"Chimneypiece" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... or green, that Christmas Day was a delightful one. Even without a gaudily lighted and trimmed tree, the Bunkers were pleased in every way. Their presents were stacked with those belonging to the Armatage children under the chimneypiece in the big front parlor, and Mr. Armatage himself ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Mammy June's • Laura Lee Hope
... stood before the mirror till the Sevres clock on the chimneypiece gently chimed seven. Then he drew out of their tissue paper a pair of lavender gloves, and pressed the ...
— The Green Carnation • Robert Smythe Hichens
... scream nor faint, as Cutter had expected. The blood rushed to her face, and then sank again as suddenly. She steadied herself with one hand on the chimney-piece before she answered. ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... people there! (He takes both her hands and they look at each other a moment in silence. Then he goes out by the door to the right. As he reaches the door she takes a step toward him, impulsively; then turning back she leans against the chimney-piece, ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton
... feet, forming a fine retreat for foxes. These animals often may be seen from the heights, sporting with their cubs in perfect safety. This day I went to see the works of an old virtuoso, who turns in marble, or rather granite [serpentine] all kinds of chimney-piece ornaments, rings, ear-rings, etc. Several specimens of his work, which must have cost him a vast deal of trouble, I thought very beautiful. It was in this neighborhood that the celebrated Ferguson spent so much of his ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... the porter and mounted the four flights to my own room. Although I could not deny that I was drunk, I was at the same time lucidly rational and practical. I had but one preoccupation—to be up in time on the morrow for my work; and when I observed the clock on my chimney-piece to have stopped, I decided to go down stairs again and give directions to the porter. Leaving the candle burning and my door open, to be a guide to me on my return, I set forth accordingly. The house was quite dark; but as there were only the three doors on each landing, ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... see it wasn't a workshop always, sir. Many a grand dinner-party has sat down in this room when it was in its glory. Look at the chimney-piece there." ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... a hundred miles away, reached them through the dense October air with a softened and muffled sound. The evenings, however, were growing cool, and before long they lighted the first fire of the season in Mrs. Vivian's heavily draped little chimney-piece. On this occasion Bernard sat there with Angela, watching the bright crackle of the wood and feeling that the charm of winter nights had begun. These two young persons were alone together in the gathering ...
— Confidence • Henry James
... Mara left the room with the children, my eyes fell on the white leopardess: I thought we had left her behind us, but there she was, cowering in a corner. Apparently she was in mortal terror of what she might see. A lamp stood on the high chimney-piece, and sometimes the room seemed full of lamp-shadows, sometimes of cloudy forms. The princess lay on the settle by the wall, and seemed never to have moved hand or foot. ...
— Lilith • George MacDonald
... depths of the big chair beside the chimney-piece, a book in her lap, looked up inquiringly. "What is curious, ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... entered with a light. Helene was on her knees praying; without rising, she signed to Madame Desroches to place the light on the chimney-piece, which that lady ...
— The Regent's Daughter • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... While on a visit to Lord Lansdowne at Bowood, years after they had left Cambridge, Austin and Macaulay happened to get upon college topics one morning at breakfast. When the meal was finished they drew their chairs to either end of the chimney-piece, and talked at each other across the hearth-rug as if they were in a first-floor room in the Old Court of Trinity. The whole company, ladies, artists, politicians, and diners-out, formed a silent circle round the two Cantabs, ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... cheaply framed, hang above the chairs. They are The Andrew McMunn, The Eliza McMunn, and, a tribute to the deceased Jimmy, The McMunn Brothers. These form the fleet owned by the firm, and carry coal from one port to another, chiefly to Belfast. On the chimney-piece under a glass shade, is a model of The McMunn Brothers, the latest built and largest ...
— Our Casualty And Other Stories - 1918 • James Owen Hannay, AKA George A. Birmingham
... the walls, broken on the right by a cheerful fireplace with a grate of glowing cannel coal, in front of it a great club lounge upholstered, like all the chairs, in well-used leather. Opposite the chimney-piece, a handsome thing in carved oak, a door was draped with a curtain that swung with it. In the back of the room two long and wide French windows stood open to the night, beyond them that garden whose wall had attracted Lanyard's attention. There were a number of paintings, portraits ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... Feversham rose abruptly from his chair, just before the tattoo ceased. He crumpled the telegram loosely in his hands, tossed it into the fire, and then, leaning his back against the chimney-piece and upon one side of the fireplace, ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... it and hurried to the bureau to examine it by the light of the candles he had taken from the chimney-piece and placed ...
