"Excelsior" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Crusoe's tree-dwelling, Mr. Bly began cheerfully to mount the steps. It should be premised that, although a recently appointed clerk in a large banking house, Mr. Bly was somewhat youthful and imaginative, and regarded the ascent as part of that "Excelsior" climbing pointed out by a great poet as a praiseworthy ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... the modest bard in Quaker gray Who blew the pibroch ere the battle lowered, Then pitched his tent upon the balmy beach? "Snow-bound," I ween, among his native hills. And where the master hand that swept the lyre Till wrinkled critics cried "Excelsior"? Gathering the "Aftermath" in frosted fields. Then, timid Muse, no longer shake thy wings For airy realms and fold again in fear; A broken flight is better than no flight; Be thine the task, as best you may, to sing The deeds of one who sleeps at Gettysburg Among the thousands in ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... of the Solimoens (like the Uakaris), are such as have not been able to cross a wide treeless space such as a river. The acquisition which pleased me most, in this place, was a new species of butterfly (a Catagramma), which has since been named C. excelsior, owing to its surpassing in size and beauty all the previously-known species of its singularly beautiful genus. The upper surface of the wings is of the richest blue, varying in shade with the play of light, ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... Scolding Machines from L5 to L50. A very good one (The Excelsior), price L10, can be charged in one minute, and set going like a musical box, and will sing, whistle, recite, preach, or scold away for a full hour without stopping. Cole would particularly recommend this one to the ladies, ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... is a Wilson's "Excelsior," with 10 inch steam cylinder and 8 inch water barrel. This powerful pump is in a special compartment of the fore hold, and will draw water from the bilge, sea, or either hold. A steam windlass and a double-handle winch are on ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 430, March 29, 1884 • Various
... glass must be wrapped in several thicknesses of soft paper (newspapers will answer). Make pads of excelsior or hay by spreading a thick layer between the folds of newspapers. Line the bottom and sides of the box with these pads. Pack the fruit in the padded box. Fill all the spaces between the jars with the ...
— Canned Fruit, Preserves, and Jellies: Household Methods of Preparation - U.S. Department of Agriculture Farmers' Bulletin No. 203 • Maria Parloa
... in the pretty detached cottages he passed, and he thought with growing wrath of the trivial errand on which he had been sent. "In happy homes he saw the light," but none of the high purpose of the youth of "Excelsior" fame stirred his heart—rather a dull sense of failure from all high things. What did his life amount to anyway, that he should count one thing more trivial than another? He loved his wife and children dearly, but he remembered a time when his ambition had not thought of being satisfied with the ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. VI., No. 6, May, 1896 • Various
... the best of all parodies is one in imitation of Longfellow's "Excelsior," entitled "Tobacco." It is from "Copis' ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... elevation. But just enough of valley and mountain, stretching far off in the dim distance, is revealed, to quicken our desire for a more extended vision, and soon, with renewed strength, we lift our gaze upward, and the word 'excelsior!' comes almost unbidden to our lips. There is a higher and a highest place to be gained, and I feel, Agnes, that there will be no rest for my feet ...
— The Good Time Coming • T. S. Arthur
... Excelsior or Michel might be added as very early; Aroma is grown very extensively in some sections; also Tennessee (Tennessee Prolific) is a very promising ...
— Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) • L. H. Bailey
... Alaskan bears in their best pelage one must be on the ground in April, and this made it necessary for us to sail from Seattle April 1, on the Pacific Steam Whaling Company's boat, Excelsior. Seattle proved a very good outfitting place, and before sailing we had safely stowed away below, in waterproof canvas bags, the provisions necessary to last us three months, in the most ...
— American Big Game in Its Haunts • Various
... this juncture, and Forsythe did not immediately answer. Instead, with Munson himself, and Billings the cook—insanely emitting whoops and yelps as he danced around for a peep—he joined the others in tearing out excelsior from the box. Then the bare contents ...
— The Wreck of the Titan - or, Futility • Morgan Robertson
... all be shiftless, dissipated characters, yet,—but see what it comes to! They a'n't content with wasting their time,—they kill it, Sir, actually kill it!" When I thought of the manly figures and handsome, eager faces of my friends of the "Union" and the "Excelsior,"—the Excelsiors won by ten tallies, I should say, the return match to come off at Smithville the next month,—and then looked at the meagre form and wan countenance of their critic, I thought to myself, "Dolorosus, my boy, you are killing ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... sack of flour, some tea, half a sack of beans and a few cooking utensils. Everything else had been stolen, including possibly the new stock of provisions Thayor had telegraphed for, the debris of two new boxes and the gray ashes of excelsior giving little doubt that the new provisions had arrived. Holt and Skinner had only time to bundle these valuables together when the fire reached them. Heavily loaded they managed to regain the others keeping along ...
