"Bolster" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... beds nor her own were worthy of offering to such a grand lady; but Coquette desired her to feel at ease, as she would provide everything needful. She then drew forth some grains of sand, which she scattered on the floor. Instantly there arose on the spot a bed of rose-leaves three feet high; the bolster was of violets, heartsease and orange flowers, all breathing delicious perfumes; and the counterpane, entirely composed of butterflies' wings, exhibited colours so brilliant and varied that one could never be weary of examining ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)
... with no lively affection, though not without some kindly feeling and much confidence—at the same time regarding himself with still greater confidence. He had never been an idler, or disobedient; and had made such efforts after theological righteousness as served to bolster rather than buttress his conviction that he was a righteous youth, and nourished his ignorance of the fact that he was far from being the person of moral strength and value that he imagined himself. ...
— Salted With Fire • George MacDonald
... a upland dog like Ship be gwaine to faace the fiery sunshine on furrin gawld diggings, I caan't answer. Here goes again: '1 sofa; 1 armchair; 4 fine chairs with green cloth seats; 1 bedstead; 2 cots; 1 cradle; feather beds and palliasses and bolster pillows to match; wash-stands and sets of crockery, mostly complete; 2 swing glasses; 3 bedroom chairs; 1 set of ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... looking back at the servant, whose horse was close upon his heels, and glancing with a leer at his bolster case of pistols, by which he seemed to set great store. He was a square-built, strong-made, bull-necked fellow, of the true English breed; and as Hugh measured him with his eye, he measured Hugh, regarding him meanwhile with a ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... necessary that your fleet should take possession of Cuba; which, after a civil apology to Spain for taking such a liberty with her possessions, and, perhaps, a few million by way of hush money, you carve into two more states, and, in this manner, try to bolster up your federal relations. How many of her West India islands Great Britain will be able to keep after such a war, is another problem, the solution of which will depend upon the relative strength of fleets and success ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... Little, Small, Wee Bear came to look at his bed, there was the bolster in its place, and upon the pillow was the little old woman's ugly, dirty head-which was not in its place, for she had no ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... did. Our procession was in this fashion: The Kirangozi, with a load on his shoulder, led the way, flag in hand, followed by the pagazis carrying spears of bows and arrows in their hands, and bearing their share of the baggage in the shape either of bolster-shaped loads of cloth and beads covered with matting, each tied into the fork of a three-pronged stick, or else coils of brass or copper wire tied in even weights to each end of sticks which they ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... hitting him?" said Robert scornfully. "Why, I should kill him. But I'll give him something to remember. Wait till I pull up my stocking." He pulled up his stocking, which was as large as a small bolster-case, and strode off. His strides were six or seven feet long, so that it was quite easy for him to be at the bottom of the hill, ready to meet the baker's boy when he came down swinging the empty basket to meet his master's ...
— Five Children and It • E. Nesbit
... Romeo wish to be "a glove upon that hand that he might touch that cheek:" three minutes afterwards he beholds Romeo refresh himself with a pot of porter. We see the Moor, who "loved not wisely, but too well," smother Desdemona with the nuptial bolster: he sees them sit down to a hot supper. We always think of the actor as on the stage: he always thinks of us as in the boxes. In justice to the poets of the present day, it may be noticed that they have improved on their brethren in Johnson's time, who were, according to Lord Macaulay, hunted by ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... the old chiffonier and wardrobe turn-up impositions, but the grand piano would beat them; only it should be kept locked, for fear any one given to harmony might commence playing a fantasia on the bolster. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... the place.' Her serpents have shortened my life, word of honour!— they wander where they will. I never lay my head beside those curl rags of hers without anticipating a cobra-decapello under the bolster. It is not everybody's money. Lucrece has no objection to them; well, it is very courageous—very fortunate, since snakes are her profession—but I, I was not brought up to snakes; I am not at my ease ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... the bed is well aired, shake the feathers, from each corner to the middle; then take up the middle, and shake it well, and turn the bed over. Then push the feathers in place, making the head higher than the foot, and the sides even, and as high as the middle part. Then put on the bolster and the under sheet, so that the wrong side of the sheet shall go next the bed, and the marking come at the head, tucking in all around. Then put on the pillows, even, so that the open ends shall come to the sides of ...
— A Treatise on Domestic Economy - For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School • Catherine Esther Beecher
... steadily? In spite of the panic, more and more people were coming to Oakland right along. Movements were already beginning in real estate. He was dickering even then to sell over a thousand of his suburban acres. Of course it was at a sacrifice, but it would ease the strain on all of them and bolster up the faint-hearted. That was the trouble—the faint-hearts. Had there been no faint-hearts there would have been no panic. There was that Eastern syndicate, negotiating with him now to take the majority of the stock in the Sierra and Salvador Power Company off his ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... a chuckle, spoke of her two children, saying they hadn't come from under a bolster, she slapped his fingers; she added that she was, no doubt made on the model of other women; women thought of their home, slaved to keep the place clean and tidy, and went to bed too tired at night not to go to sleep at once. Besides, she resembled her ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... so firm in the whirlwind of opinions, that she needed not to bolster it by bigotry. To the friends, who once murmured against her too great tolerance, she replied, "Of what use is it to live, if one is never to hear any thing but his own voice?" Her compassion and her patience were unconquerable. Nothing ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... be nothing very bad after all. But let's suppose it is; suppose he has slid back into the worst of his old ways, is it going to pay to go on and break things all up for yourself, for the purpose of trying to bolster him up? It seems to me you would let your enthusiasm get away with your common sense. But it's your business, Jimmie. Only the thing that gets me is the blooming uselessness of it all. What ...