— The Adventures of Harry Revel • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... pale-blue satin, with its blue silk counterpane and its embroidered cushion at the foot of the bed; and her boudoir, which looked to the Vatican, was full of vases of malachite and the skins of wild animals, and had a bronze clock on the chimney-piece set in a statue of Mephistopheles. The only other occupant of her house, besides her servants, was a distant kinswoman, called her aunt, and known to familiars as the Countess Betsy; but in the studio below, which was connected ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... and having his own case only in his mind. But I, looking mechanically in the direction he indicated, saw mademoiselle standing a pace or two to my right in the shadow of the great chimney-piece. I know not whether she frowned more or blushed more; but this for certain, that she answered my look with one of sharp displeasure, and, turning her back on me, swept quickly from the room, with no trace in her bearing of that late tenderness ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... dirty, although about its upper parts spiders had run their cobwebs in every direction. In the centre of the ceiling hung a quicksilver globe, a common ornament in those days, but the major part of it had lost its brilliancy, the spiders' webs enclosing it like a shroud. Over the chimney-piece were hung two or three drawings, framed and glazed, but a dusty mildew was spotted over the glass, so that little of them could be distinguished. In the centre of the mantelpiece was an image of the Virgin Mary, of pure silver, in a shrine of the same metal, but it was tarnished to the ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat
... heap of money on the Derby, and being in so desperate a frame of mind that you took the holster-pistols down from their place above the chimney-piece in your barrack sitting-room, and threatened to blow your brains out? Do you remember, in your despair, appealing to a lad who served you, and who loved you, better perhaps than a brother would have loved ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... fire. In the chimney stood a pair of firedogs of iron, ornamented above with two garlanded vases, and flutings which had formerly been silvered with silver leaf, which was a sort of episcopal luxury; above the chimney-piece hung a crucifix of copper, with the silver worn off, fixed on a background of threadbare velvet in a wooden frame from which the gilding had fallen; near the glass door a large table with an inkstand, loaded with a confusion of papers ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... Aubrey came back alone, and found them all hanging on his entrance. Pamela put down her knitting and looked at him anxiously; so did the elder sisters. He went up absently to the chimney-piece, and ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... sending for the police, Mrs. Lecount took a large green paper fan from the chimney-piece, and seated ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... and placed it on the chimney-piece, while the Countess looked through the letters, counted them, crushed them in her hand, and flung them on the hearth. In a few minutes she set the whole mass in a blaze, twisting up the last note ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... corresponding devices. The ceiling or cove is the colour of peach blossom; and a Chinese canopy is suspended round from the lower compartment with tassels, bells, &c.: the furniture and other decorations, such as cabinets, chimney-piece, trophies, and banners, which are in the gallery, are all in strict accordance with the Chinese taste; while on every side the embellishments present twisted dragons, pagodas, and mythological devices of birds, flowers, insects, statues, formed from a yellow marble; and a ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... two days ago tete-a-tete with Lord Buchan. Heard a history of all his ancestors whom he has hung round his chimney-piece. From counting of pedigrees, good {p.154} Lord deliver us! He is thinking of erecting a monument to Thomson. He frequented Dryburgh much in my grandfather's time. It will be a handsome thing. As to your ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... paraffin is all over the place!" He seized my sofa blanket, and flung it over the table while I stood helpless. "There, that's safe now. Have you candles on the chimney-piece? I've got matches." ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... few jests in the best taste. So he too pleased every one. In the evening, when the drawing-room, furnished with what Madame Guillaume called "everything handsome," was deserted, and while she flitted from the table to the chimney-piece, from the candelabra to the tall candlesticks, hastily blowing out the wax-lights, the worthy draper, who was always clear-sighted when money was in question, called Augustine to him, and seating her on his knee, ...
— At the Sign of the Cat and Racket • Honore de Balzac
... saw a Buffalo Upon the chimney-piece: He looked again, and found it was His Sister's Husband's Niece. "Unless you leave this house," he said, "I'll send ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... build him a palace in rustic work, opposite to S. Firenze, above the place where the lions used to be. This palace was to form the angle of the piazza and to face the old Mercatanzia; but the death of Giuliano Gondi put a stop to the work. In it, among other things, Giuliano made a chimney-piece, very rich in carvings, and so varied and beautiful in composition, that up to that time there had never been seen the like, nor one with such a wealth of figures. The same master made a palace for a Venetian in Camerata, without the Porta a Pinti, ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 04 (of 10), Filippino Lippi to Domenico Puligo • Giorgio Vasari
... an inventory of the apartment, as a general studies the ground on which he is about to give battle. No trace remained of the unfortunate scene of the previous night, save a broken candelabrum on the chimney-piece. It was the one which Pascal Ferailleur had armed himself with, when they talked of searching him, and which he had thrown down in the courtyard, as he left the house. But this detail did not attract M. Fortunat's attention. ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... disgrace. You're a good girl yourself, Maggie. I have always said that. How Edward has turned out as he has done, I cannot conceive. But now, Maggie, I've something to say to you." He moved uneasily about, as if he did not know how to begin. Maggie was standing leaning her head against the chimney-piece, longing for her visitor to go, dreading the next minute, and wishing to shrink into some dark corner of oblivion where she might forget all for a time, till she regained a small portion of the bodily strength that had been sorely tried of late. Mr. Buxton saw her white look of anguish, ...