— The Lady of Big Shanty • Frank Berkeley Smith
... really to be improvement. If, as I have tried to show in my Philosophy of Religion, the innermost core of all religion is faith in the persistence of value in the world, and if the highest values express themselves in the cry "Excelsior!" then the capital point is, that this cry should always be heard and followed. We have here a corollary of the theory of evolution in ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel
... study of them as to have produced some translations rendering the original with remarkable fidelity and spirit. I have before me here his brochure, printed last year at Padua, and containing versions of "Enceladus," "Excelsior," "A Psalm of Life," "The Old Clock on the Stairs," "Sand of the Desert in an Hour-Glass," "Twilight," "Daybreak," "The Quadroon Girl," and "Torquemada,"—pieces which give the Italians a fair notion of our poet's lyrical range, and which ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... Sarah readily accepted the invitation of the two children to join in the College Settlement at the corner of the two avenues. The rules of the institution proved attractive, and before a second week was well advanced ten light excelsior mattresses were regularly rolled up every morning as the different inmates went to their duties; while, as evening closed in, eight cheerful companions told stories around the ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale
... receded, leaving a sudden sullen gray; the little square room, littered with an upheaval of excelsior, sheet-shrouded furniture, and the paper-hanger's paraphernalia and inimitable smells, darkening and seeming ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... below), an office, and another large room to be used for a retail store. On the second floor is the sorting room, and adjoining or connected with it is the baling room, where such stuff as paper, rags and excelsior is pressed, ready to be taken away. On this floor, too, is to be found the kitchen, the dining room and the reading room. On the third floor are situated the dormitories and sleeping rooms. This plan is often varied. Sometimes there is a basement and only one or two stories above. Sometimes, ...
— The Social Work of the Salvation Army • Edwin Gifford Lamb
... field, if it did not the human beings in the valley below. The Silver Knight also played his part well up in the skies, so did the General, and many others. Up, up went the Green Dragon, and high soared the Silver Knight; Excelsior was his motto; but high as he went, ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston
... than a mile in length, has no clearly defined course, and is the outlet of a small lake situated in a marsh to the south-westward. These three creeks were named in the order of their discovery: Eagle, Excelsior and Deer. The small lake, which is the source of Eagle Creek, I called Alice, ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... name of which, we cannot now remember; James William Charles Pennington, D.D., and James McCune Smith, M.D., Editors: the issue being alternately at Hartford, the then residence of Dr. Pennington—and New York city, the residence of Dr. Smith. The "Excelsior," an ephemeral issue, which appeared but once, in Detroit, ...
— The Condition, Elevation, Emigration, and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States • Martin R. Delany
... He held several strips of a cotton flour-bag in one hand, and was considering how he could best make use of them without unduly displaying the bold lettering of the brand, though in the bush of that country it was not an unusual thing for a man to go about labeled "Early Riser," or somebody's "Excelsior." His companions had trooped off to the settlement about a league away, and a row of flat cars stood idle on the track which now led across the beaten muskeg. On the farther side of the latter, the tall pines lay strewn in rows, but beyond the strip of clearing the bush closed ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... ejecting at each explosion more boiling water than all the other geysers in the Park combined. Even the surrounding ledges could not withstand this terrible upheaval, and tons of rock were sometimes thrown up, with the water, more than two hundred feet. It is not strange, therefore, that this is called Excelsior, the King of Geysers. It is the most tremendous, awe-inspiring fountain in the world. When it will be again aroused, no one can tell. Its interval would seem to be from seven to ten years. Said an enthusiastic traveler to me: "If the Excelsior ...
— John L. Stoddard's Lectures, Vol. 10 (of 10) - Southern California; Grand Canon of the Colorado River; Yellowstone National Park • John L. Stoddard
... ignorance and folly that is revealed. When we look upon this picture and then upon that, verily we cannot help but ask the question, is mankind really progressing? We know that it is; we are keenly alive to the truth that the Anthem of Creation sounds out "Excelsior"—"move on," but how, and in what way (SPIRITUALLY) we fail to comprehend. The cyclic development of the human soul ...
— The Light of Egypt, Volume II • Henry O. Wagner/Belle M. Wagner/Thomas H. Burgoyne
... one fine morning, they started, full of hope, for some wonderful accounts were in circulation before they set out from Chicago, as to the enormous finds of the Excelsior mine and other kindred ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... the envelope and found a certificate for a hundred shares of the Excelsior Gold Mine, which appeared to be located in California. He had once heard his father speak of it in much the same terms ...