— Stanford Stories - Tales of a Young University • Charles K. Field
... Uvula.—Examples of double uvula are found in the older writers, and Hagendorn speaks of a man who was born without a uvula. The Ephemerides and Salmuth describe uvulae so defective as to be hardly noticeable. Bolster, Delius, Hodges, Mackenzie of Baltimore, Orr, Riedel, Schufeldt, and Tidyman are among observers reporting bifurcated and double uvula, and they are quite common. Ogle records instances of ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... two flaps permitted a fall view of the interior. A number of large boxes and articles of household use filled up the bed of the waggon. Over these had been thrown some coarse garments, and pieces of bed-clothing—blankets, counterpanes, and a bolster or two. Near the forward end, a chest of large dimensions stood higher than the rest; and upon the lid of this a piece of tallow-candle was burning, in the neck of an old bottle! Between the flame of the candle and my eyes a figure intervened, shadowing the rearward part ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... before, and sat by Halldis afterwards while the men talked and passed the mead about. She was pale and silent, but did not give way, nor leave them till her usual time. When she was in her bed she sobbed, and buried her hot face in the bolster; but even then she did not cry. She was always impatient of deeds which led nowhere—and ...
— Gudrid the Fair - A Tale of the Discovery of America • Maurice Hewlett
... moralist admits that vice is often pleasant, and that wicked men flourish like a green bay-tree. He cannot be over-anxious to preach, for he feels that the intrinsic charm of high qualities can dispense with any artificial attempts to bolster them up by sham rhetoric, or to slur over the hard facts of life. He will describe Iago as impartially as Desdemona, and, having given us the facts, leave us to make what we please of them. It is the mark of a more sickly type of morality, that it must always be distorting the plain truth. ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... The government of the Czech Republic, using successful stabilization policies to bolster its claims to full membership in the western economic community, has reduced inflation to 10%, kept unemployment at 3%, balanced the budget, run trade surpluses, and reoriented exports to the EU since the breakup ...
— The 1995 CIA World Factbook • United States Central Intelligence Agency
... is to strike his spear into the ground or sand. When my friend Ouweek was napping near me at the well of Tadoghseen, his spear was struck into the sand close by his head. So it is said, "And, behold, Saul lay sleeping within the trench, and his spear stuck in the ground at his bolster." (1 Samuel, chap. xxvi. ver 7.) The Sheikh of highest rank now seated, the Sheikhs next in dignity take their seats around him, at a short distance off, in the form of a semicircle, these generally squatting on the ground. Sometimes the principal Sheikh himself squats on ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... shirts, a waistcoat, a suit of canvas (work clothes), a suit of frieze and a suit of cloth, also three pairs of Irish stockings, four pairs of shoes, a pair of garters, a dozen points, a pair of canvas sheets, canvas to make a bed and a bolster, to be filled in Virginia and serving for two men, canvas to make a bed enroute, also for two men, a coarse rug (covering) ...
— Domestic Life in Virginia in the Seventeenth Century - Jamestown 350th Anniversary Historical Booklet Number 17 • Annie Lash Jester
... upon her first clever book, I Pose; a surer touch, a finer restraint. What is it all about? Does that matter? It is the manner of the telling rather than what is told that constitutes the charm. If I tell, you that Jay runs away from a respectable home, and, after a grievous experiment as a bolster-filler, becomes a bus-conductor, has a romantic friendship with a middle-aged married man, and marries the faithful Mr. Morgan, her dead brother's soldier friend, I have told you just nothing at all. I will merely add that you will be foolish if ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 4, 1917 • Various
... his left hand alone, you might have thought it a very simple and easy thing to do, until you tried to do it yourself.—Mr. Bernard looked at himself with the eye of an expert. "Pretty well!" he said;—"not so much fallen off as I expected." Then he set up his bolster in a very knowing sort of way, and delivered two or three blows straight as rulers and swift as winks. "That will do," he said. Then, as if determined to make a certainty of his condition, he took a dynamometer from one of the drawers in his old veneered ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... bed, Sat'day morning," Master Gammon added, and, warmed upon the subject, went on: "He's that stiff, folks say, that stiff he is, he'll have to get into a rounded coffin: he's just like half a hoop. He was all of a heap, like. Had a fight with 's bolster, and got th' wust of it. But, be 't the seizure, or be 't gout in 's belly, he's gone clean dead. And he wunt buy th' Farm, nether. Shutters is all shut up at the Hall. He'll go burying about Wednesday. Men that ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... philanthropist. Well, then, where's Slingsby, if that's philanthropy? So Mr. Churchill comes along and says, in a manner of speaking, "That's all very well, but this same Mr. Mersch is the grand duke of somewhere or other, and we must bolster him up in his kingdom, or else there will be trouble with the powers." Powers—what's powers to me?—or Greenland? when there's Slingsby, a man I've smoked a pipe with every market evening of my life, in the workhouse? And there's hundreds of ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... bed, I was longing to lie down in it; and having made those ablutions which our journey rendered necessary, I at length lay down, having first religiously stuck my talismanic pin, with the head of sealing-wax, into the bolster. ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... surprise I have discovered that I have suddenly become a moral coward, and am obliged to descend to subterfuges in order to bolster up my courage. This isn't a usual thing with me, I think, but neither is the occasion. I've been wanting and planning to tell you something, face to face, for a long time; but at the crucial moment my courage has failed ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... the quiet imposed upon him, without being conscious of it, believing himself far from sleep, and convinced that he required no effort to keep awake, he suddenly slept. When he awoke a ray of pale sunlight filled the room, and leaning her elbow on the bolster, Phillis was watching him. He made a brusque movement, throwing himself backward. "What is the matter?" he cried. "What have I said?" Instantly his face paled, his lips quivered; he felt his heart ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... brothers sat up on their bolster, and stared into the darkness. The room was full of water, and by a misty moonbeam, which found its way through a hole in the shutter, they could see, in the midst of it, an enormous foam globe, spinning round, and bobbing up and down like a cork, on which, as on a most ...