— The Moorland Cottage • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... entered the room, which not even the shabby furniture and appurtenances of the dinner table could render mean looking, with its noble proportions, oak ceiling, carved, high chimney-piece, and oriel window. There was not sufficient carpet even for the fashion—only, indeed, one large old Turkey rug; and that was spread in the recess of the window, where were, also, a finely-carved, high-backed, ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 29, May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... pilasters are of gilded bronze. Carvings in wood and stucco were contributed by a Flemish artist named Verberckt, to whom Louis XV assigned most of the sculptural work done at the chateau during his reign. It was he that modeled the two doors placed on either side the bronze and marble chimney-piece, and the sculptures of the cornice. The painting on the ceiling—the Apotheosis of Hercules—was first seen by His Majesty as he passed through the room on his way to mass on a day in September, 1736. He examined it with much attention (some one has taken the trouble ...
— The Story of Versailles • Francis Loring Payne
... dogs in the stone-paved hall; a hen too, finding its food on the floor and strutting here and there as if it had never known another home. On the left of the door, an oak table stood laid for the mid-day meal; on the right, before a carved stone chimney-piece, under which a huge log smouldered on the andirons, two or three men were seated. These rose on the entrance of the young mistress-they were dependants of the better class, for whom open house was kept at Morristown when business brought them thither. And, so far, all was well. Yet it may be that ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... squalor of half-starved existence, shorn of all that justified its grand proportions. Partition-walls have been run up across its halls to meet the requirements of our contracted modern customs. Nothing remains of the original decorations except one carved chimney-piece, an emblazoned shield, and a frescoed portrait of the founder. All movable treasures have been made away with. And yet the carved heraldics of the exterior, the coat of Piccolomini, "argent, on a cross azure five ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... and prim, Sits by the chimney-piece; Her knitting-needles clicking go, And never seem ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf; a Practical Plan of Character Building, Volume I (of 17) - Fun and Thought for Little Folk • Various
... this ungallant speech, Rose entered the room; and Miss Eliza rising to greet her, they both seated themselves near the fire, where that idle lad Fergus was standing, leaning his shoulder against the corner of the chimney-piece, with his legs crossed and his ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... still upon them. And the silk fell into such graceful folds that the proportions of the windows were enhanced. And the walls were stretched with silk of a fine romantic design, the dominant note of which was red to match the curtains. There were wall lights, and a curious old clock on the marble chimney-piece amid branching candelabra. I stayed a moment to examine the clock, deciding very soon that it was not of much value ... it was made in ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... Built by Charles IX., ornamented by Louis XIII. and XIV., to which Napoleon I. added the throne. In this room the marshals of France used to take their oath of allegiance. The ceiling magnificently gilt and painted, and chimney-piece in same style. Over it portrait of Louis XIII. The lustre of rock crystal ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... old school, gave substance and richness to the rather too decorative quality, as a painter might call it, of the rest of the room. On either side of a large window, two etageres displayed a hundred precious trifles, flowers of mechanical art brought into bloom by the fire of thought. On a chimney-piece of slate-blue marble were figures in old Dresden, shepherds in bridal garb, with delicate bouquets in their hands, German fantasticalities surrounding a platinum clock, inlaid with arabesques. Above it sparkled the brilliant facets of a Venice mirror framed in ebony, with figures carved ...
— A Daughter of Eve • Honore de Balzac
... death. Jacques and his son Philippe undoubtedly worked together in the "Appartement du Dauphin" at Versailles, and although much of their contribution to the palace has disappeared, the decorations of the marble chimney-piece still remain. They belong to the best type of the Louis XV. style—vigorous and graceful in design, they are executed with splendid skill. It is equally certain that father and son worked together upon the gorgeous bronze case of the famous astronomical clock made by Passement and Danthiau for Louis ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... chimney-piece, Charles looked at the dead man. He slowly tore the folded paper to pieces, while he ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors • Various
... said Adrian, and he sat down in her parlour and looked appraisingly (as was his habit) round the room. The grandfather clock in the corner was genuine, but he was beyond grandfather clocks. There was nothing else of any value; three china dogs and some odd trinkets on the chimney-piece; a print ...
— Happy Days • Alan Alexander Milne
... said I, "I put aside the setting altogether: it is a little too large for the present fashion; and have the portrait of my uncle framed and placed over my chimney-piece, next to yours. ...
— The History of Samuel Titmarsh - and the Great Hoggarty Diamond • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of a public-house in Fleet Street, there used to be written over the chimney-piece the following notice: "Gentlemen learning to spell are requested to ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... half dozen of Chippendale chairs, and the chintz-covered sofa where he now lay practically completed the inventory of the room. Three or four bronzes, a Narcissus, a fifteenth-century Italian St. Francis, and a couple of Greek reproductions stood on the chimney-piece, but the whole room breathed an ...
— The Blotting Book • E. F. Benson
... block for wood-chopping. Jendrek laughed, but his father unbuckled his belt and did not stop beating him till the boy crept, bleeding, under the bench. With the belt in his hand Slimak waited for his wife to make a remark. But she remained silent, only holding on to the chimney-piece for support. ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... excellent echo. He shewed us excellent pictures; two especially, those of the four Evangelists and Henry VIII. In our going, my landlord carried us through a very old hospital or almshouse, where forty poor people was maintained; a very old foundation; and over the chimney-piece was an inscription in brass: "Orate pro anima, Thomae Bird," &c. [The inscription and the bowl are still to be seen in the almshouse.] They brought me a draft of their drink in a brown bowl, tipt with silver, which I drank off, and at the bottom was a picture of the Virgin with the child ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... he called out, as Oliver sent the ray of the lighted candle upward. "'Tis easy enough to see how our prisoner escaped. Fool that I was not to have searched this place," and he let himself down again, where the bewildered group stood around the chimney-piece. ...