— The Young Musician - or, Fighting His Way • Horatio Alger
... is the most conspicuous feature of the Midway Basin, a collection of hot springs and pools. They are situated in the Midway Basin, and were originally called Cliff Caldron. Excelsior Geyser is in a continual state of anarchy, without law, government or regulation. It does just as it likes and when it likes. It seldom performs when wanted to, but when it does break out into a condition of fermentation, the effect is very magnificent. As one writer ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... from first hands," interrupted Bruce, irritated by the verbal excelsior which the prosecutor so deliberately ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott
... the parched herbage, and plodding up the ascent was like treading burning marl. I had to cry halt half-a-dozen times before we reached the summit; and yet that marvellous guide, with the baggage of all three on his head, kept on with a springy step and serene smile, like the youth in "Excelsior." It was an alternation of wheezing and stumbling with me, with a continuous ooze of perspiration, till I arrived heaving and panting on the crown of the ridge, and flung myself on the turf beside a pile of planking fresh ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... "At the Excelsior Theatre!" Here was something to talk about, to cover his bewilderment. "So you were in it! I ...
— They Call Me Carpenter • Upton Sinclair
... preoccupied. "I think he gave several very original ideas on the subjects of the pictures to those around. They seemed impressed. You know how far above the foolish feeling, mauvaise honte, he is; his voice 'like a silver clarion rung.' Excelsior was outdone. Everybody turned and looked at ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... colour; and its noisy, squat engine like the real ones in the toy-stores, that wind up with a key and go rushing off frantically in tangents. No wonder the train to my lost village is called "Le petit deraillard"—"The little get-off-the-track." And so I say, it might all have come packed in excelsior in a neat box, complete, with instructions, for the sum of four francs sixty-five centimes, had it not been otherwise destined to run twice daily, rain or shine, to Pont ...
— A Village of Vagabonds • F. Berkeley Smith
... Excelsior (N. Y.) Brigade, wounded in the Fighting Joe Hooker division, could not accept a commission in the army, but wished to be put upon the staff of the volunteers, as he could not walk. He was upheld in his desire by Adjutant-general Hamlin, who accompanied him to the ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... the original settler in this part of the country; I know the history of these thirty-six square miles of land and also of the wonderful swarming of peoples which made the prairies over; and the agent of the Excelsior County History Company of Chicago, having heard of me as an authority on local history, has asked me to write this part of their new History of Monterey County for which they are now canvassing for subscribers. I can never write this as it ought to be ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick
... when the little Wisconsin town lay broiling in the August sun, or locked in the January drifts, and the main business street was as silent as that of a deserted village. But more often she came forward to you from the rear of the store, with bits of excelsior clinging to her black sateen apron. You knew that she had been helping Aloysius as he unpacked a consignment of chamber sets or a hogshead of china or glassware, chalking each piece with the price mark as it was dug from its nest of ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... of Spirit's Self-recognition. But the Creative Process cannot stop here, for, as we have seen, its root in the Self-contemplation of Spirit renders it of necessity an Infinite Progression. So it is no use asking what is its ultimate, for it has no ultimate—its word is "Excelsior"—ever Life and "Life more Abundant." Therefore the question is not as to finality where there is none, but as to the next step in the progression. Four kingdoms we know: what is to be the Fifth? All along ...
— The Creative Process in the Individual • Thomas Troward
... terms, and settle the thing at once. I presume Grace is anxious as I am to begin her career, now that it looms up before her. I am in the mood of the youth who bore through snow and ice the banner with the strange device, 'Excelsior.'" ...
— Holiday Stories for Young People • Various
... me of his marriage, I had not heard from him. It was, therefore, with some surprise, a good deal of reminiscent affection, and a slight twinge of reproach that, two years after, I looked up from some proofs, in the sanctum of the "Daily Excelsior," to recognize his handwriting on a note that was handed to me by ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... supersaturated with mineral. It might be three feet high; it might be thirty. There was the jet of water ejected by subterranean forces. It might be half an inch in diameter; it might be three hundred feet, as in the case of the Excelsior geyser. It might rise six inches; it might rise two hundred and fifty feet. There was the interval between the jets. It might be two seconds; it might be weeks ...
— Among the Forces • Henry White Warren
... from the house to be renovated, and had asked the nurse all sorts of questions about it. We concluded it would be a fine thing to renovate the mattress of one of our doll-beds. So we ripped one end open and pulled out all the cotton and excelsior it was stuffed with, and burned it in the nursery grate. Then we began to look around the house for something ...