— Stories of Childhood • Various
... recompense the labours of the diligent worker. Allowed to lie waste, the product will be only noxious weeds and vicious growths of all kinds. One of the minor uses of steady employment is, that it keeps one out of mischief, for truly an idle brain is the devil's workshop, and a lazy man the devil's bolster. To be occupied is to be possessed as by a tenant, whereas to be idle is to be empty; and when the doors of the imagination are opened, temptation finds a ready access, and evil thoughts come trooping in. It is observed at sea, ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... there, and were only aroused by a confused noise outside. Rising, and going to the door, they beheld a strange sight. The slashers were all lined up in front of the house, surrounded by armed mast-cutters. Ben Bolster, the boss, was giving orders to the rebels. He was telling them that they must go to work, and make up for some of the trouble they had caused. Those who objected were to step forward. At this the three ringleaders advanced, and flatly refused ...
— The King's Arrow - A Tale of the United Empire Loyalists • H. A. Cody
... But today our censors have nothing behind them. No one supposes them to be more moral, more charitable, more instructed than other men; still less does anyone suppose them to be more inspired or dowered with divine right. They do not defend a faith for which they, too, would die; they merely bolster up a position because in so doing they find bread and butter. They do not object to innovators because what they innovate is bad; they object to innovators because they innovate. They do not object to us because they believe that ...
— Nonsenseorship • G. G. Putnam
... gave Douglass and the other abolitionists a new text. It was a set-back to their cause; but they were not entirely disheartened, for they saw in it the desperate expedients by which it was sought to bolster up an institution already doomed by the ...
— Frederick Douglass - A Biography • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... some financial publications. An editorial notice or subsidised paragraph will be inserted in the paper, extolling the merits and predicting the certain success of some concern which it is desired to bolster up or to foist upon the public. This is done in such a way that the reader is expected to believe that it is the genuine ex- pression of a truthful opinion by the editor, who has obtained his information from unimpeach- able sources. Of course, this peculiar kind of advertisement ...
— Everybody's Guide to Money Matters • William Cotton, F.S.A.
... and required some shaking before they could be convinced that it was time to get up. Then each boy put his bolster in his bed, rolled up his night shirt into a ball and laid it on the pillow, and then partly covered it up with the clothes. Then they slipped on their shirts, breeches, and stockings and, taking their jackets and shoes in their hand, stole out ...
— Held Fast For England - A Tale of the Siege of Gibraltar (1779-83) • G. A. Henty
... here and dawdle all day," exclaimed Deppingham. "We must be moving about—arrange our batteries, and all that, don't you know. Get out a skirmish line, nominate our spies, bolster up our defences, set a watch, court-martial the prisoners, and look into the commissariat. We've got to stave these devils off for two or three weeks, at least, and we'll have to look sharp. Browne, that's the third cup of coffee you've had. ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon
... probably hurt a little less, now. No—-don't try it," as Dick started to bolster himself up. "You want that knee in shape at the ...
— The High School Pitcher - Dick & Co. on the Gridley Diamond • H. Irving Hancock
... the ball began Leila would have found it hard to say. Perhaps her first real partner was the cab. It did not matter that she shared the cab with the Sheridan girls and their brother. She sat back in her own little corner of it, and the bolster on which her hand rested felt like the sleeve of an unknown young man's dress suit; and away they bowled, past waltzing lamp-posts and houses and ...
— The Garden Party • Katherine Mansfield
... thought, no feeling, is ever manifested save as the result of a physical force. This principle will before long be a scientific commonplace. And Huxley predicted that we would arrive at a mechanical equivalent of consciousness. But I will not attempt to bolster my position with authorities. I know, and I can prove what ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... she said that no one but I need ever know. She would creep home through the fields soon after sunrise and her sister would let her in. The old man would be sleeping heavily.... The end of it was that I let her go up to my room while I lay on the sofa in the little parlour. The horsehair bolster was deucedly hard, but I was young, and when I did get off I slept well. When I woke it was nearer eight than seven, and I had just scrambled up when my landlady came in. One look at her face was enough. I understood that Gertrude had ...
— Olive in Italy • Moray Dalton
... straw, and when this scaffolding has been raised some feet, a paillasse is placed over it, then the feather-bed, so that it literally requires a ladder to ascend to the top of this mountain of bedding, and then it is difficult to crawl into it. There were a bolster and two pillows covered with velvet, which, with the sheets, were all trimmed with a kind of lace ...
— Brittany & Its Byways • Fanny Bury Palliser
... numerous that, having frequency on their side, they ought, in all logic, to serve as the basis of the law. Here, one fact says yes; there, a thousand facts say no. To which evidence shall we lend an ear? If we only wish to bolster up a theory, it would be prudent to listen to neither. The how and why escapes us; what we dignify with the pretentious title of a law is but a way of looking at things with our mind, a very squint-eyed ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre
... ghastly fashion. With a snakelike movement, the evil thing slithered out of the wardrobe, and, gliding past Letty, approached the bed. Letty was obliged to follow every proceeding. She saw the thing deftly snatch the bolster from under the sleeping head; noted the gleam of hellish satisfaction in its eyes as it pressed the bolster down; and watched the murdered creature's contortions grow fainter, and fainter, until they finally ceased. The eyes then left the room; and from afar off, away below, in the abysmal cellars ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... appeal to the Bible for justification of his system, that system must be so modified, as no longer to make open, shameless war upon the Bible. I would recommend to slaveholders, that, rather than make so unhallowed a use of the Bible as to attempt to bolster up their hard beset cause with it, they should take the ground, which a very distinguished slaveholding gentleman of the city of Washington took, in a conversation with myself on the subject of slavery. Feeling himself uncomfortably plied by quotations from the word of God, he said with ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... Abishai the son of Zeruiah, brother to Joab, saying, Who will go down with me to Saul to the camp? And Abishai said, I will go down with thee. 7. So David and Abishai came to the people by night: and, behold, Saul lay sleeping within the trench, and his spear stuck in the ground at his bolster: but Abner and the people lay round about him. 8. Then said Abishai to David, God hath delivered thine enemy into thine hand this day: now therefore let me smite him, I pray thee, with the spear even to the earth at once, and I will not ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... one May morning, and, on turning the corner, they found the little girl leaning convulsively against the old straw stack for support, while in front of her, blinded by a big, red handkerchief, and with a long bolster full of hay across her dappled withers, was the blue mare, making stiff, wild plunges into the air, with arched back and head held low. For the little girl was breaking her ...
— The Biography of a Prairie Girl • Eleanor Gates
... grandmother taught me them lines when I wasn't more'n eleven, and I've never forgot 'em. Next you spreads the sheet just so, and you must be careful not to leave any creases in it. Then you beat up the bolster and pillow, and lay them like that," suiting the action to the words. "Then comes the top sheet, and the blankets. You must tuck each one in at the bottom first, and then at the sides, and leave the top end loose, ...
— The Carroll Girls • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... very honest gentleman, who, we were told, was then drinking below. Though we could have very well dispensed with his company, we were glad to submit to this disposition, as there was not another bed empty in the house; and accordingly went to rest, after having secured our baggage under the bolster. About two or three o'clock in the morning I was awaked out of a very profound sleep by a dreadful noise in the chamber, which did not fail to throw me into an agony of consternation, when I heard these words pronounced with a terrible ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... hour," said Clover, unhooking the rules, and carrying them to the window,—"Half an hour; and this says that we must turn the mattress, smooth the under-sheet over the bolster, and spend five minutes in silent devotion! We'll have to be quick to do all that ...
— What Katy Did At School • Susan Coolidge
... criminals) which bears his name. It mattered not that Bertillon had never appeared in a handwriting case before, or that his skill in this line was unknown. He was a man of science, of great renown in other lines, and the government relied on these facts to bolster up its claim that Dreyfus wrote the incriminating papers Bertillon reported in favor of the government's contention, and it was an easy matter to get some alleged experts—weak as to will and ability—and one or two honest ...
— Disputed Handwriting • Jerome B. Lavay
... a palliasse of straw, with a pillow consisting of a thin bolster propped on his outer clothes. Three very yellow blankets made up the tally of comfort. And the whole was spread out on the floor of a room in which four other ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... trying to bolster up my nerve, Jack It's mighty nice of you in the bargain. I'll need your counsel more than a few times from now on, and I'm right glad I can have some one to go to when I feel so sick with the suspense, All the while I'm waiting and hoping I've got to tremble every time my father speaks ...
— Jack Winters' Gridiron Chums • Mark Overton
... odours. A bed there was in the darkest corner of the room on the floor. It looked as though composed of the refuse raked from a pig-sty, and thrust into a sack which had been used for the conveyance of dust and bones. Bolster or pillow it had none, but against the wall, where the bed's head was supposed to be, were three or four logs of rough wood piled together, over which was laid a faded cloak crumpled into a heap. Such was the only couch which the unhappy sufferer had to lay him down upon at night, or when weary ...
— Amos Huntingdon • T.P. Wilson
... for himself better if he has no impediments," she said, speaking rapidly as if to bolster up her own resolution. "A woman is always an impediment in ...
— Constance Dunlap • Arthur B. Reeve
... other cause—he dropped the knife in the bed, and was not able to find it again. The wounds upon the hand of the dead man indicated his having caught and struggled to hold the blade of the weapon with which he was assailed. The impression of a bloody hand thrust under the bolster, where it was Sir Wynston's habit to place his purse and watch, when making his arrangements for the night, supplied the motive of this otherwise ...
— The Evil Guest • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... the Lord taketh away, according to His good will and pleasure," I ventured piously, as Mrs. M'Collop beat the bolster and laid it ...
— Penelope's Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... and down goes George's head on the pillow again, and he takes his pencil and notebook from under his bolster, and falls to polishing his verses, as Harry, with his cloak over his shoulder and a little valise in his hand, walks to the inn in Holborn whence the Portsmouth ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... on the camp-bed, lying aslant for he was too long for it. A sheet covered his lower limbs, but his breast and shoulders had been bared. The head was nearest to the entrance, propped on an outjutting bolster. ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... end than the making things clear to himself and his readers, and whom we should mistrust as having an ulterior aim on which he is more intent than on the furthering of our better understanding. We want to know who is doing his best to help us, and who is only trying to make us help him, or to bolster up the system in which his interests are vested. There is nothing that will throw more light upon these points than the way in which a man behaves towards those who have worked in the same field with ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler
... so absurd, that they might well provoke a smile, did they not excite a deeper feeling. The last of the charges was the only one of moment in such a trial; and the weakness of this may be inferred from the care taken to bolster it up with the others. The mere specification of the articles must have been sufficient to show that the doom of ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... that, though he gave up his own bedroom, Mrs. Sherwood could not find a pillow, not only there, but in the whole house; and, with a severe pain in her face, could get nothing to lay her head on "but a bolster stuffed as hard as ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... Every man must build up his own fortune nowadays. Shirt-sleeves rolled up lead on to best broad cloth; and he who is not ashamed of the apron will soon be able to do without it. "Diligence is the mother of good luck," as Poor Richard says; but "idleness is the devil's bolster," John Ploughman says. ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... extremely drunk. He went to the bed, piled himself loosely atop of it and forgot his identity. About the middle of the night, his wife, who was sitting up darning stockings, heard a voice from the profoundest depths of the bolster: ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... friendship; her passionate lips curled in scorn. "I might marry the sort of man you could be," she said, "but I never could marry a man so weak that, without me to bolster him up, he'd become ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips
... man's name was Jonathan Leavitt. He was quite old but hearty, with a stubbly fringe of white beard around a ruddy face. He had come on a wood-sled for the greater convenience of bringing Sylvia's goods. There were a feather-bed, bolster, and pillows, tied up in an old homespun blanket, on the rear of the sled; there was also a red chest, and a great bundle of bedclothing. Sylvia sat in her best rocking-chair just behind Jonathan ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... turned many things over in his mind to bolster up this conclusion, he was still not at ease. Against his will he recalled certain unpleasant things which had happened within his knowledge under sudden and unexpected stress of emotion. He tried to laugh the absurd stuff out of his thoughts and to the end ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood
... truth. All true whole men succeed; for what is worth Success's name, unless it be the thought, The inward surety, to have carried out A noble purpose to a noble end, 160 Although it be the gallows or the block? 'Tis only Falsehood that doth ever need These outward shows of gain to bolster her. Be it we prove the weaker with our swords; Truth only needs to be for once spoke out, And there's such music in her, such strange rhythm, As makes men's memories her joyous slaves, And clings around the soul, as the sky clings Round the mute earth, forever beautiful, And, if o'erclouded, only ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... mind of an old story which, besides applying to the Parish, all who are married, and all who intend to marry, will do well to recollect. A worthy couple, named John and Joan, had lived happily together many a long year, till one unlucky day they bought a new bolster. Joan said the bolster was too hard, and John that it was too soft. So, of course, they quarrelled. After sulking all day, they agreed to put the bolster between them at night." (Roars of laughter amongst the men; the women did not know which way to look, except, indeed, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... the porter sleeping in his arm-chair: she glides up the staircase, and lies down between the king and queen in their bed-royal: this very night I dare say she will perch upon poor old Goody Twoshoes's meagre bolster, and whisper, "Will the gentleman and those ladies ask me again? No, no; they will forget poor old Twoshoes." Goody! For shame of yourself! Do not be cynical. Do not mistrust your fellow-creatures. What? Has the Christmas morning dawned upon thee ninety times? For four-score and ten years has ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Clarissa's misfortune, through sickness, to lose much of her hair. It had now begun to grow again and resume its former luxuriant abundance, but by removing several switches—of her own hair—and the bolster commonly called a rat, and sleeking her hair down hard with oil, she appeared as a boy might who was badly in need of a haircut. After a light supper, she set out alone for the residence of Asbury Fuller and at the end of her journey found herself at the gateway of a somber edifice, which was apparently ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis
... hand with humid kisses, and, slowly rising, he bent towards her face, which she again began to hide. Suddenly he threw one arm across the bed, winding it around his wife over the clothes, and slipped his other arm under the bolster, which he raised with her head upon it; then he ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... (exactly a month since the first shock,) the earth had a shivering fit between one and two; but so slight that, if no more had followed, I don't believe it would have been noticed. I had been awake, and had scarce dozed again-on a sudden I felt my bolster lift up my head; I thought somebody was getting from under my bed, but soon found it was a strong earthquake, that lasted near half a minute, with a violent vibration and great roaring. I rang my bell; my servant came in, frightened out of his senses- - in an instant we heard all the windows ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... little of this in Pope. Had he been a really great poet of the old Homer or Dante breed, he would have outshot his age, till he "dwindled in the distance;" but in lieu of immediate fame, and of elaborate lectures in the next century, to bolster it unduly up, all generations would have "risen and ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... also give and bequeath, unto my said son, George Beall, his choice of one of my feather beds, bolster and pillow and other furniture thereunto belonging, with two cows and calves and half my sheep from off this plantation I now live on, unto him ...
— A Portrait of Old George Town • Grace Dunlop Ecker
... of innumerous boughs. But, oh, that hapless virgin, our lost sister! Where may she wander now, whither betake her From the chill dew, amongst rude burs and thistles Perhaps some cold bank is her bolster now, Or 'gainst the rugged bark of some broad elm Leans her unpillowed head, fraught with sad fears. What if in wild amazement and affright, Or, while we speak, within the direful grasp Of savage hunger, or of savage heat! ELD. BRO. Peace, ...
— L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, Comus, and Lycidas • John Milton
... a scheming Boston banker, gets control of an old, reliable trust company, wrecks it to bolster up another business, and disappears. Police and reporters hunt him in vain. As Ashley, a reporter, is "combing" the neighborhood of Newhall's home for evidence, a young girl draws him inside a house, where he finds the banker dead, a pistol beside him. The police call ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... we search beneath bolster, mattress, and blankets; yea, even downwards to the fundamental straw. Not a trace was to be seen of Cox Savory's horizontal lever, jewelled, as Tom pathetically remarked, in four special holes, and warranted to go for a year without more than a minute's deviation. Neither were the emerald ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... Sarah, sensibly enough, wants to get it over before dinner, so I've promised to come over right after lunch and sit on your porch so I'll be here no matter how early Hugh gets home. You and I have to bolster up the ...
— Rosemary • Josephine Lawrence
... was beyond her strength. She could not move the helpless weight, and, in her despair, she let Tibbie's head fall back with a dull plash upon the bolster. ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... ribbons, laces on floors; chairs overturned; my desk wide open covered with letters, trinkets, etc.; bureau drawers half out, the bed filled with odds and ends of everything. I no longer recognized my little room. On the bolster was a little box, at the sight of which I burst out laughing. Five minutes before the alarm, Miriam had been selecting those articles she meant to take to Greenwell, and, holding up her box, said, "If we were forced to run for our lives without a moment's warning, I'd ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... heard every word, had folded up all her clothes, and put them under the bolster, had taken off her chemise, that her husband should not recognise it, had twisted her head up in a sheet, and had brought to light the carnal convexities which commenced where ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 3 • Honore de Balzac
... the country. Men, lured by the gains of slavery and corrupted by its contact, sought by infamous reasoning and vicious legislation to avert the criticism of men and the judgment of God. In the words of our immortal Douglass, "To bolster up and make tolerable what was intolerable; to make human what was inhuman; to make divine what was infernal." To make this giant wrong acceptable to the moral sense it was averred and enacted that slavery was right; that God himself had so predetermined in His wisdom; that ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... faint vestige of smoke vanished, neither said a word, but sat there silent, with clasped hands. The bitterness of disappointment wore away slowly, and as the uneventful hours left them in the same helpless condition, they fell again into fitful conversation, merely to thus bolster up courage, and lead their minds to other thoughts. It was maddening to sit there motionless and stare off across the desolate water, seeing nothing but those white-crested surges sweeping constantly toward them, and to feel the continuous leap and drop of the ...
— The Case and The Girl • Randall Parrish
... been used externally has decayed. The abaci of the Early English capitals in the main arcade are of Barnack stone, which is harder than clunch and so more suitable for bearing a weight. The Norman stonework was cut with an axe, the Transition with a chisel. The Early English is bolster-tooled; the Decorated ashlar (including the bays on the south side of the nave) is claw-tooled, the mouldings being scraped; the ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Saint Albans - With an Account of the Fabric & a Short History of the Abbey • Thomas Perkins
... to procure it for him and began to ask how he was feeling. Prince Andrew answered all his questions reluctantly but reasonably, and then said he wanted a bolster placed under him as he was uncomfortable and in great pain. The doctor and valet lifted the cloak with which he was covered and, making wry faces at the noisome smell of mortifying flesh that came from the wound, began examining that dreadful place. The doctor ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... cot were some very wide windows, and three windows were filled with galleons of cloud—fat, bolster, swelling vessels, white, save where, in their curving sails, they had caught a faint radiance from the hidden sun. In fine procession, against the blue, they passed along. Very faint and muffled there came up from the Square the lingering ...
— The Golden Scarecrow • Hugh Walpole
... space upon discussing the different fashions of spelling in England and America. The rage excited in otherwise rational human beings by the dropping of the "u" in "favor," or the final "me" in "program," is one of the strangest of psychological phenomena. The baselessness of the reasonings used to bolster up the British clinging to superfluous letters is very ably shown in Professor Matthews' Americanisms and Briticisms. Let me only put in a plea for the retention of such abnormal spellings as serve to distinguish two words of the same sound. For instance, it seems to me useful that we should ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... not unlikely that Flechter's fear of a conviction led him to invite testimony in his behalf which would not bear the test of careful scrutiny. Many an innocent man has paid the penalty for uncommitted crime because he has sought to bolster up his defense with doubtful evidence without the incubus of which he ...
— True Stories of Crime From the District Attorney's Office • Arthur Train
... that he had an equally accurate knowledge of the state of my father's health. That would account for what Cumming says as to his offer to bolster up the bank for a time, and for a retraction of that offer within a few days after my ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... Hence the frequent warnings to turn our attention from it, as a subject lying beyond the range of all sober speculation, and as unsuited to the investigation of our finite minds. If this be a wise conclusion, it would be well to leave it to support itself, instead of attempting to bolster it up with the reasons ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe
... Cibot, meanwhile, looking under the pillow, found the handkerchief with the key of the bureau knotted to one corner; and this so much the more easily because Pons purposely left the end hanging over the bolster, and lay with his ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... at threats so fervent and precise; but Gerard only gnashed his teeth with rage at the noise, and seized his hard bolster with ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... Not now, Theridamas; her time is past: The pillars, that have bolster'd up those terms, Are faln in clusters at ...
— Tamburlaine the Great, Part I. • Christopher Marlowe
... Small, Wee Bear came to look at his bed, there was the bolster in its place; and the pillow in its place upon the bolster; and upon the pillow was the head of Goldenlocks—which was not in its place, for she had ...
— The Golden Goose Book • L. Leslie Brooke
... have given most trouble. One German officer who was sent to Austria to help bolster up her army told me that he didn't worry over the desertion of Bohemians singly and in small groups. He expected that. But he did take serious exception to the increasingly popular custom of whole battalions with their officers ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin
... Ireland, and all the schemes contrived to bolster up the credit of the base coin, would have proved insufficient to support the expenses of the war, had not James received occasional supplies from the French monarch. After the return of the fleet which had conveyed him ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... sat endeavouring to shake it off. He also tried to bolster himself up by thinking he might perhaps be able to assist his mother to come out from her narrowness, and discover too how warm and glorious the sun shone outside, where people loved and helped each other. Then he ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim
... left for the small chest of drawers of painted deal to stand back to the wall. A similar washstand and a low bed completed the furniture. The last was immediately behind the door, and there lay the woman, with a bolster heightened by a thin petticoat and threadbare cloak under her head. Hester saw a pale, patient, worn face, with ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... his powerful influence carried no weight in this case. It was useless to argue with the infatuated old boy, who was evidently very uneasy about Major Lund, and suspected also that Miss Nightingale had not reported fair, in order to prevent him coming. He made himself into a perfect bolster with wraps, and put on a respirator. This damned thing, however, he took off again, as it impeded respiration, and then went out into the all but solid fog, gasping and choking frightfully, to feel his way to Hill Street and satisfy himself the best ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... amendment of lodging; for, said they, our fathers, yea and we ourselves also, have lain full oft upon straw pallets, on rough mats covered only with a sheet, under coverlets made of dagswain or hopharlots (I use their own terms), and a good round log under their heads instead of a bolster or pillow. If it were so that our fathers—or the good man of the house had within seven years after his marriage purchased a mattress or flock bed, and thereto a stack of chaff to rest his head upon, ...
— Chronicle and Romance (The Harvard Classics Series) • Jean Froissart, Thomas Malory, Raphael Holinshed
... cried with her head buried in Aunt Cordelia's new bolster sham; for how could she confess to Hattie and to Rosalie that it was a ...
— Emmy Lou - Her Book and Heart • George Madden Martin
... to my husband no more than if he were a crow's son and not a king's; and yet will the thing come to pass, but and if thou standest in the way thereof, and goest against him with an army, and takest me away withal; for verily with no king would I rather bide on bolster ...
— The Story of the Volsungs, (Volsunga Saga) - With Excerpts from the Poetic Edda • Anonymous
... easy to understand their plight. If we know ourselves we are strengthened that much, because we can bolster up our weaknesses. We will know enough to combat timidity. We can then know what we are capable of, and thus become conscious of our innate powers that only need to be called into action in order to become useful. We ...
— Laugh and Live • Douglas Fairbanks
... moment of uneasiness," she added, slapping the bolster. "You didn't know what to ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... the motives of the later "reconstruction." Both ingloriously failed, as they deserved to do. How much stronger the Republican party would have been if it had relied upon the loyal States which had sustained it through the war, instead of timidly distrusting them and trying to bolster itself up by the aid of the negro and "carpet-bag" ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... time to turn over a new leaf. With this lame affair the first division of the disastrous campaign of 1776 properly closes, and the second properly begins. It had been watched with alternate hope, doubt, and despondency. Excuses are never wanting to bolster up failing reputations. The generals said they had no soldiers, the soldiers declared they had no generals; the people hung their ...
— The Campaign of Trenton 1776-77 • Samuel Adams Drake
... encounter with O'Malley and the galling sense of inferiority it carried with it; but once on the highroad again the smart returned and the sting lingering behind the man's scorn was not to be allayed. It required every excuse his wounded dignity could muster to bolster up his pride and make out for himself the plausible case that had previously comforted him and lulled his conscience to rest. It was now more impossible than ever for him to make any confession, he decided; for having denied in his father's ...
— Steve and the Steam Engine • Sara Ware Bassett
... a knife, but fell upon it tooth and nail. He ate and ate till school began, and after school was over he ate again; at night, too, it was the same thing till bedtime—nay, a little fellow that Henry had for a playmate told me that he put the cake upon his bolster when he went to bed, and waked and waked a dozen times, that he might take a bit. I cannot so easily believe this last particular; but, then, it is very true, at least, that on the morrow, when the day was hardly broke, he set about his favourite business once again, ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... graceless uncles, who had seen the world, were ever ready to bolster the matter through, and as they were brawny, broad-shouldered warriors, and veterans in brawl as well as debauch, they had great sway with the multitude. If any one pretended to assert the innocence of the duchess, they interrupted him with a loud ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... he repeated seven or nine Times, I know not which; but I was so disturb'd at it, that I began to wake, and with my Eyes but half open was preparing to rise; when I fancy'd I felt a cold Hand take me by the Hand, and force me on my hard Bolster again, with these Words, take thy Rest, Miles! This I confess did somewhat surprize me; but I concluded, 'twas the Effect of my Melancholy, which, indeed, has held me ever since I last left England: I therefore resolutely started up, and jump'd out of Bed, designing to leave you, and sit ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... he looked up. Her eyes were certainly extraordinary. Could she be laughing at him? The prospect of a new building had been, it was true, a joke for many years and evidently she put no more confidence in the statement than he did himself. "Of course, you are aware," he continued to bolster his assertion, "that the road has been bought by an immensely rich lot ...
— The Daughter of a Magnate • Frank H. Spearman
... men were kept well off the ground, and the hair-felt not only preserved their bodily heat from escaping, but it prevented the damp of the earth from ascending. This mattress was ten feet long, therefore it could be rolled up to form a bolster at one end; and, during a hot sun, it was intended for a cover to the roof of the ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... his complaint to Joseph that Rabbinism laid no stress on immortality, further investigation of the Pentateuch had shown him that Moses himself had taken no account whatsoever of the conception, nor striven to bolster up the morality of to-day by the terrors ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... upon which he laid the oilskin and then one of the blankets—they were new white blankets, fresh from the store. After that, he set the cushions from the buggy, covering them with the rug, at the head of the couch, making a bolster, and, over that, the one she ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... that such statements as the foregoing would throw the scholastic world into a ferment. There was a scramble to bolster up the cause of Aryanism and to preserve this one civilization, at least, to the credit of the Caucasian race. Homer was scanned with a patience unknown to college students and the classic myths were refined in the alembics of master minds. Yet there were some who cared for truth more than ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... perfectly well made, went to the Prince de Conti, and said to him: "Monseigneur, I have examined the shape of the young Prince who is just born: he is at all points well formed, let him sleep without a bolster that he may remain so; and only imagine what grief it would occasion to the Princesse de Conti, who has brought him into the world straight, if you should ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... prisoners were told next morning the decision of Chief Justice Bolster to try each prisoner separately and in closed court, they all protested against such proceedings. But guards took the women by force to a private room. "The Matron, who was terrified," said Miss Morey, "shouted to the guards, 'You don't handle the drunks that ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens
... games had been played, and two of them were won by the Navy. Next would come Stanford College, a hard lot to beat. The Navy tried to bolster up its own hopes; a loss to Stanford would mean the majority of games lost ...
— Dave Darrin's Fourth Year at Annapolis • H. Irving Hancock
... made by Germans about England have often been to me. It is true, however, that tall people do find the old-fashioned German bedsteads short; and it is true that the big square downy pillows are supported by a wedge-shaped bolster called a Keilkissen. But the Plumeau is what the German loves, and the Briton hates above all things: the mountain of down or feathers that tumbles off on cold nights and stays on on hot ones. You hate it all ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... Institute meetings which open with a hymn and end up with sponge-cake and green tea, after a platitudinous paper on the Beauty of Prairie Life. It has its beauties, God knows, or we'd all go mad. We women, in this brand-new land, try to bolster ourselves up with the belief that we have greatnesses which the rest of the world must get along without. But that is only the flaunting of La Panache, the feather of courage in our cap of discouragement. There is so much, so much, we are denied! So much we must do without! So much we must see ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... pride in these possessions was almost as vast as the labor she expended in caring for them. What a collection was in those old-time linen chests! Humphreys, in her Catherine Schuyler, copies the inventory of articles in one: "35 homespun Sheets, 9 Fine sheets, 12 Tow Sheets, 13 bolster-cases, 6 pillow-biers, 9 diaper brakefast cloathes, 17 Table cloathes, 12 damask Napkins, 27 homespun Napkins, 31 Pillow-cases, 11 dresser Cloathes and a damask Cupboard Cloate." And this too before the day of the washing-machine, the steam ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... occasion, you may be obliged to have the beds made without airing, turn the clothes half way down, and leave them for several hours. Some persons have cheap calico covers, to spread over beds, while the room is swept, this is a good plan, on account of the dust. Bolster and pillow tucks wear better, if you have a check case basted on, this should be changed, washed and starched occasionally. It is a good plan also to have check covers for matresses and feather beds, but the covers should not be kept on ...
— Domestic Cookery, Useful Receipts, and Hints to Young Housekeepers • Elizabeth E. Lea
... out of Dessie, covered over from head to foot in the bed. Directly John reached over to lay a hand on her shoulder. 'Dessie, honey,' he coaxed, 'Brother Dyke Garrett's come to pray with you!' He shook the heap of covers. And bless you, what they thought was Dessie turned out to be a feather bolster. John snatched back the covers. The bed was empty except for that long feather bolster that strumpet had covered over lengthwise of the bed. Come to find out Dessie had sent John snipe huntin', so to speak, and she skipped out with a timber cruiser. Dyke ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... canvas bag like a short bolster was handed down into the boat, and then the boy followed with a light, useful-looking rifle, belt and long keen sheath-knife, which he hung up under the canvas to be clear of the night ...
— Rob Harlow's Adventures - A Story of the Grand Chaco • George Manville Fenn
... affairs, our objectives will be to hold down taxes, to continue controlling inflation, to promote economic growth, to increase productivity, to encourage foreign trade, to keep farm income high, to bolster small business, and to promote ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... he was in was almost bare of furniture. Even part of the carpet had been taken up. The windows were wide open; a stale odour of drugs pervaded the air, while upon the bed nothing remained but the mattress and bolster. For a moment Bennett looked about him bewildered, then he started sharply. This was—had been—the sick-room. Here, upon that bed, Ferriss had died; here had been enacted one scene in the terrible drama wherein he, Bennett, had played so ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris
... led to a long and recriminatory correspondence in the columns of The Tittersham Observer. The Rev. Eldred Bolster, Vicar of Little Titley, writing in the issue of May 9th, characterises them as grotesque and preposterous fabrications. He points out, to begin with, that the Nether Wambleton Parish Magazine only contains eighteen pages, of which no fewer than sixteen are provided from London and have no ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 3, 1914 • Various |