— An Unwilling Maid • Jeanie Gould Lincoln
... language), the red tape dangling limp and dejected, the pasteboard boxes covered with traces of the gambols of mice, the dirty floor, the ceiling tawny with smoke. A frugal allowance of wood was smouldering on a couple of fire-dogs on the hearth. And on the chimney-piece above stood a foggy mirror and a modern clock with an inlaid wooden case; Fraisier had picked it up at an execution sale, together with the tawdry imitation rococo candlesticks, with the zinc beneath showing through the lacquer in ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... in the afternoon, A faintness and a giddiness came o'er him; And, leaning on the chimney-piece, he cried, "The hand of God is on me!" and ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... more puzzled]. Yes—oh, yes. They have always been—[His eye catches that of Constance, first Lady Bantock, looking down at him from above the chimney-piece. His tone changes.] Well, yes, in ...
— Fanny and the Servant Problem • Jerome K. Jerome
... the threshold Elfgiva exclaimed in vexation, for the light of the log fire, whose rudely carved chimney-piece broke the long side-wall, succumbed at the balcony's lower edge to the shadows of the raftered ceiling, and all above was wrapped in soft twilight. "He cannot tell me from a monster," she fumed, letting herself sink into a faded tapestry ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... took a turn across the room, ending in front of the looking-glass over the marble chimney-piece; and there he stood for a long time contemplating in the glass the reflection of his face. It had that look, peculiar to some men, of having been steeped in linseed oil, with its waxed dark moustaches and the little ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... whose blame will most affect you, to eat, to sleep, to live with your most admiring and thence most exacting judge, is not this to domesticate the living God? Each becomes a conscience to the other, legible like a clock upon the chimney-piece. Each offers to his mate a figure of the consequence of human acts. And while I may still continue by my inconsiderate or violent life to spread far-reaching havoc throughout man's confederacy, I can do so no more, at least, in ignorance and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... There will be chairs covered with hideous antimacassars, tasteless round worsted-work mats for absent flower jars, and a lot of ugly cheap and vulgar china chimney ornaments, which, there being no fireplace, and consequently no chimney-piece, are set out in order on a rickety deal table. The whole life of these village folk is one piece of unreal acting. They are continually asking themselves whether they are incurring any of the penalties entailed ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... So, after getting some cheese and bread, to say nothing of a glass or two of strong beer and a dram at Luckie Barm's, we waited in her parlour, which was hung round with most beautiful pictures of Joseph and his Brethren, besides two stucco parrots on the chimney-piece, amusing ourselves with looking at them, as a pastime like, till Benjie wakened; on the which I made Tammie yoke his beast, and rowing the bit callant in his mother's shawl, took him into my arms in the cart, and after shaking hands with all and sundry twice or thrice over, we bade them a "good-night," ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... and my body, the side upon which I was lying, loyally preserving from the past an impression which my mind should never have forgotten, brought back before my eyes the glimmering flame of the night-light in its bowl of Bohemian glass, shaped like an urn and hung by chains from the ceiling, and the chimney-piece of Siena marble in my bedroom at Combray, in my great-aunt's house, in those far distant days which, at the moment of waking, seemed present without being clearly denned, but would become plainer in a little while when I was ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... the Exhibition in Philadelphia, 1876, a chimney-piece on which were sculptured "Children and the Yule-Log and Fireside Spirits." This was purchased ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... to his companion that they would see one another again after the play, and remained by the fire, with his elbow resting on the chimney-piece. I remained at table till the company had all left the room, and when we were alone together I got up and looked him straight in the face, and went out, walking towards Sheveningue, sure that he would follow me if he were a man of any ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... Iachimo, "is south of the chamber, and the chimney-piece is Diana bathing; never saw ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... the window shutters of the room, and looked at his watch. It wanted only a quarter to nine o'clock. He took his dog-whistle from the chimney-piece, and turned his steps at once in the direction of the drawing-room, in which his guests were ...