— The Little Colonel's House Party • Annie Fellows Johnston
... tanks have been found by the divers, all in crushed and shapeless masses. It is important to note that in the six-inch and ten-inch tanks recovered the excelsior used for packing the charges shows no injury from flame ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 2, No. 10, March 10, 1898 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... invitation reached her, Thea climbed the stairs and knocked at the familiar door. Mrs. Harsanyi herself opened it, and embraced her visitor warmly. Taking Thea into the studio, which was littered with excelsior and packing-cases, she stood holding her hand and looking at her in the strong light from the big window before she allowed her to sit down. Her quick eye saw many changes. The girl was taller, her figure had become definite, her carriage positive. She had got ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... followed the Yellowstone to the lake and crossed over to the Firehole, which he followed up as far as the Excelsior geyser (not then named), but did not visit the Upper Geyser basin. On his return to Helena he related to a few of his intimate friends many of the incidents of his journey, and Mr. Samuel T. Hauser and I invited him to meet a number of the citizens of Helena ...
— The Discovery of Yellowstone Park • Nathaniel Pitt Langford
... Romanticism was awakening in the reading public an interest in the affairs of real life,* began to appear what may be called "the men with aspirations," a little band of generous enthusiasts, strongly resembling the youth in Longfellow's poem who carries a banner with the device "Excelsior," and strives ever to climb higher, without having any clear notion of where he was going or of what he is to do when he reaches the summit. At first they had little more than a sentimental enthusiasm for the true, the beautiful, and the good, and a certain Platonic love for free institutions, ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... appear in plays and pictures seated at the foot of a high, rocky cliff in some lonely spot, with bales and casks and strange looking bundles about. No one would be heartless enough to ask what was inside the bundles, but I have always had a strong suspicion that it was excelsior." ...
— Grace Harlowe's Senior Year at High School - or The Parting of the Ways • Jessie Graham Flower
... Massachusetts Historical Society is a prospectus used by Longfellow in canvassing, on one of the blank leaves of which are the skeleton stanzas of "Excelsior," which he was evidently evolving as he ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... Excelsior for March is in many respects the most notable of the season's amateur magazines edited by our brilliant Laureate Recorder, Miss Verna McGeoch, it contains a surprisingly ample and impressive collection of prose and verse by our best ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... library besides the family books which ran into the hundreds. She loved to see the crates and barrels swallow up dishes and crockery like hungry monsters with wide-open jaws. She found even the wrapping of chair legs with excelsior, and the crating of bureau ...
— Chicken Little Jane • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... the points of discharge, as on this depends effectivity to tear down the gravel. It is delivered to the miner by huge pipes made of wrought iron, and laid down to follow the curvatures of the surface of the ground; and the pipe I now treat of, belonging to the Excelsior Water Company, has a diameter of 40 inches on a length of 6,000 feet, and 20 inches on the rest of its length of 8,000 feet, being 9,000 feet in all; and this large pipe forms an inverted siphon across a valley, following on the gravel, to the top ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 455, September 20, 1884 • Various
... have felt or thought she said nothing, and Nigel, taking silence for consent, bore her swiftly onward and upward,—with an "Excelsior" spirit that would have thrown the Alpine youth with the banner and the strange device considerably into the shade,—until he placed her at the yawning black mouth of ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... studio was to be returned to its original omnibus status. Mrs. Corriani, priestess of family emergencies, had been summoned from the depths; the Sparrow had donned an apron, Mary a smock; Lily, the colored maid, was packing china into a barrel, surrounded by writhing seas of excelsior. For Stefan, the flat might as well have been given over to the Furies. ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... will be too late then. Don't you know that song of 'Excelsior,' Mr. Newton? You ought to learn to ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... Blank Building annex a pile of excelsior and bagging and other refuse packing materials protruded into the shaft where once had been the Hawkins Hydro-Vapor Lift. That fact, I suppose, saved ...
— Mr. Hawkins' Humorous Adventures • Edgar Franklin
... insulating material a variety of substances may be used. Asbestos and mineral wool are the best, and have the additional advantage that they cannot burn. Ground cork (used in packing Malaga grapes), hay, excelsior, Spanish moss, wool, and crumpled paper may also be used satisfactorily. Of these materials crumpled paper is probably the best, as it is clean and odourless and, if properly packed, will hold the heat better than the others. It is wise to line the box with one thickness of heavy paper or ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Household Science in Rural Schools • Ministry of Education Ontario
... look at it. She bought one of the sort that goes on shooting as long as one holds a finger on the trigger—a snub-nosed thing that looked as deadly as it was. She was in terror of it from the moment she got it home, and during most of the trip it was packed in excelsior, with the barrel stuffed with cotton, ...
