glace silk, 180 braided and bugled all around the bottom of skirt, on the front of body, around the band of Garibaldi body, down ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe

... lost,—and so were Naples, and Sicily, and Sardinia, and the Milanese, and other lands that had been ruled, and wellnigh ruined, by the Austro-Burgundian kings. The English had Gibraltar, and were holding Minorca also. Bourbon Spain was not to be Austrian Spain,—that was clear. But this trimming and pruning of the Peninsular monarchy were very useful to it; and Spain, having been ploughed up by the sword for twelve successive years, was in condition to yield something beyond what it had produced ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various

... expensive bonnet, adorned with many pink roses that scarcely rivaled the color of her cheeks. The dress she held up in both hands, high above her trim gaiter-tops, was of black satin, much bedecked with heavy beaded trimming. From all appearances Auntie Jinit had, to use her own phrase, been "up sides" with Jake ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith

... Gentleman's Estate in a Tropical Land. An old Indian, with a mahogany-coloured face, is trimming the grass on a grave by a mangrove swamp. Presently he rises to his feet and walks slowly toward a grove that is shaded by the gathering, brief twilight. In the edge of the grove stand a man who is stalwart, with a kind and courteous air, and a woman of a serene and clear-cut loveliness. ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry

... a moderate Doctour at Cripplegate dwells, Whom Smythes his curate in trimming excells; But Bunyan a tinker hath tickled ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... earth. Like all human institutions, speech is too variable and too elusive to be quite safely ticketed. Even if we operate with a minutely subdivided scale of types, we may be quite certain that many of our languages will need trimming before they fit. To get them into the scheme at all it will be necessary to overestimate the significance of this or that feature or to ignore, for the time being, certain contradictions in their mechanism. Does the difficulty of classification prove the uselessness of the task? I do not think so. ...
— Language - An Introduction to the Study of Speech • Edward Sapir

... curl on his forehead and take his place, a fine example of florid church decoration. Now the scarf was trimmed down to be as narrow as your neckcloth, and hung loose and straight over the back; the ephod was cut straight and as close and short as might be,—I believe there was a little trimming of lace to the narrow sleeves, and a slight arabesque of tape, or other substance, round the edge of the surplice. As for the curl on the forehead, it was no more visible than the Maypole in the Strand, or the Cross at Charing. Honeyman's hair was parted down the middle, short ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray

... now in her dungeon, was treated with wretched dishonor. Even the petty expenses of bread and salt were begrudged: 15 francs a day for food; three francs and 18 sous for trimming a skirt, 18 sous for a ribbon and shoe-strings; three francs for a tooth wash;—all this was kept track of. Yet in years gone by France had allowed her four million francs of pin money, and the royal allowance was twenty-five millions of ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel

... a broad black lace; crape flounce, & leave made of blue ribbon, and trimmed with white floss; wreaths of black velvet ribbon spotted with steel beads, which are much in fashion, and brought to such perfection as to resemble diamonds; white ribbon also in the van dyke style, made up of the trimming, which looked very elegant, a full dress handkerchief, and a bouquet of roses.... Now for your cousin: A small, white leghorn hat, bound with pink satin ribbon; a steel buckle and band which turned up at the side, and confined a large pink bow; large bow of the same kind of ribbon behind; a wreath ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday

... round flat hat, plaited of straw. It had no trimming save a pretty bow and strings of brown ribbon, but Anne thought ...
— A Little Maid of Massachusetts Colony • Alice Turner Curtis

... were munching succulent back-fin crab meat drenched in fresh butter. The wooden block served as an anvil, and the round hardwood piece as a hammer for cracking claws. The paring knife was used for trimming and for scooping out delicious bits of meat. The fork was utilized to persuade small tidbits to leave their shell cages. Three or four napkins were used between each tidbit to mop buttery hands, and even chins, down which the butter sometimes dripped. It ...
— The Flying Stingaree • Harold Leland Goodwin

... themselves, unsupported, and pay the penalty of their own improvidence and unwisdom. Perhaps in that bridal procession might have been seen fathers, brothers, friends, for whose service and amusement the foolish virgins had wasted many precious hours, when they should have been trimming their own lamps and keeping oil ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton

... of a snail's fine shell, Which for the colours did excel, The fair Queen Mab becoming well, So lively was the limning; The seat the soft wool of the bee, The cover, gallantly to see, The wing of a pied butterflee; I trow 'twas simple trimming. ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick

... The time is too short to develop designers, but it does help a girl to be more exact, resourceful, and useful in her workroom, and often enables her to make a higher wage. A worker who can place trimming, adapt designs to new purposes, stamp patterns, draw copies of garments, and combine color attractively is especially desirable in her ...
— The Making of a Trade School • Mary Schenck Woolman

... plaster come to edge of plaque all round. When the plaster is dry, trim the edge round, and take it out of plaque. You must now roll out a flat sheet of clay sufficiently large to cover this plaster mould, and, by pressing the clay evenly all over the mould, and trimming round the edges with a knife, you will get a clay plaque sufficiently good to answer your purpose. Don't attempt to remove the clay immediately from the plaster, but let it remain on a few hours, to enable the clay to set. The surface of this plaque may be kept moist ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII: No. 356, October 23, 1886. • Various

... mother held some notions like those. She used to say—quality was the thing, and was never satisfied till she got the best lawn, soft as silk, but she never had much trimming on them. Cut plain and full, was almost always her directions. Well, now—yes, I guess you'll have to wait till you go to Paree before you replenish that side of your wardrobe. Is your Mr. Hawtree free with ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison

... remarked Leonard, one evening, "that there is much diversity of opinion in regard to the time and method of trimming trees. While the majority of our neighbors prune in March, some say fall or winter is the best time. Others are in favor of June, and in some paper I've read, 'Prune when your knife is sharp.' As for cleansing the bark of the trees, very few ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe

... of green silk, the body opening in front a la demi coeur; the waist is long and rounded in front; the sleeves, reaching a little below the elbow, are moderately wide, and finished either by a ruche or rich guimpe trimming; the skirt is plain, long, and full. Pardessus manteau of claret velvet, fastening to the throat; it is ornamented with a narrow silk trimming: this manteau is lined with white silk, quilted in large squares. ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various

... very pleasant, I can assure you, to listen to tales of adventure while one is engaged at the somewhat prosaic task of trimming a lilac bush or of weeding the pansy bed. Whenever he discovers me at this kind of toil neighbor Robbins comes over and leans up against a tree and beguiles the tedium of labor with a bit of personal experience. I can't begin to tell you how attached ...
— The House - An Episode in the Lives of Reuben Baker, Astronomer, and of His Wife, Alice • Eugene Field

... say to a silver trimming, pretty Catherine? Don't you think a scarlet riding-cloak, handsomely laced, would become you wonderfully well?—and a grey hat with a blue feather—and a pretty nag to ride on—and all the soldiers to present ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray

... cheerful thought, more than a physical reality,—while Peony expanded in breadth rather than height, and rolled along on his short and sturdy legs, as substantial as an elephant, though not quite so big. Then the mother resumed her work. What it was I forget; but she was either trimming a silken bonnet for Violet, or darning a pair of stockings for little Peony's short legs. Again, however, and again, and yet other agains, she could not help turning her head to the window, to see how the children ...
— The Snow-Image - A Childish Miracle • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... of the body may cause disease in the soul; yet not the less trust we in the mercy of the merciful—not the less strive we to keep feeding and trimming that spiritual lamp which is within us, even when it flickers feebly in the dampy gloom, like an earthly lamp left in a vaulted sepulchre, about to die among the dead. Heaven seems to have placed a power in ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson

... indeed," said Mary, "but I often thought the wealth of flowers there was too much for earth. You see, it is very near the equator, very hot and so unbearably oppressive. That is what gave us all the deadly fever." She was trimming off a few withered leaves from a plant in its hanging basket, and standing on the high rustic stool, her face above the blossoms, brought sighs of admiration even to Grace, who ordinarily disclaimed so small a thing ...
— The Girl Scouts at Bellaire - Or Maid Mary's Awakening • Lilian C. McNamara Garis

... garden seat with a cushion at her back, she looked away at the back of the houses in the next street. She was dressed in black, it was true, but even Darnell could see that her gown was old and shabby, that the fur trimming of her cape and the fur boa which was twisted about her neck were dingy and disconsolate, and had all the melancholy air which fur wears when it is seen in a second-hand clothes-shop in a back street. And her gloves—they were black kid, wrinkled with much wear, faded to a bluish hue at the ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen

... or well or ill Ravel yet more the riddle of our lot. The mind is in their trammels, and lights not By trimming fear-bred tales; nor does the will To find in nature things which less may chill An ardour that desires, unknowing what. Till we conceive her living we go distraught, At best but circle-windsails of a mill. Seeing she lives, and of her joy of life Creatively ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... that I am weak. I feel that I am wanting in that energy, which should sustain a Mama: not to say a parent: on such a subject,' said Mrs Skewton, trimming her lips with the laced edge of her pocket-handkerchief; 'but I can hardly approach a topic so excessively momentous to my dearest Edith without a feeling of faintness. Nevertheless, bad man, as you have boldly remarked ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens

... aid of lanterns; but next morning Lieutenants Amir and Yusuf were unable to find it. Native craft usually make fast in three fathoms to a lumpy natural mole of modern sandstone, north of the entrance: a little trimming would convert it into ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 2 • Richard Burton

... shoes, but I have taken considerable liberties in the manner in which I have shorn them of ribbons and laces and—for the sake of dramatic simplicity, be it remembered—I have eliminated yards of trimming. ...
— The Beggar's Opera - to which is prefixed the Musick to each Song • John Gay

... the vow which he had made to Jupiter. On the return of the army to Rome, the soldiers, by his directions, cut down a small oak-tree, and trimming the branches at the top, and shortening them as much as was necessary for the purpose, they hung the weapons and armor of Acron upon it, and marched with it thus, in triumph into the city. Romulus walked in the midst of the procession, a crown of laurel ...
— Romulus, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... other outhouses were left open for himself and men. He occupied the mansion and his men the outhouses, on the west towards the bridge; on the back of the outhouses to the east, and directly in front of the dwelling, there stretched towards the road an extensive avenue of old cedar trees, the trimming of which had been neglected for some years; and their long boughs now descended nearly to the ground. While encamped in this situation, Gen. Marion heard of the approach of Major Fraser with the British cavalry, towards the Santee, in his ...
— A Sketch of the Life of Brig. Gen. Francis Marion • William Dobein James

... glass for putting on the final perfect touch to a work of art like an axe-helve. Nothing will so beautifully and delicately trim out the curves of the throat or give a smoother turn to the waist. So with care and an indescribable affection, I added the final touches, trimming the helve until it exactly fitted my hand. Often and often I tried it in pantomime, swinging nobly in the centre of the sitting-room (avoiding the lamp), attentive to the feel of my hand as it ran along the helve. I rubbed it down with fine sandpaper until it ...
— Adventures In Contentment • David Grayson

... wanted her back again. It seemed to Paul his mother looked lonely, in her new black silk blouse with its bit of white trimming. ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence

... those dim alcoves, far withdrawn, He turned with measured steps and slow, Trimming his lantern as he went; And there, among the shadows, bent Above one ponderous folio, With whose miraculous text were blent Seraphic faces: Angels, crowned With rings of melting amethyst; Mute, patient Martyrs, cruelly bound To blazing fagots; here and there, Some ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... You can get four per cent. on deposits. Even at the salary I've been earning, I've figured out that in ten years I'd have an income of about $50 a month just from the interest alone. Well, I might invest some of the principal in a little business—say, trimming hats or a ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry

... occasion. The curtains are drawn to shut away the dreary fog, and fire-light mingles with the rosy rays from a tall lamp. Eleanor is still quite in a tremble lest the oil should smell, as Sarah frequently fails over the art of wick trimming. ...
— When the Birds Begin to Sing • Winifred Graham

... supported by agitators so long as the defence was dangerous and profitless, stepped forward now that it was clearly winning, and received both the reward and the credit. Mill and Place could not find words to express their contempt for the trimming, shuffling Whigs. They were probably unjust enough in detail; but they had a strong case in some respects. The Utilitarians represented that part of the reforming party which had a definite and a reasoned creed. They tried to give logic where the popular agitators were content ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen

... this—all the extra work that occupies me so much, we must do without; you shall be content with clean white linen, and Isabel's frocks and things must go with less trimming—she is pretty enough without them, you know—then I can take in sewing, and earn enough to pay for what the poor little thing will eat. Perhaps she knows how to sew a little; at any rate, she and Isabel will be handy about the house, and give me more time. There, now, isn't ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens

... of artlessness expressed in the first mourning of a certain young widow, for instance, who sewed upon her blue gown all the black trimming she could collect, declaring that she "would 'a' dyed de frock th'oo an' th'oo 'cep'n' it would 'a' swunked it up too much"? And perhaps her sympathetic companions were quite as naive as she, for, as they aided her in these ...
— Moriah's Mourning and Other Half-Hour Sketches • Ruth McEnery Stuart

... grown from her! It seemed years since she had been engrossed with the latest mode in hat trimming, the dip of "umbrella" skirts, and the best method of making the hands white. Years since she had tried a trembling 'prentice hand at flirtations. Years, almost, since she had given the little blue ribbon at Yarrahappini, that ...
— Seven Little Australians • Ethel Sybil Turner

... semi-Tyrolean type in resilient chamois, which can be readily converted to any desired shape, with or without extra stiffening. Its adaptability and the patent sound-proof ear-flaps make it particularly suitable for travellers. Detachable edelweiss and leek trimming. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 22, 1920 • Various

... the State, one J. Neely Johnson, a politician who would long since have been utterly forgotten had not his unlucky star risen just at this unlucky time. A more unfortunate man for a crisis it would have been difficult to find. His whole life had been one of trimming; he had made his way by trimming; he had gained the governor's chair by yielding to the opinions of others. This training combined perfectly with the natural disposition of a chameleon. He was, or became, a sincere trimmer, taking his colour and his temporary beliefs from those with whom ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White

... spread his two lug-sails; and, trimming aft the sheets, placed himself at the helm, like one who expected his services there might be shortly needed. The result did not disappoint his expectations. Ere Long, the light canvas of the boat began ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper

... rich trimming from some of her plainest dresses, and wore them when she could not possibly avoid it. She did her work with great neatness and dispatch, and was supplied with all she could possibly do, so that she remunerated the kind hearted woman who had boarded ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna

... of the Dying Gladiator, talking incessantly, arranging his port-crayons by the drawing-boards, and trimming the lamps that lit the model. Mrs. Blyth cast many an anxious look towards the fireplace. After the lapse of a few minutes Madonna turned round and came back to the couch. The traces of tears had almost entirely ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins

... lace, body and sleeves; one piece of silk to match, unmade, intended for high body, and bons; sleeves slashed open and lined with white satin 1 rose-colored robe, with $250 flounces; high and low body, having fringe and trimming woven to imitate Russian fur; both bodies trimmed with fringe ribbons and narrow lace 1 mauve-colored glace silk, 180 braided and bugled all around the bottom of skirt, on the front of body, around the band of Garibaldi body, down the sleeves and round the cuffs of Garibaldi body; the ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe

... rocking-chairs. She knotted white fringes for the table-covers and curtains, painted the inside of the fireplace red, put some pots of scarlet geraniums on the window-sills, filled a wall-pocket with ferns and tacked it over an ugly spot in the plastering, edged her work-basket with a tufted trimming of scarlet wool, and made an elaborate photograph case of white crash and red cotton that stretched the entire length of the old-fashioned mantelshelf, and held pictures of Mr. Reynolds, Miss Elvira Reynolds, George, Susy, Anna, John, Hazel, Ella, ...
— A Village Stradivarius • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... a small snap-shot picture of the girl. Petka looked at the picture and did not know what to say. To judge from her photograph, she was a frail spinster, with high cheekbones, a long neck and a nose like a frozen potato. But the trimming of her hair, her city hat with flowers, and her whole American bearing made her interesting enough to the ambitious tailor. For a long time he was gazing at the ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy

... all beautiful, perfect in regard to fit, trimming, and suitability to the occasion on which they were to be worn; very becoming, also, the captain remarked in an aside to his wife; a remark to which she gave a ...
— Elsie at Home • Martha Finley

... they are safe; those I will myself deliver; though, from what the journals say, his Lordship has small need of new trimming. 'Twas the public talk, when you made me act the respectable character of spy in Sir Willmott Burrell's service—at the court, sir, they talked of nothing else—how the King of France, with his own ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall

... net, and, oddly enough, the memory came to her now as she looked at the sweet, starry-eyed creature advancing. She was as surely caught in an invisible net of some kind as the long-ago butterfly had been. Matilda Markham noted the conventional gown of dull blue with silver trimming; the little slippers to match, and the silken stockings; her eyes rested upon the string of small silver beads wound around the slim throat; all, all were but part of the mesh that caught and held the spirit that had ...
— A Son of the Hills • Harriet T. Comstock

... fears should be too powerful to suffer their remaining with him. The assassins extinguished their own fires, but did not lie down to sleep: Robinson kept his burning brightly, that he might watch their movement. They were earnestly chattering, and were trimming their weapons, while one of their number insisted upon the cruelty of killing the white man! On Robinson's rising, the whole seized their spears—one grasped in their right hand, and a bundle in their left. The dogs of Robinson's party had been ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West

... an evil spirit seeking rest and finding none. He stood for some time gloomily watching the four gardeners, who were busily at work laying strips of turf, mowing the lawn, rolling the gravel paths and trimming the trees and bushes. The boy Bert, Philpot, Harlow, Easton and Sawkins were loading a hand-cart with ladders and empty paint-pots to return to the yard. Just as they were setting out, Misery stopped them, remarking that the cart was not half loaded—he said it would take ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell

... and consists in forming the bowls in one piece of metal, without seams or joints, by stamping up sheets of metal into the form of a trough, with a flange around the top, and cutting the same transversely in the center, with blanks for the bowls of two scoops, to be finished by trimming or shaping the cut ends, turning down the flange at the top, for stiffening either over wire or not and attaching the handle; the object being to produce scoops with bowls formed in one piece, and shaped at the base ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various

... said Mrs. Pelz, "you are sinning before God. Look on your fur coat; it alone would feed a whole family for a year. I never had yet a piece of fur trimming on a coat, and you are in fur from the neck to the feet. I never had yet a piece of feather on a hat, and your hat is ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... she always found some of the family there, when she pushed the perambulator up the path, to let the baby sleep in the warmth and silence of the sheltered place. She chatted with Olive or the elder sisters, while Mrs. Halleck drove Cyrus on to the work of tying up the vines and trimming the shrubs, with the pitiless rigor of women when they get a man about some outdoor labor. Sometimes, Ben Halleck was briefly of the party; and one morning when Marcia opened the gate, she found him there alone with Cyrus, who was busy at some belated tasks of horticulture. The young ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells

... but in some instances they should not contain more than half the amount to facilitate drying. When the heap has become large enough, the inverted fork should be made to draw down on every side the loose portions, which in turn are put upon the top of the cock. Such trimming is an important aid to the shedding of rain. An expert hand will put up one of these cocks of hay in less time than it takes to read ...
— Clovers and How to Grow Them • Thomas Shaw

... Carruthers, intently engaged in trimming his cigar ash on the edge of the Limoges china saucer of his coffee set, looked up ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard

... which may have fallen on the spot on which the collar is to rest. The connection of the laterals with the mains, the laying of the larger sizes of tiles so as to form a close joint, the wedging of these larger tiles firmly into their places, and the trimming which is necessary in going around sharp curves, and in putting in the shorter pieces which are needed to fill out the exact length of the drain, demand more skill and judgment than are often found in the common ditcher. ...
— Draining for Profit, and Draining for Health • George E. Waring

... dream of insuring Marion's stock boxes; there were no bills payable, because no travelling man would advise a line of credit to an inexperienced and, what was worse, an unpractical milliner. Marion did her own trimming, so there were no salaries except to Katie Dancing. It puzzled McCloud to find the leak. How could he know that Marion was keeping nearly all the block supplied with funds? So McCloud continued to raise the price of his table-board, and, though ...
— Whispering Smith • Frank H. Spearman

... circumstances, I had no alternative but to take on myself the responsibility of navigating and sailing the vessel. And while proceeding along the fruitful shores of St. Domingo, and the picturesque coast of Jamaica, I passed whole nights on deck, engaged in tending the sick, trimming the sails, and steering the brig. It was truly fortunate that the wind continued ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper

... The quilt over it contained pieces of every calico and gingham dress that had been worn in the Weston family since the Revolution, and in the centre had been transferred from a remnant of curtain calico, an eagle with outstretched wings. The pillow cases were finished off with tape trimming, Alice's work, at Cousin Janet's suggestion. Over an old fashioned-mahogany bureau hung an oval looking glass, which was carefully covered from the flies. An easy chair stood by the window at the foot of the bed, which had, like most of the other ancient looking ...
— Aunt Phillis's Cabin - Or, Southern Life As It Is • Mary H. Eastman

... our culture are not self-justifying nor always justifiable when looked at through eyes not already disposed in their favour. Hearn was one of the most loyal advocates the West could possibly have sent to the East, but he was an honest artist, and he never tried to improve his case by trimming a fact. His interpretation of us, therefore, touches our sensitiveness in regions—and in a degree—which perhaps his Japanese students were unconscious of; we too marvel as well as they at his skill in explaining, but we are ...
— Books and Habits from the Lectures of Lafcadio Hearn • Lafcadio Hearn

... been here a long time, badly wounded, and has lately had his leg amputated. It is not doing very well. Right opposite me is a sick soldier boy, laid down with his clothes on, sleeping, looking much wasted, his pallid face on his arm. I see by the yellow trimming on his jacket that he is a cavalry boy. He looks so handsome as he sleeps, one must needs go nearer to him. I step softly over to him, and find by his card that he is named William Cone, of the 1st Maine Cavalry, and his folks live ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs

... passed there. I fear disunion, and no mortal line can sound the depth of that calamity. I sometimes think that it would be well if we could wear around this last, terrible, black headland by sounding, and trimming sails, rather than attempt to sail by compass and quadrant. Do not mistake my figure. I am no moral trimmer, and that you know. Conscience must be obeyed. But conscience does not forbid that we should treat the Southern people with great ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey

... the girls' high school, and brought up in all ways after the manner of New England. Her looks were not of New England, however; and her dresses would show an edge of trimming or a ribbon that had a Spanish color, despite all Jamie's mother's Presbyterian repression. Then, a few years after, the old drayman died; and a beautiful piano appeared in the McMurtaghs' modest lodging. ...
— Pirate Gold • Frederic Jesup Stimson

... into loud exclamations of pleasure and admiration. Then, when Wolf hastened out and with hurrying fingers opened the little package he had brought and gave her the costly fur which was to serve as trimming for the velvet jacket, she again laughed gleefully, and, ere Wolf was aware of it, she had thrown her arms around his neck and ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... hat should be the subject of the most earnest thought, even of prayer. (Cheers.) Not only the shape but the colour. There were hats that were black and hats that were white. (Shouts of "Hurrah!") There were even white hats with black trimming. (Sensation.) The older he grew the more convinced he was that an Englishman's hat was ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 18, 1919 • Various

... and topaz and ruby ornaments clasped her throat and arms. An Eastern queen she looked, exacting universal homage, and full of fiery jealousy whenever her eyes fell upon one who stood just opposite. Irene's dress was an airy blue tulle, flounced to the waist, and without trimming, save the violet and clematis clusters. Never had her rare beauty been more resplendent—more dazzlingly chilly; it seemed the glitter of an arctic ice-berg lit by some low midnight sun, and turn whither she would ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson

... was over, and they were preparing to have early evening prayers for the sake of the children, when a vehicle drove up, and a burly form, clad in navy blue broadcloth with a plentiful trimming of gilt buttons, descending from it, came along the path towards the house, ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell

... and Fig. 7b a plan of the tool for performing the seventh operation. P P are the punches for trimming the outside and Q Q those for trimming the inside of the ends of the links. The links adjacent to the one to be operated on are brought together into the position shown in dotted lines, the bed-die having an aperture in it to admit of this, so that ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 819 - Volume XXXII, Number 819. Issue Date September 12, 1891 • Various

... on the 15th of February, 1622. The Torbay barque reached Penzance, in Cornwall, having all along persuaded the Algerines that they were going to Algiers, till they came in sight of England. When the pirates were below trimming the salt, they nailed the hatches down upon them. Having come to an anchor, they ...
— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston

... that I should like it very much, and accordingly, when the trimming operations were concluded and I had secured a wisp of Mr. Towler's hair for subsequent examination, we ascended to the second floor front and he demonstrated the ...
— The Uttermost Farthing - A Savant's Vendetta • R. Austin Freeman

... it was a busy day, with so much of cake-baking and icing and trimming to be done; and then the girls had to see about their dresses for the evening, and the young men had their shoes to black, and their best clothes to brush, and their hair to unwrap; but, notwithstanding all this, when Major Waldron and his family entered the chapel they found a large congregation ...
— Diddie, Dumps & Tot - or, Plantation child-life • Louise-Clarke Pyrnelle

... pocket, Tom McMahon made for the barber's shop which Mazarine had entered. He found it full, but seated in the red-plush chair, tipped back at a convenient angle, was Mazarine undergoing the triple operations of shaving his upper lip, beard-trimming and haircutting. From that moment and for the rest of all the long day and evening, Joel Mazarine commanded the unvarying interest of two members of the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... if a man is trimming a tree, and kills your slave as he passes by with a bough which he lets fall, he is guilty of negligence, if it is near a public way, or a private path belonging to a neighbour, and he does not call out to give people warning; ...
— The Institutes of Justinian • Caesar Flavius Justinian

... Europe, the whole charge of preserving that balance would fall upon Great Britain; every state would expect a gratification from her, for doing that which it would otherwise be obliged to do for its own preservation; even the Dutch might at last refuse to assist in trimming this balance, unless Britain should submit to make the grand pensionary of Holland a pensionary of England, and take a number of their forces into English pay. The debate having had its free course, the question was put, and the motion approved by the majority. The ministry allowed a ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett

... in so extensive a sense as you do. Girls may appear genteelly without being extravagant, and though some fops may know the most approved color for a ribbon, or the newest arrangement for trimming, I believe gentlemen of real character merely notice whether a lady's dress is generally in good taste, or not. But, granting your statement to be true, in its widest sense, of what consequence is it? How much will the whole happiness of your daughter's life be affected by ...
— The American Frugal Housewife • Lydia M. Child

... Lisa" was there with her inscrutable smile, "The Laughing Cavalier," as well as less famous characters, such as smiling girls on calendars and magazine covers. An amusing display of newspaper cartoons also filled one portion of the wall space. Smilax was appropriately enough used for trimming. ...
— Entertaining Made Easy • Emily Rose Burt

... are mostly of the same material and shape as those of the Bachelor's: the gown differs only in the mode of trimming. At Trinity and Caius Colleges the gown is purple, with large sleeves, terminating in a point. At St. Peter's and Queen's, the gown is precisely the same as that of a Bachelor; and at King's, the ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall

... at his own desire. This assurance had a surprising effect upon Pipes, who, though he made no manner of reply, thrust the helm into the master's hands, saying, "Here, you old bumboat-woman, take hold of the tiller, and keep her thus, boy, thus;" and skipped about the vessel, trimming the sails, and managing the ropes with such agility and skill, that everybody on deck ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett

... passage in which she stood—the passage which she had left in black darkness—was alight; was so far lighted, at least, that to eyes fresh from the night, the figures of three men, grouped at the farther end, stood out against the glow of the lanthorn which they appeared to be trimming—for the two nearest were stooping over it. These two had their backs to her, the third his face; and it was the sight of this third man which had driven the blood to her heart. He ended at the waist! ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman

... biggest shopping place in Watauga, and the ready-made summer wear was to be had at bargain rates. Not for her were the flaring, coarse, scant garments whose lack of seemliness was supposed to be atoned for by a profusion of cheap, sleazy trimming. After long and somewhat painful inspection, since most of the things she wanted were hopelessly beyond her, Johnnie carried home a fairly fine white lawn, simply ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke

... hairy, which they killed and offered unto Mars. Then supper was prepared sumptuously, and the new companion said unto the other, You ought to accompt me not onely your Captaine in robbery and fight, but also in pleasures and jolity, whereupon by and by with pleasant cheere he prepared meat, and trimming up the house he set all things in order, and brought the pottage and dainty dishes to the Table: but above all he plyed them wel with great pots and jugs of wine. Sometimes (seeming to fetch somewhat) ...
— The Golden Asse • Lucius Apuleius

... fast with only her main-sail, what would she not do with her jib also? The young skipper was determined to test the question, and, lashing the helm, he hoisted her headsail. Trimming the sail by the sheets which led aft, the yacht increased her speed, and tossed the water over her boughs at a fearful rate; but Little Bobtail had closed the fore scuttle, and he let it toss. It was wild excitement to him, and he enjoyed it to ...
— Little Bobtail - or The Wreck of the Penobscot. • Oliver Optic

... until the fields are everywhere covered with a downy fleece of spotless purity, and every salient point—the tops of the fences and posts, the branches of the trees, and the interminable lines of telegraph wire—are adorned with a white and dazzling trimming. In such a fall of snow as this the delicate process of crystallization is not disturbed by any agitations in the air. The feathery needles from each little nucleus extend themselves in every direction as far as they will, and combining by gentle contacts ...
— Harper's Young People, February 10, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... to the house, and brought with me, as I promised, the "Clockmaker." When I entered the room, I found Jessie there, who received me with her usual ease and composure. She was trimming a work-bag, the sides of which were made of the inner bark of the birch-tree, and beautifully worked with ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton

... In trimming lamps, let the wick be cut evenly all round; as, if left higher in one place than it is in another, it will cause it to smoke and burn badly. The lamp should then be filled with oil from a feeder and afterward well ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller

... they must beware the beginnings of sin; hold no parley with the enemy; never hesitate, whether it is not best, in any case to yield to temptation; nor make attempts to please those who wish them, and dare to importune them to counteract the light of their own minds— "trimming their way to ...
— Sermons on Various Important Subjects • Andrew Lee

... moment, Louisa, who sat swinging on the garden gate, fanning her fair cheek with the little round hat which she had just been trimming with roses, caught the sound of my angry voice; and never did a cloud more quickly obscure the sweet star of evening than the shadow fell on her young face. She dropped her hat beside her on the grass, ...
— Hurrah for New England! - The Virginia Boy's Vacation • Louisa C. Tuthill

... the youth has so well formed a limb that even his own villainous yarn coverings cannot disfigure it. His hair is of a good brown colour, which the king affects much, and seems to curl naturally; but it wants trimming to the mode, for he is rough as a young colt fresh from pasture; and though he hath not much beard on his chin or upper lip, yet what he hath becomes him well, and will become him better, when properly clipped and twisted. Altogether he is as goodly a youth as one would desire to see. What if ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth

... compact little nest of moss and feathers in a tiny hole in a tree, selecting, I believe, generally a natural cavity, but certainly trimming the ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume

... eyes of yearning tenderness; thereafter she laughed, soft and happily and, snatching up a cloak, set it about her and fled from the chamber. So, swift and light of foot, she sped by hidden ways until she came where old Godric, her chief huntsman, busied himself trimming the shaft of a boar-spear, who, beholding his lady, rose ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol

... nor with any one looking after it. Next half-a-dozen men, sleeping bolt upright or leaning against one another in their sleep. In one place a family group, a child asleep in its sleeping mother's arms, and the husband (or male mate) clumsily mending a dilapidated shoe. On another bench a woman trimming the frayed strips of her rags with a knife, and another woman, with thread and needle, sewing up rents. Adjoining, a man holding a sleeping woman in his arms. Farther on, a man, his clothing caked with gutter mud, asleep, ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London

... a beautiful apostrophe to the memory of his son, the gallant Earl of Ossory. The Bishops of London and Rochester; Mulgrave our author's constant patron, now reconciled with Charles and his government; the plausible and trimming Halifax; and Hyde, Earl of Rochester, second son to the great Clarendon, appear in this list. The poet having thus arrayed and mustered the forces on each side, some account of the combat is naturally expected; ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott

... who came from that country, said that her parents were much employed in making these pots, chiefly it seems as articles of barter. The asbestos, which they use in the shape of a roundish pointed stick called tatko for trimming the lamps, is met with about Repulse Bay, and generally, as they said, on ...
— Journal of the Third Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage • William Edward Parry

... ist uns ein Kindelein," as he gazed wistfully at a shop window piled high with crisp gingerbread, marzipan, chocolate under every guise, and tempting cakes. A great rough peasant coming out, saw him, turned back, and a moment later thrust a gingerbread Santa Klaus, with currant eyes and sugar trimming to his coat and cap, into the half-fearful little hands. "Hab' ebenso ein Kerlchen zu Haus'," he said to ...
— The Grey Brethren and Other Fragments in Prose and Verse • Michael Fairless

... Mademoiselle de l'Enclos, trimming her pen with her trusty knife, wrote to the lady in waiting an agreeable and polished letter, one of those letters, careful without stiffness, that one writes, indulging oneself a little with the intention of getting ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan

... boys, one at a time now. Bud, you and Tim and Dough-head give them guys a singe, their hair's getting too long. The rest of you boys just content yourselves doing a fancy decoration on the canvas all around 'em. I'll deevote my entire attenshun to trimming them lugshuriant whiskers, Mister Harris is a-sporting. All ready now,—one, two, ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... are cut and peeled twice in the course of the year,—say about Christmas and midsummer. The plantations resemble a thick, tangled copse, without any regularity, and require no cultivation, after being once set out; though by close trimming the strength is thrown downward, and the shrub is thought to render a better crop. The raising of the spice was once a government monopoly, but all restrictions are now removed, and the plantations near to Colombo are ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou

... became bolder and bolder. In fact, so daring were their crimes that the home governments, stirred at last by these outrageous barbarities, seriously undertook the suppression of the freebooters, lopping and trimming the main trunk until its members were scattered hither and thither, and it was thought that the organization was exterminated. But, so far from being exterminated, the individual members were merely scattered north, south, east, and west, each forming a nucleus around ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle

... black silk, that fell in full rich folds behind her, high to the round white throat, where it was clasped with a flashing diamond. A solitaire diamond blazed on her left hand—those slender, delicate little hands—her engagement ring, no doubt. They were all the jewels she wore. The trimming of her dress was of filmy black lace, and all her masses of bright golden hair were twisted coronet-wise round her noble and lovely head. She was very tall, very slender; and the exquisite face just tinted with only the faintest shadow of rose. "Beautiful, ...
— Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters - A Novel • May Agnes Fleming

... striking characteristics were his devotion to principle and his indomitable courage. There never was a moment when he could be truthfully charged with trimming or insincerity. His views were always clearly avowed and fearlessly maintained. He hated slavery, and he did not attempt to conceal it. He remembered the lessons of his youth, and his heart rebelled against the injustice of the system. His antipathy was deeply grounded in his convictions, ...
— Oration on the Life and Character of Henry Winter Davis • John A. J. Creswell

... however, the sky cleared a little, and Bill got sight of part of the constellation of the Great Bear. Although the pole-star was not visible, he guessed pretty nearly its position, and thus ascertained that the breeze came from the south-west. Trimming the lug-sail accordingly, the tars turned the prow of the little craft to the northward, and steered for the ...
— The Battle and the Breeze • R.M. Ballantyne

... heavy drilling was done with Ingersoll drills (Model E 52), the trimming being largely done with jap and baby drills. A large number of pumps were used at various points on the work, and practically all were of Cameron make, the largest ones at the shaft being 10 by 5 by 13-in. The grout machines were ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, Vol. LXVIII, Sept. 1910 • James H. Brace and Francis Mason

... cynical, and in a sort outcasts told off by fortune to these sad and grizzly services, sat themselves down by the fire, each perhaps feeling unusually at home in the other's society; and in this soured and forlorn comfort, trimming their fire, quickening the song of the kettle to a boil, and waxing polite and chatty; each treating the other with that deprecatory and formal courtesy which invites a return in kind, and both growing ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 3 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

... alongside of the rocks almost mast head high, from the top of which the guano is sent down through a canvass shute directly into the hold of the ship. Thus several hundred tons can be put on board in a day. The trimming of the cargo is a very unpleasant part of the labor. The dust and odor is almost overpowering; so the men are obliged to come often on deck for fresh air. The rule is to remain below as long as a candle will burn; when that goes out, the air is considered unfit for respiration. ...
— Guano - A Treatise of Practical Information for Farmers • Solon Robinson

... she felt it must then be embarrassing to him to speak, and to herself to hear. Her retreat, had not, however, been effected with considerable loss, she had been compelled to leave a large piece of the crape-trimming of her gown under the foot of ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth

... the axe and the coil of rope which had fallen from the wagon during its descent, and now lay within easy reach. Passing the rope several times around his body so as to form a sling she cut a stout bush, and trimming it, made a stake which she firmly fastened into a crevice, and with, an exertion of strength, such as her loving and resolute heart could have alone inspired her to put forth, she extricated him ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler

... of a pale chocolate cachmere, trimmed with narrow silk fringe, the double robings on each side of the front as well as the cape, on the half-high corsage, ornamented with a double row of narrow silk fringe, this trimming repeated round the lower part of the loose sleeve; the chemisette of plaited cambric, headed with a broad frill of embroidery; full under sleeves of cambric, with a row of embroidery round the wrist; open bonnet of pink satin, a row of white lace encircling the interior next the face. The ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various

... this time finished trimming the aspen sticks; and by the fading light of day and the red light of the fire they set to work to mend the broken leg. Between them they knew something of surgery: she by recollecting all that she had seen in her father's office, where ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham

... came a messenger to King Arthur saying that King Ryons of North Wales, a strong man in body, and passing proud, had discomfited and overcome eleven kings, and each of these to do him homage had cut his beard clean off as trimming for King Ryons' royal mantle. One place of the mantle still lacked trimming; wherefore he sent for Arthur's beard, and if he did not receive it he would enter England to burn and slay, and never would he leave till he had Arthur, head ...
— Stories of King Arthur and His Knights - Retold from Malory's "Morte dArthur" • U. Waldo Cutler

... up to the table and ended some barley-trimming that I'd just learned how to make; and as the little kernels came tumbling out from under my fingers, Stephen sat beside and watched them as if it was a field of barley, growing, reaped, and threshed under his eyes. By-and-by I finished it; and then, rummaging round in the table-drawer, I found ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various

... and chairs covered the long bench, and round it sat the neat-handed little maidens gluing, tacking and trimming, while they sang and chatted at their work as busy and happy as a ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott

... One day while trimming a wreath of oak leaves, she thought she heard footsteps, and the low growl of Trot, before she had time to turn her head, confirmed her impression that ...
— Dawn • Mrs. Harriet A. Adams

... responsibilities in life, and picking the right shade of paint for a house you have to live in is a most wearing one. Painting the trimming of ours in connection with the garden was very agitating. I had sample bits of board painted and took them about town, trying them next to houses I liked, and at last decided on a wicked Spanish green that the storms of winter are expected to mellow. As I saw it being put on ...
— The Smiling Hill-Top - And Other California Sketches • Julia M. Sloane

... crowd a very striking appearance. In single suits I saw sleeves of one color, the waist of another, the skirt of another; scarlet jackets and gray skirts; black waists and blue skirts; black skirts and gray waists; the trimming chiefly gold braid and buttons, to give a military air. The gray and gold uniforms of the officers, glittering between, made up a carnival of color. Every moment we saw strange meetings and partings of people from all over the South. Conditions of time, space, locality, ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable

... then the mast was stepped and set up with shrouds and stays, wedges being driven in to secure it more firmly. The sail was hoisted and rigged out with a boom, and away we glided up the stream. Great care had been taken, in trimming the log, to prevent the risk of its upsetting. To each person was assigned his own proper place, from which he was on no account to move, unless directed by Uncle Paul or Captain van Dunk. Further to secure ...
— The Wanderers - Adventures in the Wilds of Trinidad and Orinoco • W.H.G. Kingston

... and then look at the outlandish trimming of the lady's dress. You men are so dull about such matters you'd never observe these little points. Well, I was here first after Patty, and my light shone on this jet ornament lying near where she saw the spirit. No one has any such tasty ...
— The Abbot's Ghost, Or Maurice Treherne's Temptation • A. M. Barnard

... Perceiving no outlet, he examined the wooden flooring, and soon discovered a trap, which, when raised by the ring attached, exposed to view a steep and narrow descending staircase, leading apparently to some sally-port beyond the castle ditch. After carefully trimming his lamp, he was about to lead the way into this dark abyss, when a sound, sharp and sudden, as of something falling in the adjacent prison, caught his ear. Retracing his steps, he re-entered the apartment, where, after a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various

... dull; she needed distraction, and her letters suggested both the means of getting it and a difficulty. She wore black, but it had an artistic, almost coquettish, effect, and the big hat became her well, in spite of its simple trimming. Sylvia bestowed a good deal of thought upon ...
— Ranching for Sylvia • Harold Bindloss

... hundred times better than he had thought them, and the prisoner a hundred times worse. Lastly, came my Lord himself, turning the suit of clothes, now inside out, now outside in, but on the whole decidedly trimming and shaping them ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens

... head! Or consul in his purple gown, Came up and knock'd the praetor down! Come, courtiers: every man his stick! Lord treasurer,[3] for once be quick: And that they may the closer cling, Take your blue ribbon for a string. Come, trimming Harcourt,[4] bring your mace; And squeeze it in, or quit your place: Dispatch, or else that rascal Northey[5] Will undertake to do it for thee: And be assured, the court will find him Prepared to leap o'er sticks, or bind them. To make ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift

... great advertisement, for better or worse, in the extraordinarily prominent way he has been mentioned in connection with "faking" and trimming. Columns have been written on this subject, speeches of inordinate length have been delivered, motions and resolutions have been carried, rules have been promulgated, etc., etc., and the one dog mentioned ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton

... put the bow on the right or left side, Elinor?" asked Mrs. Wyllys, who was re-trimming a hat for one ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper

... which included plain sewing, dress-making, hat-trimming, and fancy work of all kinds, was sent by the Pratt Institute, in Brooklyn. The useful sewing from that school was above the standard of excellence, and the art work fully equal to that of the New York School ...
— The Great Round World And What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1. No. 23, April 15, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various

... or such like place, Where here the curious cutting of a hedge: There, by a pond, the trimming of the sedge: Here the fine setting of well-shading trees: The walks there mounting up by small degrees, The gravel and the green so equal lie, It, with the rest, draws on your ling'ring eye: Here the sweet smells that do perfume ...
— Pastoral Poems by Nicholas Breton, - Selected Poetry by George Wither, and - Pastoral Poetry by William Browne (of Tavistock) • Nicholas Breton, George Wither, William Browne (of Tavistock)









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