— Miss or Mrs.? • Wilkie Collins
... with an indignant start, "why that there clock have hung over chimney-piece for nigh upon farty year! That clock didn't ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)
... the spectacle of the nailed-up carcasses of a dozen hawks against the walls, and the outspread wings of an extended eagle emblazoning the gable above the door, like an armorial bearing. Within the cabin the walls and chimney-piece were dazzlingly bedecked with the party-colored wings of jays, yellow-birds, woodpeckers, kingfishers, and the poly-tinted wood-duck. Yet in that dry, highly-rarefied atmosphere, there was not the slightest suggestion ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... illustrative of the slyness of the Bohemians, compared with the simple honesty of the German, and the candid unscrupulousness of the Hungarian: "During the late war, three soldiers, of each of these three nations, met in the parlour of a French inn, over the chimney-piece of which hung a watch. When they had gone, the German said, 'That is a good watch; I wish I had bought it.' 'I am sorry I did not take it,' said the Hungarian. 'I have it in my pocket,' ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... of being in Messrs. Blocksy's rooms, of handling the Longepierre, and of seeing Wentworth there, and Lord Tarras. When he wakened he was very cold, and, of course, it was pitch dark. He did not remember where he was; he lit a match and a candle on the chimney-piece. Then slowly his memory came back to him, and not only his memory, but his consciousness of what he had wholly forgotten—namely, that this was Saturday, the Sabbath of the Jews, and that there was not the faintest ...
— Angling Sketches • Andrew Lang
... he gained the lower apartment his father was standing by the chimney-piece, the sailor having gone. The trumpet-major went up to the fire, and, grasping the edge of the ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... Chesterfield was known to entertain for her having induced him to seek an introduction to her. Although rich, he found her occupying a small lodging in Henry street, where she lived secluded and alone. "Over the chimney-piece of the front drawing-room was suspended the picture of her Platonic idolater. It was a half-length portrait, and had been given her by the man of whose adoration she was so virtuously vain." While Sheil was striving ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... the top of an ormolu box on the chimney-piece of a boudoir and showed Amy and me, under the rose as it were, some cigarettes, with a laugh. "Mamma's," she said: "she has a faiblesse ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... the same time she said something in the native with a gasping voice. Three little boys sat beside my path, where, I must pass within three feet of them. Wrapped in their sheets, with their shaved heads and bits of top-knots, and queer faces, they looked like figures on a chimney-piece. Awhile they sat their ground, solemn as judges. I came up hand over fist, doing my five knots, like a man that meant business; and I thought I saw a sort of a wink and gulp in the three faces. Then one jumped up (he was the farthest off) and ran for his mammy. ...
— Island Nights' Entertainments • Robert Louis Stevenson
... was half over, it became so dark that it was found necessary to illuminate the great lamp suspended from the centre of the roof, while other lights were set on the board, and two flaming torches placed in sockets on either side of the chimney-piece. Scarcely was this accomplished when the storm came on, much to the surprise of the weatherwise, who had not calculated upon such an occurrence, not having seen any indications whatever of it in the heavens. But all were too comfortably ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... the lamps had long been lit, and Mrs. Fairford, after a last impatient turn, had put aside the curtains of worn damask to strain her eyes into the darkening square. She came back to the hearth, where Charles Bowen stood leaning between the prim caryatides of the white marble chimney-piece. ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... in its heavy gilt frame, with a large crown at the top, glared on you: the paper, the curtains, the carpet glared on you: the books, the wax-flowers in glass-cases, the chairs in flaring chintz-covers, the china plates on the door, the blue and pink glass vases and cups ranged on the chimney-piece, the over-ornamented chiffoniers with Tonbridge toys and long-necked smelling bottles on their upper shelves—all glared on you. There was no look of shadow, shelter, secrecy, or retirement in any one nook or corner of those four gaudy walls. All surrounding objects seemed startlingly near to the ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... was to leave. He endeavored to dissuade her from her plan. She did not even reply to him. She stood looking at a crystal vase on the chimney-piece in which were some winter roses, Christmas roses, fresh and milk-white, that had been sent as a souvenir from yonder Dauphiny. Her glance rested fixedly on that fair bouquet that seemed like a bursting cloud ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... after Natalie had retired to rest, Louis stood leaning against the chimney-piece, gazing thoughtfully into the fire. Upon the table lay the packet, he knew well enough the moment he saw it what it contained, the letters and presents that Isabel had received from himself. Yes there they ...
— Isabel Leicester - A Romance • Clotilda Jennings
... that of the poorer squatter. The floor is composed of flag-stones, in this case always carefully washed and holystoned. There are the same chairs and deal table as in the poorer cottage, but there are many more domestic utensils, and the chimney-piece is ornamented with more crockery figures. A few coarse prints hang against the walls. Some of these old prints are great curiosities in their way—hardly valuable enough for a collection, but very amusing. A favourite set ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies
... remains of a meal. As the visitor's eye glanced round he could not but remark with an ever-recurring thrill that all the small details of the room were of the most quaint design and antique workmanship. The candlesticks, the vases upon the chimney-piece, the fire-irons, the ornaments upon the walls, were all such as he had been wont to associate with the remote past. The gnarled heavy-eyed man sat himself down upon the edge of the bed, and motioned his guest ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... On the chimney-piece, under an enormous glass shade, were a bride's wreath, a military medal, and a plait of white hair. On each side of the glass shade was a china vase containing a branch of box. All this, together with the table and the bed, belonged to the landlady, who had given up her ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... Last week, Joe Irving, the undergardener at Clomley lodge, brought me, as a present, a large nosegay of dahlias and china-asters. I carried them upstairs, and while Mrs. Rodney was in church, I put them into jars, on the table, and on the chimney-piece, and very bright and pretty they looked. So when she came in, she noticed them and thanked me, and spoke quite cheerful. As she was standing a-talking to me about them, an insect ran out from between the leaves, and I tried to kill it, but she ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... lighted by half-a-dozen candles, having wicks only a trifle smaller than the grease which enveloped them, in candlesticks that were never used but at high-days, holy-days, and family feasts. The lights were scattered about the room, two of them standing on the chimney-piece. This position of candles was in itself significant. Candles on the chimney-piece always meant ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... was meant to afford the highest gratification to the beholder, was the chimney-piece. This spot was crowded to excess in every square inch of its area with ornaments, chiefly of earthenware, miscalled china, and shells. There were great white shells with pink interiors, and small brown shells with spotted backs. Then there were china cups and saucers, and china shepherds and shepherdesses, ...
— The Lighthouse • Robert Ballantyne
... my grandest manner and walked up to Madame Chouteau, sitting in state in a great arm-chair near the chimney-piece. With my courtliest bow, in my best French, I made my compliments to her as if I had been accustomed to entering rooms in no other fashion. Then I made the circuit of the room, talking for a minute or two to each of my acquaintances, lingering ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... it seemed to leap and splutter with a distinctly Christmas morning air; the curtains and carpets and arm-chairs were warm and cosy in aspect; the tea-urn was warm, indeed it was hot, and so were the muffins, while the atmosphere itself was unusually warm. The tiny thermometer on the chimney-piece told that it was 65 degrees of Fahrenheit. Outside, the self-registering thermometer indicated ...
— The Coxswain's Bride - also, Jack Frost and Sons; and, A Double Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... at that!" He pointed upward to an ancient sword with belt and trappings, which gleamed on the panelled chimney-piece—crossed by an old queen's arm. Evesham had given up his large sunny room to Dorothy's mother, but he had not removed all his ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... making death-masks is described by Polybius: in Donatello's time it became very popular, and Verrocchio became one of the foremost men in this branch of trade, which combined expedition and accuracy with cheapness. The wax models were coloured and used as chimney-piece decorations, in ogni casa di Firenze. The bronze bust of San Rossore in the Church of Santo Stefano at Pisa has been attributed to Donatello. From the denunzia of 1427 we know that Donatello was occupied on a bust of the saint, and certain ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford
... Following Master B.'s bell to its source I found that young gentleman to have had but indifferent third-class accommodation in a triangular cabin under the cock- loft, with a corner fireplace which Master B. must have been exceedingly small if he were ever able to warm himself at, and a corner chimney-piece like a pyramidal staircase to the ceiling for Tom Thumb. The papering of one side of the room had dropped down bodily, with fragments of plaster adhering to it, and almost blocked up the door. It appeared that Master B., in his spiritual condition, always made a point ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... he remained standing; and she leaned back in a low, deep chair, looking up at him, with her arms folded. He stood near her and over her, as it were, dropping his baffled eyes on her, with his hand resting on the corner of the chimney-piece. "Has it never occurred to you that I may deem myself absolved from the promise made you before I ...
— Georgina's Reasons • Henry James
... dressed with flags, with this difference, that the flags instead of being gay and parti-coloured, were white and suggestive of infancy and innocence. The gentle noise of washing, and the soft breathing of the sleepers, and the tiny ticking of the clock over the chimney-piece, were the only audible sounds, for London had reached its deadest hour, four o'clock. Rioters had exhausted their spirits, natural and artificial, and early risers had not begun ...
— Life in the Red Brigade - London Fire Brigade • R.M. Ballantyne
... books on the board which served as a chimney-piece. Dr Johnson took up Burnet's History of his own Times. He said, 'The first part of it is one of the most entertaining books in the English language; it is quite dramatick: while he went about every where, saw every where, and heard every where. By the first part, I mean ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... early in the morning to the house of one of our friends, Ernest de B——. On my arrival I found Ganguernet there with some others of the party. Ernest had just finished a letter, which he sealed, directed, and placed upon the chimney-piece. Ganguernet, in his usual inquisitive and impertinent manner, took it up, and read the direction. 'Ah ha!' said he; 'so you correspond with your pretty ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... to Sylvie, with the colonel at her side opposite to Madame de Chargeboeuf. Bathilde was near her mother and Rogron. Sylvie placed Pierrette between herself and the colonel; Rogron had set out a second card-table, in case other company arrived. Two lamps were on the chimney-piece between the candelabra and the clock, and the tables were lighted by candles at forty sous a pound, paid for by the ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... said the host simply. "Will you go in, Mr. Burton?" And Tom climbed two or three perilous wooden steps and entered, to find himself in a most homelike and charming place. There was a huge fireplace opposite the door, with a thin whiff of blue smoke going up, a few old books on the high chimney-piece, a pair of fine portraits with damaged frames, some old tables and chairs of different patterns, with a couch by the square window covered with a piece of fine tapestry folded together and still showing its beauty, however raveled and worn. By the opposite window, curtained only by vines, sat ...
— The Life of Nancy • Sarah Orne Jewett
... that modern invention has employed to embellish it, there are to be seen, on the chimney-piece in a drawingroom, the arms of Cardinal Richelieu, just as they were during the lifetime of his father, which the cardinal desired to leave there, because they comprise a collar of the Holy Ghost, in order to prove to those who are wont to misrepresent ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... or of some other variety. I have not made sufficient experiments to judge certainly, but in some cases the difference in the growth of the young plants is highly remarkable. I have taken every kind of precaution in getting seed from the same plant, in germinating the seed on my own chimney-piece, in planting the seedlings in the same flower-pot, and under this similar treatment I have seen the young seedlings from the crossed seed exactly twice as tall as the seedlings from the self- fertilised seed; both seeds having ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... she uttered the word, she leaned against the chimney-piece for support, and buried her face ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 580, Supplemental Number • Various
... candles were brought to us and we were about to retire for the night. Then, as we vacated the chairs we had been occupying during the evening, and rose to our feet, he grasped me by the arm and planted me square in front of the chimney-piece, which was surmounted by a pier-glass, and, placing himself beside me, remarked, ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... ripened before being gathered. Afterwards the crossed and self-fertilised seeds were in most cases placed on damp sand on opposite sides of a glass tumbler covered by a glass plate, with a partition between the two lots; and the glass was placed on the chimney-piece in a warm room. I could thus observe the germination of the seeds. Sometimes a few would germinate on one side before any on the other, and these were thrown away. But as often as a pair germinated at the same time, they were planted on opposite sides of a pot, with a superficial ...
— The Effects of Cross & Self-Fertilisation in the Vegetable Kingdom • Charles Darwin
... alacrity; "a great part of my business correspondence is conducted in French, and I speak and hear it every day of my life." He smiled pleasantly in reply, rose from his seat, and, unlocking with the key he held a small drawer in a chest that stood beside the chimney-piece, took out of it a roll of manuscript and a cigar. "Monsieur," said he, offering me the latter, "let me recommend this, if you care to smoke so early in the day. I always prefer rappee, but you, doubtless, have younger tastes." Having thus provided ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... clock upon the schoolroom chimney-piece struck the hour, Arctura entered, and at once took her seat at the table with Davie—much to the boy's wonder and pleasure. Donal gave her a Euclid, and set her a task: she began at once to learn it—and after a while so brief that Davie ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... large dimensions, and finely proportioned; the sides and ends are divided by fluted pilasters with Corinthian capitals richly gilt. At one extremity is a beautifully sculptured chimney-piece of Parian marble, over which is a vast mirror, bounded by pilasters, that separate it from a large panel on each side, in the centre of which ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... his leave. When the courtyard echoed with the sound of a departing carriage, the Vicomtesse looked up, saw that no one was present save her brother and a friend of the family finishing their game of piquet, and went across to her daughter. The girl, standing by the chimney-piece, apparently examining a transparent fire-screen, was listening to the sounds from the courtyard in a way that justified ...
— Gobseck • Honore de Balzac
... staggered by this last speech that he nearly tumbled down the bank, but saved himself, and hung onto the window ledge, staring in with eyes as round as the stuffed owl's on the chimney-piece. ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... between a merman with a whelk shell and a mermaid with a comb, and another like Siren curled her tail on the top of the gaping baronial helmet above the shield, while two more upheld the main weight of the chimney-piece on either side ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... am in my private sanctum, my rifles all arranged in their respective stands above the chimney-piece, the stags' horns round walls hung with horn-cases, powder-flasks and the various weapons of the chase. Even as I write the hounds ...
— The Rifle and The Hound in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... task was that of building log-houses—two for our twenty hands. In each was an immense chimney-piece, a cooking-stove, and a bed stretching the width of the house on the floor, with a mattress of hemlock boughs. The rifles and shotguns hanging over the wide fireplace, and a long pine table and rustic benches, completed the furniture of our houses. The oxen and a company of ...
— Captain Mugford - Our Salt and Fresh Water Tutors • W.H.G. Kingston
... a wonderful time we had, arranging things before our new neighbors moved in. Teresa bought some neat linen curtains for the windows of the little house. Paula and I gathered quantities of flowers from our garden and placed them over the chimney-piece, and on the bedroom shelves and in the window-seats—and how the floors and windows did shine after we had finished ...
— Paula the Waldensian • Eva Lecomte
... approached. Other conversation followed. As half-past ten chimed from the clock on the chimney-piece, ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... right (if he said it) that he was LA MISERE HUMAINE, cureless misery - unless perhaps by the gallows. Death is a great and gentle solvent; it has never had justice done it, no, not by Whitman. As for those crockery chimney-piece ornaments, the bourgeois (QUORUM PARS), and their cowardly dislike of dying and killing, it is merely one symptom of a thousand how utterly they have got out of touch of life. Their dislike of capital punishment and their treatment of their domestic ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... shall be. For the nonce——" He turned to a tall dark girl who was leaning against the chimney-piece, watching us curiously. "Let me introduce my brother-in-law. Carefully kept from me before marriage and by me ever since. Both the ablative case, I believe, but what a difference? So rich ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... too, in this room; books on the table, books on the chimney-piece, books in an open press in the corner. Fielding was there, and Smollett was there, and Steele and Addison were there, in dispersed volumes; and there were tales of those who go down to the sea in ...
— The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices • Charles Dickens
... she was sulky and persistently silent, there was a lurking triumph in her eyes, and it was easy to see that she listened eagerly for the words which seemed to die on her son's lips. He glanced quickly round, stepped back, and rested his elbow on the chimney-piece so awkwardly that a small china cup fell and was shivered ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... is a new purchase of a 'Holy Family,' supposed to be by Andrea del Sarto. It has displaced the Glover over the chimney-piece in the drawing-room, and dear Stormie and Alfred nearly broke their backs in carrying it upstairs for me to see before the placing. It is probably a fine picture, and I seem to see my way through the dark of my ignorance, to admire the grouping and colouring, whatever doubt as to the expression and ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... we got to the Inn, I have half believed we were on the old North Road that my poor Lirriper knew so well. Then to see that child and the Major both wrapped up getting down to warm their feet and going stamping about and having glasses of ale out of the paper matchboxes on the chimney-piece is to see the Major enjoying it fully as much as the child I am very sure, and it's equal to any play when Coachee opens the coach-door to look in at me inside and say "Wery ...
— Mrs. Lirriper's Lodgings • Charles Dickens
... The very place for him. And to throw that up because some scoundrel writes an article in a newspaper! Well;—I have done my duty. If he chooses to ruin his child I cannot help it;" and he stood still at the fire-place, and looked at himself in a dingy mirror which stood on the chimney-piece. ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope
... too obliging, lad!" growled Silas. "And if it isn't asking too much, where's that china pig as used to be on the chimney-piece in th' kitchen there? Her's ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... been art and part in the disobedience, and Wilmet gravely blaming the child, and Mr. Audley telling her not to think so much about the loss as the transgression; and then the door was shut, and he heard no more, till Mr. Audley came in, examined the chimney-piece, and performed the elegy of the list in a long ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Has been to the play twice, and seen Jack Sheppard. Went with his brother the first time, and by himself the second. I took the money to go a second time out of mother's house, off the chimney-piece, where she had left a sixpence. It was the first night Jack Sheppard was played. There was great talk about it, and there were nice pictures about it all over the walls. I thought him a very clever ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... imploringly, "since I am speaking to you as I would to my confessor, I do assure you, by the holy name of God, that I have nothing to reproach myself with except for having, now and then, buttered my bread on both sides; and I call on Saint-Labre, who is there over the chimney-piece, to witness that I have never said one word about the Gars. No, my good friends, I ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac
... absolute than ordinarily he turned round. The heavy, gloomy oak wainscot, which extended over the walls upstairs and down in the dilapidated "Old-Grove Place," and the massive chimney-piece reaching to the ceiling, stood in odd contrast to the new and shining brass bedstead, and the new suite of birch furniture that he had bought for her, the two styles seeming to nod to each other across three centuries upon ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... ready-witted. His biographer[2] records the following anecdote of him as very likely to be authentic. The great artist occasionally made sketches from an honest old tailor, of the name of Fowler, who had a picturesque countenance and silver-gray locks. On the chimney-piece of his painting-room, among other curiosities, was a beautiful preparation of an infant cranium, presented to the painter by his old friend, Surgeon Cruickshanks. Fowler, without moving his position, continually peered at it askance with inquisitive ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... there. The Reindeer Inn is one of the chief architectural attractions of the town. We see the dates 1624 and 1637 inscribed on different parts of the building, but its chief glory is the Globe Room, with a large window, rich plaster ceiling, good panelling, elaborately decorated doorways and chimney-piece. The courtyard is a fine specimen of sixteenth-century architecture. A curious feature is the mounting-block near the large oriel window. It must have been designed not for mounting horses, unless these were of giant size, but for climbing to the top of coaches. The ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield
... just goin' to fall, quite an' clane, with the shakin' iv it. All av a suddint the storm stopt, as silent an' as quite as if it was a July evenin'. Well, your honour, it wasn't stopped blowin' for three minnites, before he thought he hard a sort iv a noise over the chimney-piece; an' with that my father just opened his eyes the smallest taste in life, an' sure enough he seen the ould squire gettin' out iv the picthur, for all the world as if he was throwin' aff his ridin' coat, until he stept out clane an' complate, out av ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 4 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... thing was a trough, but——' and Philip was about to describe the group of roses and columbines he had made for the Squire's chimney-piece, but was interrupted by a scornful ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... flat-breasted, wild-eyed mother, who did man's work; of a father, who spoke seldom and never twice—a father whose heavy foot upon the threshold sent his children scuttling like rabbits to hidden lairs and dens. She remembered the dogs; the bright gun-barrel above the chimney-piece; the steam of clothes hung to dry after many a soaking in "soft" weather; the reek of the peat; the brown eyes and steaming nostrils of the bullocks, that sometimes looked through the kitchen window in icy winter twilights, as though they would willingly change ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts |
