"Bamboo" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 2 P.M. the first mate and party returned from Seal Island with some skins which run very small...This time the officer found remains of fires and a number of bamboo pegs, also a club. The Harrington must have been here, but where she could have lain at anchor we could not discover; if any place along this beach, it is curious that not the least signs of her are to be found—as I walked down from one end almost to the other. P.M. I sent ...
— The Logbooks of the Lady Nelson - With The Journal Of Her First Commander Lieutenant James Grant, R.N • Ida Lee
... the window overlooking the garden. He saw the water carrier enter through the bamboo gate, heard the water slosh about jerkily as the bheestee emptied his goatskin. He watched the man curiously; saw him drop the skin and tiptoe toward the house, glance to right and left alertly. Then he disappeared. Presently at the head of the ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... in Korea have a strange way of keeping themselves cool in hot weather. They have something like a basket made of rods of bamboo. This basket is round and long, and open at the top and bottom. They put their heads through this basket, and it hangs downward from their shoulders around their bodies. Then they put their clothes over it, so that the basket is inside. It is next to their skin. How would ...
— Big People and Little People of Other Lands • Edward R. Shaw
... received a note from Villiers, asking him to call either that afternoon or the next. He chose the nearer date, and found Villiers sitting as usual by the window, apparently lost in meditation on the drowsy traffic of the street. There was a bamboo table by his side, a fantastic thing, enriched with gilding and queer painted scenes, and on it lay a little pile of papers arranged and docketed as neatly as anything in ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen
... literally obeyed. In light flannel costumes we roamed the hills after moths and butterflies, early and late. We kept the frogs in miniature ponds in boxes covered with netting, providing them with bamboo ladders to climb, and so tell us when it was going to be wet weather. We had also enclosures in which we kept banks of trap-door spiders, which used to afford us intense interest with their clever artifices. To these we added the breeding of the more beautiful ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... when I got up I found him still lying quiet enough. I made for the boat, and in an hour we were well out at sea. Tonga had brought all his earthly possessions with him, his arms and his gods. Among other things, he had a long bamboo spear, and some Andaman cocoa-nut matting, with which I made a sort of sail. For ten days we were beating about, trusting to luck, and on the eleventh we were picked up by a trader which was going ...
— The Sign of the Four • Arthur Conan Doyle
... paper, with a huge green seal in the corner. Without being subjected to any form of trial, I was taken at once to prison. I found myself the occupant of a cell about ten feet square, with one window secured by an iron grating. The furniture of the cell consisted of a bamboo chair, a small table, and a low bedstead. I was glad to find that every thing looked neat and clean. I remained in this place for several days in utter solitude, except when my meals were brought to me; and then all that I could get out of my attendant was, "Me no talkee." I had ...
— John Whopper - The Newsboy • Thomas March Clark
... days was deeply worn—the long tenth notches half effaced, as alphabets of the blind. Ten thousand times the longing widow had traced her finger over the bamboo—dull flute, which played, on, gave no sound—as if counting birds flown by in air would hasten tortoises ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... apartments; the lesser being reserved for the use of the females of the household, while the larger, furnished with half-a-dozen hides, the skin of a jaguar, and a couple of benches or stools ingeniously manufactured from bamboo, is the general reception-room, sleeping-apartment, and workshop for the hatero, when the floods are out, or when he takes a fancy at other times to shelter his head beneath a roof. A few rods from the dwelling is the corral or cattle-pen, a large oval inclosure, into which, ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... struck by the strangeness of the sight, three children came up from a neighbouring village with baskets in their hands, on the same errand as themselves. As soon as the children saw the foxes, they picked up a bamboo stick and took the creatures stealthily in the rear; and when the old foxes took to flight, they surrounded them and beat them with the stick, so that they ran away as fast as their legs could carry them; but two of the boys held down the cub, ...
— Folk Tales Every Child Should Know • Various
... completely chaotic. Within the last two ot three years shaking machines have been developed, and we are indebted to the West Coast growers for these inventions, which are very helpful. Previous to that a, long bamboo pole was used to knock the pecans from the trees, and then they were picked up off the ground. There are two machines now waiting for the present crop to be harvested which are supposed to pick up the nuts ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Incorporated 39th Annual Report - at Norris, Tenn. September 13-15 1948 • Various
... zinc, which were separately and scientifically described, with the reasons assigned, (as good as could be given,) for their admixture, in the composition of brass." "A lady's parasol, and a gentleman's watch were described in the same manner. The ivory knob, the brass crampet, the bamboo, the whalebone, the silk, were no sooner adverted to, than they were scientifically described. When their attention was called to the seals of the gentleman's watch, they immediately said, 'These are of pure, and those of jeweller's ...