— More Tish • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... am surprised—I should have thought—the fact is, when Raglan was at school, he had to learn 'Excelsior,' and I happened to glance over it. I was slightly acquainted with the piece, but I had quite forgotten that it contained what seems to me very gross indelicacy—very gross indeed. Do you remember a verse beginning ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing
... upward. We sing "Excelsior" in our hearts, and forget our aching limbs, for the most laborious portion of the night's toil is before us. The almost perpendicular ladder is just beside the powerful pump, which, worked by a steam-engine, exhausts the water from the ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... because it would draw the calls of two or three old New York families who had hitherto stood upon their dignity, and refused to acknowledge the shoddy aristocracy. The beautiful Mrs. John Seymour, therefore, was no less useful than ornamental, and advanced Mrs. Follingsbee's purposes in her "Excelsior" movements. ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... ascended, the more we obtained of a brisk breeze playing and sighing musically among the noble pines, and the ground was clothed with heather and fragrant herbs. Still onwards, "excelsior," the pines were more straight and lofty; there were patches of wild myrtle on the ground, some in white blossom; and we looked down upon the flat roofs of villages below, an appearance so strange to us after the round domes of ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn
... he said, and Clara's face betokening an extremer contrition than he thought was demanded, the colonel rallied the Alpine climber for striving to be the tallest of them—Signor Excelsior!—and described these conquerors of mountains pancaked on the rocks in desperate embraces, bleached here, burned there, barked all over, all to be able to say they had been up "so high"—had conquered another ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... understand all about that—you know? As it is I want to show you that I'm grateful, and my experienced eye informs me that you arrived in a box car. An empty furniture car, I should say, judging by that scrap of excelsior in your back hair, although the car might have been ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... the most precious of all. The two pulpits of colored marbles and the celebrated screen with its carven figures are now hidden beneath pyramids of sand-bags. The spiral columns of translucent alabaster which support the altar, are padded with excelsior and wrapped with canvas. Swinging curtains of quilted burlap protect the walls of the chapels and transepts from flying shell fragments. Yet all these precautions would probably avail but little were a bomb to strike St. Mark's. In the destruction that would almost certainly ...
— Italy at War and the Allies in the West • E. Alexander Powell
... Walnut Abominate Piazza Holiday Barbarous Disgust Heavy Kind Virtu Nightmare Devil Gospel Comfort Whist Mermaid Pearl Onion Enthusiasm Domino Book Fanatic Grotesque Cheat Auction Economy Illegible Quell Cheap Illegitimate Sheriff Excelsior Emasculate Danger Dunce Champion Shibboleth Calico Adieu Essay Pontiff Macadamize Wages Copy Stentorian Quarantine Puny Saturnine Buxom Caper Derrick Indifferent Boycott Mercurial Gaudy ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... new things. I always try and keep up with the new things of every kind. Don't you think that's a good motto for a young couple—to keep 'going higher'? That's the name of that piece of poetry—what do they call it?— Excelsior!" ...
— Washington Square • Henry James
... recovered and crept back into the hammock, but out I went when I reached page 16, and repeated the performance at pages 19, 21, and 24 until the supplementary excitement became monotonous. Whereupon I procured some rags and excelsior, made a bed underneath the hammock, and proceeded to enjoy our eminent ...
— In The Amazon Jungle - Adventures In Remote Parts Of The Upper Amazon River, Including A - Sojourn Among Cannibal Indians • Algot Lange
... viewed the interior of the badly charred storeroom, declared, "Looks to me like matches and mice!" This seemed to be the concensus of opinion among the fellows as to the origin of the fire. The room had been filled with spare pieces of furniture, some of which were packed in excelsior. There was also a great quantity of extra bedding in the room. This accounted for the dense smoke which almost proved fatal to ...
— Over the Line • Harold M. Sherman
... haven't cold storage, such as Evansville affords, and have an ice house you can use that. It is very important to pack the scions in excelsior and sawdust and be sure there is very slight moisture, and to paper line your boxes. Colonel Sober keeps chestnut scions by standing them on end in cans. He fills in with a thin layer of sawdust, punches holes for them to breathe, puts a lid on and sets them ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Fifth Annual Meeting - Evansville, Indiana, August 20 and 21, 1914 • Various
... unpacking of the complacent Mr. Crabtree's gift, which he bore over from the store in his own arms. With dramatic effect he placed it on the floor at Miss Lavinia's feet and called for a hatchet for its opening. And as from their wrappings of paper and excelsior he drew two large gilt and glass bottles, one containing bay rum and the other camphor, that precious lotion for fast stiffening joints, little Miss Amanda heaved a sigh of positive rapture. Mr. Crabtree was small and wiry, with a hickory-nut countenance and a luscious peach of a heart, ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess
... had brought down, was a beautiful structure, made, I think, of very fine excelsior of a bright straw-color. It was suspended in an upright fork of four twigs, and lashed securely to three of them, while a few lines were passed around the fourth. Though it was in a fork, it did not rest on it, but was suspended three inches ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller
... by exerting himself to the utmost to entertain the children as far as decorum allowed. He encouraged them to sing, he who felt every ugliness in sound like a blow; he urged them to recite for prizes of sixpences, he on whose soul Casabianca and Excelsior had much the effect of scourges on a tender skin; he led them out into a field between tea and supper and made them run races, himself setting the example, he who caught cold so easily that he knew it probably meant a week in bed. Robin helped too, but his exertions were confined ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... At Cambridge he was a friend of Hawthorne, Holmes, Emerson, Lowell, and Alcott. His best-known long poems are "Evangeline," "Hiawatha," "The Building of the Ship," and "The Courtship of Miles Standish." He made a fine translation of Dante's "Divine Comedy." Among his many short poems, "Excelsior," "The Psalm of Life," "The Wreck of the Hesperus," "The Village Blacksmith," and "Paul Revere's Ride" are continuously popular. He died in 1882. He was the first American writer who was honored by a memorial in ...
— Graded Poetry: Seventh Year - Edited by Katherine D. Blake and Georgia Alexander • Various
... o'clock our Company might have been seen (had there been a better light to see it by) progressing smartly in column of platoons. The shades of night were falling fast as over Regent's Park we passed, and my platoon was marching last, excelsior. As my platoon came opposite our Commanding Officer he gave the order, "About turn." We did so. "Form fours, left"—we made it that. The night fell thicker; I can now speak only for myself and my immediate neighbours. "Right incline"—we inclined rightly. Another "Right incline" and a "Halt," and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, October 28, 1914 • Various
... I forgot the Excelsior pears," said Seaforth. "They're as big as your two fists, and Harry's quite proud ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss
... from Boston, but I know Reff once sent him a letter addressed to Springfield, care of the Excelsior Hotel." ...
— The Mystery at Putnam Hall - The School Chums' Strange Discovery • Arthur M. Winfield
... about myself,' he said. 'Am I sure I can get work in Chicago? I am, worse luck. Darling, have you in your more material moments ever toyed with a Boyd's Premier Breakfast-Sausage or kept body and soul together with a slice off a Boyd's Excelsior Home-Cured Ham? My father makes them, and the tragedy of my life is that he wants me to help him at it. This was my position. I loathed the family business as much as dad loved it. I had a notion—a ...
— The Man with Two Left Feet - and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... were stuffed with hay. Thomas Cathcart Blake grinned and said that, as for taking the yacht out to sea, he was afraid of getting it wet; and he wouldn't want to bet as to what the sail covers were stuffed with because it might be excelsior, or cotton, or any one of a ...
— A Fool There Was • Porter Emerson Browne
... fathers of it! As such he has made himself the apologist of a gigantic and rampant beast on whose horns of hazard the values produced by the labor of seventy millions of Americans are tossed about as if the wreckage were so much waste excelsior thrown on the horns of a bull! Mr. Clews tells us that in 1792 twenty-seven gentlemen met under a buttonwood tree and formed the association known as Wall Street. The purpose of the association was "the purchase and sale ...
— The Arena - Volume 18, No. 92, July, 1897 • Various
... yield to each new disappointment; but, by dint of courage and perseverance, overcame every obstacle, and at last obtained success. I remembered, too, that this boy had adopted for his motto, the Latin word "Excelsior," which was explained to mean ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid
... but in a larger degree wooded, and here and there diversified by the well-cared-for gardens of some large villa. Our outlook, it will be admitted, is pleasant enough. The house I am speaking of, now known under the style and title of the "Excelsior Hotel," was recently a magnificent villa of the Morosini family at Venice. The name will not be new to any who have visited Venice; for the traveler, even if his tastes did not lead him to take any heed of such matters, will not have been allowed by the ciceroni ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... lid with green burlap, allowing the edges to lap over the ends and sides and fasten under the side strips. This top can be stuffed with excelsior, if desired, and tacks with large heads driven in to hold it in place. The slats can be stained any color to suit the maker. They should be removed from the box when being stained so as not to ...
— Mission Furniture - How to Make It, Part 3 • H. H. Windsor
... the coat closet and presently emerged with a prier. Cleigh literally snatched it from the astonished butler's grasp, pried and tore off a board. He dug away at the excelsior until he felt the cool glass under his fingers. ...
— The Pagan Madonna • Harold MacGrath
... are able to give it in our magazine, is not large enough to show all the points of interest about this cake. It represents, of course, a Chinese pagoda, but with the idols omitted. Possibly there is in it a little symbolism of ascent—the excelsior spirit which comes from new life in Christ. Beginning at the shell foundation, we see two cards which bear in Chinese an inscription literally translated thus: "Eyes see; hands must not touch." Above this were the more abrupt or pointed English words: "Hands off." Over the door ...
— The American Missionary - Volume 50, No. 6, June 1896 • Various
... coming into view, having been detained round the corner by his curiosity concerning a set of Louis XVI. furniture which some house-movers were unpacking upon the sidewalk. A curl of excelsior, in fact, had attached itself to his nether lip, and he was pausing to remove it—when his roving eye fell upon Flopit. Clematis immediately decided to let the excelsior remain where it was, lest he ...
— Seventeen - A Tale Of Youth And Summer Time And The Baxter Family Especially William • Booth Tarkington
... after soiling the bed give no further care to it until the bed is bearing, others cover the beds with some litter, in the form of straw or excelsior. This is done for the purpose of conserving the moisture in the bed, and especially the moisture on the surface of the bed. Sometimes where there is a tendency for the material in the bed to become too dry, this litter on the surface retards the loss of moisture. Also, the litter itself may be moistened ...
— Studies of American Fungi. Mushrooms, Edible, Poisonous, etc. • George Francis Atkinson
... is now at Syracuse. He has been tramping the roads. Have had two of my operators enter his room at the Excelsior Lodging House and search, his effects, while he was taking a bath. Can find nothing to give me any legal means of proceeding against him. He has some ready money, so a vagrancy-charge will not hold. If you wish me to resort to extreme measures ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... to her mother. "Everything in it is already cooked because she is almost blind and cooking is harder for her than it is for most people. There is a roast chicken and the vegetables are all done and put in covered bowls packed around with excelsior so that ...
— Ethel Morton's Holidays • Mabell S. C. Smith
... her Cousin Jane whirling past. She tried to imagine her mother dancing with young men at the Hotel Excelsior and she could not. Already she wondered if she had ...
— The Innocent Adventuress • Mary Hastings Bradley
... the cutting of hundreds of acres of New England's best birch woods. Butter dishes, fruit crates, baskets, wooden boxes of all kinds, tools and handles, kitchen utensils, toys and sporting goods, picture molding and frames, grille and fretwork, excelsior, clothes-pins, matches, tooth-picks,—all these are mowing down our forests by the thousands ...
— Checking the Waste - A Study in Conservation • Mary Huston Gregory
... be secured?— Stephen, your life is not insured. But tie a rope your waist around, And it will hold you safe and sound." "I will," said he. "Now for the roof— All snugly tied, and danger-proof! Excelsior! Excel—But no! The rope is not secured below!" Said Rachel, "Climb, the end to throw Across the top, and I will go And tie that end around my waist." "Well, every woman to her taste; You always would be tightly ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For • Various
... house we find a tiny pair making their plans to occupy it and to take up housekeeping. Sometimes this will happen the same day the bird house is set up. Always provide some nesting material near at hand; linen or cotton thread, ravellings, tow, hair and excelsior are all good. Of course we must not attempt to build the nest. No one is ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... earthenware mug and soap-dish, the latter containing a thin bit of red translucent soap scented with sassafras; an ordinary wooden chair and a rocking-chair with rockers of divergent aims; a yellow wooden bedstead furnished with a mattress of "excelsior" (calculated to induce early rising), a dingy white spread, a gray blanket of coarse wool, a pair of cotton sheets which had too obviously done duty since passing through the hands of the laundress, and a pair of flabby ...
— David Harum - A Story of American Life • Edward Noyes Westcott
... forbidden thing, I felt as if I wanted to pursue an inspiring, if purposeless, journey up uncomfortable Alpine heights, with my Excelsior-banner in my hand, and a tear in my solitary bright blue eye; now, the maiden's invitation seems to be the only part of the enterprise that has any pith in it. Then, I gloried in the fiendish adage of, 'Two hours' sleep for a man, three for a woman, and four for a fool'; now, my ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... We may have to sleep on excelsior for a while yet, but we shall soon stop eating it. And the first thing we do with the coin will be to give old Warren heart-disease by going down in a body and paying up all our back rent. I'm figuring on pulling out about two thousand for ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... us came together from Rhode Island and settled on Minnewashta Lake in '54. There was only a carpenter shop in Excelsior. We spent the first few months of our stay all living together in one log shack which was already there. The first night the man who had driven us from St. Paul sat up all night with his horses and we none of us slept a ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various
... a whole mowful o' hay sence October and eleven ton o' brand. Hay don't seem to have the goodness to it thet it hed last year, and with their new pro-cess griss mills they jerk all the juice out o' brand, so's you might as well feed cows with excelsior and upholster your horses with hemlock bark as to ...
— Nye and Riley's Wit and Humor (Poems and Yarns) • Bill Nye
... the nervous young woman in 'Excelsior,'" David Linton said, with a laugh. "Cheer up, my girl—there's no need to worry about Monarch and me. He's only playful; hasn't an atom of vice, and I know him very well by now. I never put my leg over a ...
— Mates at Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... will not bend. Such boards or other substance are called splints. They act as artificial bones. All splints should be well padded with some soft material like raw cotton waste, grass (be sure the grass contains no biting insects), leaves, hay or excelsior, to prevent pressure of the soft flesh on the ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss
... the Great Fountain; it will make good its name should you throw into it a handful of dirt. Excelsior Geyser, not far away, is really a winter volcano, its crater being a seething caldron near the Firehole River, into which it sends six million gallons of water each day, ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson
... she cried "even if there's nothing in it but stove-polish and excelsior, the nails and the ...
— The Master-Knot of Human Fate • Ellis Meredith
... done up in a big black coffin covered with flowers; and the lid with his name, age and wonderful accomplishment engraved upon a plate stood beside him. The remains of Mighty Mardo, stuffed with baled hay and excelsior, were embracing the dead Admiral with monster coils; and the crowds came, gazed, and marveled; then they went forth to tell their friends that they might ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VI. (of X.) • Various
... the poor thief ask, that Dixmas of whom the church has made a saint for that one appeal: 'Remember me, Lord, in Thy kingdom!' But we have arrived. Stoop, that you may not spoil your hat. Now, what do you want with me? You know the motto of the Montfanons: 'Excelsior et firmior'—Always higher and always firmer.... One can never do too many good deeds. If it be possible, 'present', as we said ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget
... motionless shadows at the wheel was engaged in scrubbing the quarter-deck—which, with its grated settees and stacked camp-chairs, seemed to indicate the presence of cabin passengers. For the barque Excelsior, from New York to San Francisco, had discharged the bulk of her cargo at Callao, and had extended her liberal cabin accommodation to swell the feverish Californian immigration, ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... tenacious clay; and that on a foundation of rocks, which often break through both strata, lifting their backs above the surface. The trees which chiefly grow here are the gigantic, black oak; magnolia grandi-flora; fraximus excelsior; platane; and a few stately tulip trees." What Mr. Wordsworth will produce, it is not for me to prophesy but I could pronounce with the liveliest convictions what he is capable of producing. It is the ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... through among the bulbs. This prevents the frost from entering. As an additional safeguard, the bulbs may be put into strong sacks, with some one of the materials before mentioned among them, the sacks packed into the box or barrel, and all crevices among them filled with straw, excelsior or paper. This mode of packing is especially suitable when several varieties ...
— The Gladiolus - A Practical Treatise on the Culture of the Gladiolus (2nd Edition) • Matthew Crawford
... closed in the ecstasy of art, brought the "verse" part of his selection to an excruciating conclusion, half a tone below pitch. Before the chorus there was a brief pause for effect. In this pause, from Mr. Linder's open face a voice fell like a falling star. Although it did not cry "Excelsior," its output of vocables might have been mistaken, by a casual ear, for that clarion call. What the Honorable Mr. Linder actually ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... but faster still A youth came down the darkening hill, A super-youth, whose super-flag Flaunted the strange but hackneyed brag, "Excelsior!" ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 25, 1917 • Various
... exclaimed. "De mahogany present will jest fit." Eradicate took some excelsior to pad the box, and then, dropping inside it the gift, already wrapped in tissue paper, he proceeded ...
— Tom Swift and his Big Tunnel - or, The Hidden City of the Andes • Victor Appleton
... the air and proved it good by dropping in blazing excelsior saturated with turpentine, a stout oak stick was attached to the end of the rope, my son sprang astride and was lowered to the bottom, just one hundred feet. He reported back 'All right.' On the return of the rope I took ...
— Cave Regions of the Ozarks and Black Hills • Luella Agnes Owen |