— A Practical Enquiry into the Philosophy of Education • James Gall
... in the air and actually introduced a light undernote of red into the effect. Dust, which covered the bare feet of the coolies, the velvet slippers of the Burmese, which encroached everywhere and no one regarded, for presently, just at sundown, shouting watermen, carrying large bamboo vessels with great spouts, would come running along the road, casting the splashing water on all sides, and reduce the ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie
... explaining that they must have caught him, if they could have done it! But Pike only told me not to say a word about it, and began to make ready for another tug of war. He made himself a splice-rod, short and handy, of well-seasoned ash, with a stout top of bamboo, tapered so discreetly, and so balanced in its spring, that verily it formed an arc, with any pressure on it, as perfect as a leafy poplar in a stormy summer. "Now break it if you can," he said, "by any amount of rushes; I'll hook you by your jacket collar; you cut ...
— Crocker's Hole - From "Slain By The Doones" By R. D. Blackmore • R. D. Blackmore
... to sea. "See, her bow sinks deeply in the water, while the stern floats lightly upon it. Large as that craft is, she is only partially decked. She has cross-beams, however, to preserve her shape, and on them are laid flat strips of bamboo, which enable the crew to make their way from one end to the other. At the afterpart she has a large house, lightly built, the roof of which forms a poop, while the interior serves, I have no doubt, for the cabin of the skipper, and probably for his ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... Hollingworth, H.G. Holy Sepulchre, oil from lamp of. Homeritae. Homi-cheu, or Ngo-ning. Homme, its technical use. Hondius map. Ho-nhi, or Ngo-ning (Anin) tribe (See Homi-cheu.). Hooker, Sir Joseph, on bamboo explosion. Horiad (Oirad, or Uirad) tribe. Hormuz (Hormos, Curmosa), trade with India; a sickly place; the people's diet; ships; great heat and fatal wind; crops, mourning customs; the king of; another road to Kerman from; route from Kerman to; site of the old city; foundation of; history of; merchants; ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... wild apple, the bronze-green of the beetle's back, the dead green of the autumn Nile." And these are expressed, not in plants, but in trees. The moss is waist-high, the ferns wave twenty feet overhead, the bamboo drapes a feathery fringe by every stream, the cocoa trees grow right up to the road or railroad which sweeps along as on an avenue between them, while at every crossing the white roadway is lined by the majestic sentinels of plantain, coco-nut ...
— Plotting in Pirate Seas • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... operate as follows: A dry bamboo rod, about a foot in length, is split longitudinally, and the pith which lines the inside is scraped off, pressed, and made into a small ball which is afterward placed in the center of the cavity of one of the halves of the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 392, July 7, 1883 • Various
... rising before her, instead of her own nursery, a huge tree, on the top of a mound.[1] Basket-work had been woven between the branches to make floors, and on these were huts of bamboo cane; there were ladders hanging down made of strong creepers twisted together, and above and around the cries of cockatoos and parrots and the chirp of grasshoppers rang in her ears. She laid hold of the ladder of creeping plants and began ...
— Little Lucy's Wonderful Globe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... raked the little sitting-room from the sham marble mantelpiece to the bamboo cabinet. I surveyed it, too, and suddenly it did seem unnecessarily wretched ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse
... the air was filled with a singular harmony. It seemed to be a concert of Aeolian harps. In the air were a hundred kites of different forms, made of sheets of palm-leaf, and having at their upper end a sort of bow of light wood with a thin slip of bamboo beneath. In the breath of the wind these slips, with all their notes varied like those of a harmonicon, gave forth a most melancholy murmuring. It seemed as though they were breathing ...
— Rubur the Conqueror • Jules Verne
... banners, and the staffs holding the banners were, bound in white silk, with long streamers hanging down. Half enclosing the banners were fanlike screens. Along the walls also were flags with toothed edges. The figure was seated on a mat of fine bamboo in the midst of this strange scheme of decoration. Behind him, and drawn straight across the chamber, was a sheet of fine white cloth, embroidered with strange designs. He was clothed in a rich jacket of blue, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... two lengths of bamboo, standing about fifteen feet high and clustered with little twigs from top to bottom. I plant one of them straight up in the tuft, beside the first nest. I clear the surrounding ground, because the bushy vegetation might easily, thanks to threads carried by the ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... Tungting Lake and great Siang River, and north of the Kuangtung Province. The other chief vegetal products are wheat, barley, maize, millet, the bean, yam, sweet and common potato, tomato, eggplant, ginseng, cabbage, bamboo, indigo, pepper, tobacco, camphor, tallow, ground-nut, poppy, water-melon, sugar, cotton, hemp, and silk. Among the fruits grown are the date, mulberry, orange, lemon, pumelo, persimmon, lichi, pomegranate, ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... and the margin of the lake were bamboo reeds as tall as lances, and at the edge of these were gathered myriads of ducks. The fishermen were engaged in bombarding the ducks with rocks. They went about this in a methodical fashion. All around ...
— With the French in France and Salonika • Richard Harding Davis
... two ladies of the Stevenson party took lessons from the niece of a chief in plaiting hats of bamboo shavings and pandanus, and Mrs. Louis learned how to make them beautifully. This hat-making is the constant "fancy-work" of all Tahitian women, and serves in lieu of the tatting and embroidery of civilized lands. The best hats are made of the ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... were tortured in bamboo cages, he told me, and he said, too, that they made awful faces in their agony," Weeks continued, his face looking as if he enjoyed the reminiscence; "while the others, twenty in number, were all put up in a row kneeling on ...
— Afloat at Last - A Sailor Boy's Log of his Life at Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... for going down into the Aquarium, where the sallow blinds, the stale smell of spirits of salt, the bamboo chairs, the tables with ash-trays, the revolving fish, the attendant knitting behind six or seven chocolate boxes (often she was quite alone with the fish for hours at a time) remained in the mind as part of the monster shark, he himself being only a flabby yellow receptacle, like an empty ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... little stick, as you poetically call it, even if he does produce the will. I think a hundred on his feet, or any suitable portion of his person, might have a good moral influence upon him," said Kavanagh. "Oh, to have the handling of the bamboo!" ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... Manila is a parish called Las Penas (les Roches) [i.e., "the rocks"]. It is under the charge of a secular priest, and has a very small church, built of bamboo and thatched with straw. It is a charming place, and pleasure-parties often go there to dine, or walk there after dinner. I went there quite frequently with Father Melo. One Sunday, Don Andres Roxo and Dona Ana Roxo, his wife, asked me to go there to dine with them. Don Andres Roxo had married ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 28 of 55) • Various
... noble stems of trees, towering to an immense height, from whose summits, far above you, the wind is drawing deep and grand harmonies; and often your way is beside a marsh, verdant with magnolias, where the yellow jessamine, now in flower, fills the air with fragrance, and the bamboo-briar, an evergreen creeper, twines itself with various other plants, which never shed their leaves in winter. These woods abound in game, which, you will believe me when I say, I had rather start than shoot,—flocks of turtle-doves, rabbits rising and scudding before you; bevies of quails, partridges ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... bamboo and low hills to M'pokwa ruins and river. The latter in a deep rent in alluvial soil. Very hot, and many sick in consequence. Sombala ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... addition of five strange men. All appeared actuated by the same friendly disposition, a very strong indication of which was their presenting themselves without spears.* Like most others on that coast, they had apiece of bamboo, eighteen inches long, run through the cartilage of the nose. Their astonishment at the size of the wells was highly amusing; sudden exclamations of surprise and admiration burst from their lips, while the varied expressions and play of countenance, showed how strongly ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... made me suffer, but afterwards, when I thought of it in the convent, I smiled and longed for you so that we might quarrel again—so that we might once more make up. We were still children and had gone with your mother to bathe in the brook under the shade of the thick bamboo. On the banks grew many flowers and plants whose strange names you told me in Latin and Spanish, for you were even then studying in the Ateneo. [44] I paid no attention, but amused myself by running ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... himself; had even felled the palma brava alone, and had spent days burning and chopping the center away, until at last he was the proud possessor of one of the swiftest canoes on the river. As on ice-boats, long outriggers of slender poles extended across the banco, and the ends were joined by other bamboo poles, so that the canoe looked like a giant dragon-fly as it ...
— The Adventures of Piang the Moro Jungle Boy - A Book for Young and Old • Florence Partello Stuart
... are, owing to their hollow and cylindrical form, best adapted for the imitation of a bird's beak and the sonorous transmission of breath. In many languages the word for a flute is the same as that for a reed. In Sanscrit, vanca and venu mean a flute and bamboo; in Persian, na and nay mean a flute and reed; in Greek [Greek: donas], and in Latin calamus, have the same double meaning, and many more examples might ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli
... she went on, leaning her head back against the cushions of her bamboo-seat, "He wants us to go for a sail ...
— The Touchstone • Edith Wharton
... master of the country, who had destined him to be sacrificed. Then came twenty venerable grey-headed men, in red and gold striped garments, each of whom bore a broad glittering blade, and a bundle of dry bamboo-sticks. Behind them followed ten youths, with coal-dishes full of glowing coals. And now Jussuf was brought forth, and, with his hands fastened, and his feet chained to the horse, he rode between his former companions. Behind him followed a number of armed men, and then a crowd of people. In this ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... their heads rest upon blocks of wood or some improvised pillow; a small oil lamp flickers between them. Their pipes resemble flutes, with an inverted ink-bottle on the side near the lower end. They are most of them of bamboo, and very often are beautifully colored with the mellowest and richest tints of a wisely smoked meerschaum. A small jar of prepared opium—a thick black paste ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... erect; and the ass being very refractory, it was found impossible to carry her forward in that manner. The Slatees, however, were unwilling to abandon her, the day's journey being nearly ended; they therefore made a sort of litter of bamboo canes, upon which she was placed, and tied on it with slips of bark: this litter was carried upon the heads of two slaves, one walking before the other, and they were followed by two others, who relieved them occasionally. In this manner the woman was carried forward until it was dark, ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
... be found at the Japanese stores nowadays suggest numberless excellent designs for china decorating. So do the "Walter Crane Fairy-tales." A plain olive or cream-colored tile with a pattern in bamboo-boughs and little birds, a milk-jug in gray with leaves and a motto in black, a set of tiny butter-plates with initials and a flower-spray on each, are easy things to attempt and very effective when done. Pie-dishes can be ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - No 1, Nov 1877 • Various
... feet from her when Tweel caught me with one of his flying leaps. He grabbed my arm, yelling, 'No—no—no!' in his squeaky voice. I tried to shake him off—he was as light as if he were built of bamboo—but he dug his claws in and yelled. And finally some sort of sanity returned to me and I stopped less than ten feet from her. There she stood, looking as ...
— A Martian Odyssey • Stanley Grauman Weinbaum
... had pork cooked in ten different ways, such as meat balls, sliced cold in two different ways, red and white, the red being cooked with a special kind of sauce made of beans which gives it the red color and has a delicious taste. Chopped pork with chopped bamboo shoots, pork cut in cubes and cooked with cherries and pork cooked with onions and sliced thin. This last dish was Her Majesty's favorite and I must say it was good. Then there was a sort of pancake made ...
— Two Years in the Forbidden City • The Princess Der Ling
... have a pleasant tea-room, which is called a winter garden, because of a pair of palm-trees set under the centre of its glass roof and the painted bamboo chairs and tables set about. This sort of garden is found even in the hotels which are almost of the grade of pensions and of their prices; but generally the pensions proper are without it. Their rates are much lower, but quite as good people frequent them, and they are often found in good ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... check of the redundant sap; and were garlanded often enough like the capitals of the columns, with delicate tracery of parasite leaves and flowers; the mouldings of the arches seemed copied from the parallel bundles of the curving bamboo shoots; and even the flatter roof of the nave and transepts had its antitype in that highest level of the forest aisles, where the trees, having climbed at last to the light-food which they seek, care no longer to grow upward, ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... oaths on board a ship; commoners my-lord each other when they meet—and urchins as they play marbles. And for the real noble a whole private dialect is set apart. The common names for an axe, for blood, for bamboo, a bamboo knife, a pig, food, entrails, and an oven are taboo in his presence, as the common names for a bug and for many offices and members of the body are taboo in the drawing-rooms of English ladies. Special words are set apart for his leg, his face, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... similar length was bordered with magnolia trees of immense growth which we then saw only in bud, but it was not difficult to see in imagination the magnificent picture that would be presented to the eye, when later on, these millions of buds overhead would be in full bloom. The "Bamboo Pathway" led through a dense growth of bamboos whose slender poles, bending under a slight breeze, kept up a continual creaking sound. Huge trees, whose wide-spreading branches were supported by scores of accessory trunks, so that each tree formed ...
— A Trip to the Orient - The Story of a Mediterranean Cruise • Robert Urie Jacob
... sugar-cane and know that it is a tall perennial not unlike our Indian corn in appearance; it has broad, flat leaves that sometimes measure as many as three feet in length, and often the stalk itself is twenty feet high. This stalk is jointed like a bamboo pole, the joints being about three inches apart near the roots and increasing in distance the higher one gets from ...
— The Story of Sugar • Sara Ware Bassett
... he was investigating everything with a microscope, and one day in the early part of 1880 he noticed upon a table in the laboratory an ordinary palm-leaf fan. He picked it up and, looking it over, observed that it had a binding rim made of bamboo, cut from the outer edge of the cane; a very long strip. He examined this, and then gave it to one of his assistants, telling him to cut it up and get out of it all the filaments he could, carbonize them, put them into lamps, ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... of the Chinese (fig. 2) closely resembles the Roman abacus in its construction and use. Computations are made with it by means of balls of bone or ivory running on slender bamboo rods, similar to the simpler board, fitted up with beads strung on wires, which is employed in teaching the rudiments of arithmetic in English ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... ancient in the world, allowed a wife, a son, a pupil, a younger brother, or a slave, to be whipped with a lash, or bamboo twig, in such a manner as not to occasion any dangerous hurt; and whoever transgressed the rule, suffered the punishment of a thief. In this case, the slave and other members of the family ...
— An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans • Lydia Maria Child
... affairs—expatiate and criticise upon the imperfections or charms of the passing multitude—tell a fine story to some acquaintance who knows but little about you, and, by this means, borrow as much money as will furnish you with a very small bamboo, or very large cudgel; extremes are very ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... to have sufficient length to enable it to be manipulated, drawn over, and twisted by the fingers. It is noted that the yarns for the gossamer-like Dacca muslins of India were so fine that one pound of cotton was spun into a thread 253 miles long. This was accomplished with the aid of a bamboo spindle not much bigger than a darning needle, which was lightly weighted with a pellet of clay. Since such a slender thread could not support even the weight of so slight a spindle, the apparatus was rotated upon a piece of hollow shell. It thus appears that the primitive spinners ...
— Textiles • William H. Dooley
... the glistening dew, In bamboo tufts, or mango-trees, In lotus bloom, and spring anew, In rose-tree bud, or such as these ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous
... her out a glass of foaming ale from a bottle that stood upon a little Indian bamboo-table, and handed it to her carefully over ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... mosque of Omar done in greenery, the humble pineapple with its unproportionate fruit, everywhere the banana, king of vegetables, clothed in its own immense leaves, the frondy zapote, now and then in a hollow a clump of yellowish-green bamboo, though not numerous or nearly so large as in many another tropical land, above all else the symmetrical Gothic fronds of the palm nodding in a breeze the more humble vegetation could not know. The constant music of insect life sounded in my ears; everywhere ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... brother's imprisonment, I was permitted to make a little bamboo room in the prison enclosures, where he could be much by himself, and where I was sometimes allowed to spend two or three hours. It so happened that the two months he occupied this place, was the coldest part of the year, when he would have suffered much in the open shed he had ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... fully realised—there can be no question as to the value of its arboreal products. The lacquer-tree (rhus vernicifera), which furnishes the well-known Japanese lacquer, the paper mulberry, the elm, oak, maple, bamboo, camphor, and many other descriptions of trees, grow in abundance. The forests of Japan cover nearly 60 per cent. of the land. For some years after the Revolution there was a reduction in the wooded ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery
... ancestors and of the old heroic days. The place of carousal is a bare spot near a large and ancient well out of which grows a vast pipal tree. Hard by is a little temple surmounted by a red flag on a drooping bamboo. It is here that the Gangor[F] and Dassahra[F] solemnities are celebrated. Arrived on the ground, the Raja slowly circles his horse; then, jerking the thorn-bit, causes him to advance plunging and rearing, but dropping first on ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... simply a pose, and the most irritating pose I know," cried Lord Henry, laughing; and the two young men went out into the garden together, and ensconced themselves on a long bamboo seat that stood in the shade of a tall laurel bush. The sunlight slipped over the polished leaves. In the grass, white ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde
... said "Very well," in a tone of haughty resignation. She turned to a booth that had been made of turkey-red chintz in one corner of the room. She lit a small red lamp and sat down before a little bamboo table. A toy angel from a Christmas tree hung above her. A stuffed alligator sat up, on its hind legs, beside her—a porcelain bell hung on a red ribbon about its neck—to grin with a cheerful uncanniness ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... bamboo chair, in an interval of labor, and when the intense heat brought comparative stillness, before his closed eyes came often up his home among the New-Hampshire hills. He thought of his dead mother in the burying-ground, and the slate stones standing in the desolate grass. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... the arrows. It will contain from five to six hundred. It is generally from twelve to fourteen inches long, and in shape resembles a dice-box used at backgammon. The inside is prettily done in basket-work with wood not unlike bamboo, and the outside has a coat of wax. The cover is all of one piece formed out of the skin of the tapir. Round the centre there is fastened a loop large enough to admit the arm and shoulder, from which it hangs ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... with a brisk row across the bay, and Sylvia met them with a countenance that gave a heartier welcome than her words, as she greeted the neighbor cordially, the stranger courteously, and began to gather up her work when they seated themselves in the bamboo chairs scattered about ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... the black, Buck Denham signed to him as he looked their way, and the stalwart, fierce-looking fellow marched up to them, shouldering his spear, whose broken shaft he had replaced with a finely grown bamboo. ...
— Dead Man's Land - Being the Voyage to Zimbambangwe of certain and uncertain • George Manville Fenn
... little moment to wait," the child said; "I go to announce the honorable coming;" and hurried toward the house. It was a spacious house, but seemed very old, and built in the fashion of another time. The sliding doors were not closed; but the lighted interior was concealed by a beautiful bamboo curtain extending along the gallery front. Behind it shadows were moving—shadows of women;—and suddenly the music of a koto rippled into the night. So light and sweet was the playing that It[o] could scarcely believe the evidence of his senses. A slumbrous ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn
... young man, thin as a bamboo pole, elegantly tailored, who yawned to advertise gold inlays. I explained while he looked skeptical, bored and knowing simultaneously. "Who would tha flummox, bah ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... arrows, by the way, are rather interesting. The natives make them of bamboo and strips of hide, and they are tipped with iron. They really shoot things with them—birds and wild animals, I mean. I bought one from the owner of the dressing-gown for four annas, to take home to Peter. It seemed very little for a real bow and arrow, but Dr. Russel said it was quite ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas
... juicy, warm plant has successfully surmounted through its coat of felt. Humming birds have been detected gathering the hairs to line their tiny nests. The light, strong stalk makes almost as good a cane as bamboo, especially when the root end, in running under a stone, forms a crooked handle. Pale country beauties rub their cheeks with the velvety leaves ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... resemblance was increased by their gauzy structure, and, as they turned, they flashed and glittered as if enameled. (The supernatant structures that they maintained were, as we afterwards ascertained, framed of hollow beams and trusses—a kind of bamboo, of great ...
— A Columbus of Space • Garrett P. Serviss
... special significance which is never omitted at the sacrifice of a Bear. Libations were offered to the inabos, sacred wands which stand outside the Aino hut. These wands are about two feet high and are whittled at the top into spiral shavings. Five new wands with bamboo leaves attached to them are set up for the festival; the leaves according to the Ainos mean that the Bear may come to life again. These wands are specially interesting. The chief focus of attention is of course the Bear, because his flesh is for the Aino his staple food. ...
— Ancient Art and Ritual • Jane Ellen Harrison
... pain, he let fall the burning wood from his back, and stamped and howled with agony. But the hare comforted him, and told him that he always carried with him an excellent plaster in case of need, which would bring him instant relief, and taking out his ointment he spread it on a leaf of bamboo, and laid it on the wound. No sooner did it touch him than the Tanuki leapt yelling into the air, and the hare laughed, and ran to tell his friend the peasant what a trick he had played on their enemy. But the old man shook his head sadly, for he ...
— The Pink Fairy Book • Various
... syringes, squirts, and pumps, with long rubber tubes, like those used for watering gardens, and were sending against the second-floor windows streams of water which were pouring down again into the street; others were mopping the windows with sponges and rags tied to the tops of long bamboo canes; others were burnishing the door-knobs, rings, and door-plates; some were cleaning the staircases, some the furniture, which they had carried out of the houses. The pavements were blocked with buckets and pitchers, with jugs, watering-pots, ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis
... bass voice, behind them, answered gravely: "Because the governess is in the way." And a big bamboo walking-stick pointed over their heads at Miss Minerva. Zo instantly recognised the stick, and took it ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... that the thatched shed, with bamboo mat windows, the bed of tow and the stove of brick, which are at present my share, are not sufficient to deter me from carrying out the fixed purpose of my mind. And could I, furthermore, confront the morning breeze, the evening moon, ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... an opera-glass, probably all our party on board the Rangoon would have been personal witnesses to the existence of a great sea-serpent. But, alas for romance! One glance through the lenses, and the reptile was resolved into a bamboo, root upwards, anchored in some manner to the bottom,—a "snag," ...
— The Youth's Companion - Volume LII, Number 11, Thursday, March 13, 1879 • Various
... holding Mr. Cummings here, don't you?" She glanced somberly past the bamboo gatherers to where we saw a gray corner of the study with its pink ivy geranium blossoms atop. "Mr. Cummings is held here by two steel bolts—the bolts on those study doors. Until he finds how they can be moved through an inch of planking—he'll not ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... to-day, in Vait-hua where the whites are not. I have had my trousers lifted from my second-story room in a Manila hotel by the eyed and fingered bamboo of the Tagalog ladron, while I washed my face, and stood aghast at the mystery of their disappearance with door locked, until looking from my lofty window I beheld them moving rapidly down an estero in a banca. I have given over my watch to a gendarme in Cairo to forfend arrest ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... 43 feet in diameter and 176 feet long, with a gas capacity of 235,000 cubic feet. To maintain the external form of the envelope a smaller balloon, or compensator, was placed inside the larger one. The framework was of bamboo, and the car was attached by about eighty wire-cables. The wooden deck was about 123 feet in length. Two 50-horse-power engines drove four propellers, two of which were at ...
— The Mastery of the Air • William J. Claxton
... deal of a strange vegetation that had the appearance of mighty toadstools; and down nearer the beach there was a thick grove of a kind of very tall reed, and these we discovered afterwards to be exceeding tough and light, having something of the qualities of the bamboo. ...
— The Boats of the "Glen Carrig" • William Hope Hodgson
... sell his property but he set such an unreasonable price that no buyer appeared, and he was, moreover, unwilling to leave all the treasures he had accumulated there—the sculptured wainscotting, the polished panels, like mirrors, the transparent windows, the gilded lattice-work, the bamboo lounges, the vases of rare porcelain, the red and black lacquered cabinets, and the cases full of books of ancient poetry. It was hard to give up to strangers the garden where he had planted shade and fruit trees with ...
— The Aldine, Vol. 5, No. 1., January, 1872 - A Typographic Art Journal • Various
... the Japanese garden with its bamboo fence, the posts and door of entrance being carved with remarkable taste and boldness. The double gates are surmounted by a cock and hen in natural attitudes, which is a relief from the absurdities of their impossible storks and hideous griffins. Perhaps ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... people used to stop and look at the juggler: brawny porters, with loads of merchandise, or boxes of tea, or bars of silver, which they carried in boxes or baskets slung on bamboo poles over their shoulders." ...
— Miscellanea • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... leading his horse to a shed in the rear, entered the cottage, where he saw an old man and a girl warming themselves by a fire of bamboo splints. They respectfully invited him to approach the fire; and the old folks then proceeded to warm some rice-wine, and to prepare food for the traveler, whom they ventured to question in regard to his journey. Meanwhile ...
— Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things • Lafcadio Hearn
... have been about 500 B.C., and Buddha spent thereafter a considerable portion of his time in the bamboo garden which King Bimbisara presented to him on the outskirts of Rajagriha. There, and in his annual wanderings through the country, he delivered to the poor and to the rich, to the Brahman and to ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... semi-tropical plants. Interspersed among these are masses of brightly blossoming dainty flowers—baby blue eyes in the spring and others, equally lovely, as the seasons change. In a sheltered nook rise the tall slender stalks of rare bamboo, sent from a private ...
— The Architecture and Landscape Gardening of the Exposition • Louis Christian Mullgardt
... them all, the Sultan, if there were any further trouble he would destroy their stronghold. The Sultan in his fortress, with walls of earth and living bamboo forty feet thick, laughed at the warning. In two days his fortress was in ruins. So skillful was Pershing's attack that he captured the stronghold with the loss ...
— Modern Americans - A Biographical School Reader for the Upper Grades • Chester Sanford
... a number of small country-houses, garden-walls, and high bamboo palisades shut off the view. The green hill crushed us with its towering height; the heavy, dark clouds lowering over our heads seemed like a leaden canopy confining us in this unknown spot; it really seemed as if the complete absence of perspective inclined one all the better to notice the ...
— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti
... Archipelago and deserves its reputation, one hundred and twenty miles having been built. Those we passed over this day would have been called good in France even. Our passage was of the nature of a progress, thanks to the presence of the Governor-General. Simple bamboo arches crossing the road greeted us everywhere, Mr. Forbes punctiliously raising his hat under every one. All the villages had decorated their houses; handkerchiefs, petticoats, red table-cloths, anything and everything had been hung out of the windows by way of flags ...
— The Head Hunters of Northern Luzon From Ifugao to Kalinga • Cornelis De Witt Willcox
... good or bad—for it is entirely a question of time, place, and circumstance—the opinion is unfounded, because the tyranny of a majority is just as galling, and usually less intelligent, than other tyrannies. It has rather cynically been said that governments are of two kinds—bamboo and bamboozle. A Democracy combines these two kinds. When political power is so minutely divided as it is among the voters of England, say, it is not worth having; and power, as a rule, resides in the hands of demagogues, instead of ...
— Six Letters From the Colonies • Robert Seaton
... of earthenware, and contained water, or dates, of which the stones were found. The small cylinders on the side were of stone; the two large cylinders, between the copper vessel and those of earthenware, were pieces of bamboo, of whose use ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... roof was covered with thatch—a little nest where one might be sheltered from the rain, and in which I could see a bed of palm fiber. At one side of the house a tremendous cluster of bamboo curved upward and over the roof. A path of chopped coconut husks led from the street to a short flight of steps in the terrace at the ...
— The Fire People • Ray Cummings
... tail, dragging on the ground, a baleful green eye, and a crooked mouth full of horrid fangs, which made it look the very incarnation of cruelty and brute strength—black lakes and grisly reeds as high as bamboo—prodigious black serpents troubling the water, and rearing their long spiry necks above the surface—gigantic alligators and crocodiles resting motionless in the shallows, with their snouts high in the air—hideous toads or such-like forbidding reptiles, many with tusks like the ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro
... are avoided by timely topping. When such vigorously growing canes have grown twelve or eighteen inches above the top of the stake they are cut back about level with the stake. This is most conveniently done with a long-bladed knife or piece of split bamboo. After topping, the cane ceases to grow in length and laterals start at most of the joints. It is less exposed to the action of the wind, and the laterals supply the buds needed for forming the ...
— Manual of American Grape-Growing • U. P. Hedrick
... distance, where they fish with rods and lines and catch bonetas and other fish. Whenever there is a show of fish a fleet of canoes immediately proceeds to sea. Their hooks being bright are used without bait in the manner of our artificial flies. Their rods are made of bamboo; but when there are any very large fish they make use of an outrigger over the fore part of the canoe, about twenty-five feet in length, which has two prongs at the extremity, to each of which is fastened a hook and line; and when a fish takes the hook it is raised by ropes ...
— A Voyage to the South Sea • William Bligh
... after day passed away; but although the ascent was slow, the wagons still moved upwards, and the region of everlasting mist (at that season) was reached. Dense forests clothed the mountain sides; the roar of waterfalls resounded in the depths of black ravines; tangled bamboo grass crept upwards from the wet soil into the lower branches of the moss-covered trees, and formed a ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... Bamboo-grass, n. an Australian cane-like grass, Glyceria ramigera, F. v. M. ; also called Cane Grass. Largely used for thatching purposes. Stock eat ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... hulks of huge uprooted trees, scarcely distinguishable from the fragments of genuine wrecks beside them, were securely fastened by chains to stakes and piles driven in the marsh, while heaps of broken and disjointed bamboo orange crates, held together by ropes of fibre, glistened like ligamented bones heaped in the dead valley. Masts, spars, fragments of shell-encrusted boats, binnacles, round-houses and galleys, and part of ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... From the Royal School of Amsterdam wrote Professor Vander Tooler: "If they will not behave themselves, just trounce them with a ruler." From the Model School of Pekin wrote Professor Cha Han Coo: "Just put their hands into the stocks and beat with a bamboo." From the Normal School of Moscow wrote Professor Ivan Troute: "To make your boys the best of boys, why, just use the knout." From the Muslim School of Cairo wrote the Mufti, Pasha Saido: "Upon the bare soles of their feet give ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... requirements of modern speech. We can no more say how Confucius (551-479 B.C.) pronounced Chinese, than we can say how Miltiades pronounced Greek when addressing his soldiers before the battle of Marathon (490 B.C.). The "books" which were read in ancient China consisted of thin slips of wood or bamboo, on which the characters were written by means of a pencil of wood or bamboo, slightly frayed at the end, so as to pick up a coloured liquid and transfer it to the tablets as required. Until recently, it was thought that the Chinese scratched ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles
... Katharine and Florence sat on the side piazza of the Hapgood house, Florence in the hammock, Katharine curled up among the cushions of a bamboo lounge, idly stroking the back of Scott, Molly's plump ...
— Half a Dozen Girls • Anna Chapin Ray
... preparations being made by Mrs. Sin. From the attache case she took out a lacquered box, silken-lined like a jewel-casket. It contained four singular-looking pipes, the parts of which she began to fit together. The first and largest of these had a thick bamboo stem, an amber mouthpiece, and a tiny, disproportionate bowl of brass. The second was much smaller and was of some dark, highly-polished wood, mounted with silver conceived in an ornate Chinese design representing a long-tailed ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... myself from all earthly cares, while the metalwork showed a craftmanship that made one wonder how many centuries had elapsed since the Polynesian artist who had fashioned the weapon had been laid in the Cavern of Skulls. The sinnet work and the parquetry of split bamboo, which comprise the highest handicraft of the present-day islander, could hardly be classed with the exceedingly beautiful work ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer |
