"Lap" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... her forehead lightly upon the tips of her fingers; the periodical slipped from her lap and lay ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... her side. While he speaks she sits erect in the chair, her hands folded in her lap, her head raised. A bright smile plays on her half-open lips. It is as if she were listening to a beautiful tale]. Are you waiting for me to say just the words: I love you! Weren't there moments when I made a greater confession, when one sigh, one ...
— Hadda Padda • Godmunder Kamban
... dining-table, and at the other end were mother's white board and rolling-pin, the pudding-cloth wrung into a twist out of the scald, and waiting upon a plate, and a pitcher of cold water with ice tinkling against its sides. Mother sat with the deal bowl in her lap, turning and mincing with the few last strokes the light, delicate dust of the pastry. The sunshine—work and sunshine always go so blessedly together—poured in, and filled the room up ...
— We Girls: A Home Story • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... in fact, seemed to be somewhat singularly employed. Through a dense cloud of tobacco-smoke you could just pick him out of the depths of an armchair, his feet resting on the mantelpiece, while his lap and all the floor round about were covered with immense books. The Baron's curiosity was still further excited by observing that they consisted principally of a London and a St Egbert's directory, several volumes of a Dictionary of National Biography, ...
— The Lunatic at Large • J. Storer Clouston
... moon-light garden. Seeing a curly-headed child asleep in the sunshine before a cottage door is sufficient excuse for a discourse on childhood; quite as good as if I had seen infant Cain asleep in the lap of Eve with Adam looking on. A lark cannot rise to heaven without raising as many thoughts as there are notes in its song. Dawn cannot pour its white light on my village without starting from their dim lair a hundred reminiscences; nor can sunset burn ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... as if he devoured it, which was to all appearance his method of studying. 'He knows how to read better than any one (said Mrs. Knowles;) he gets at the substance of a book directly; he tears out the heart of it.' He kept it wrapt up in the tablecloth in his lap during the time of dinner, from an avidity to have one entertainment in readiness when he should have finished another; resembling (if I may use so coarse a simile) a dog who holds a bone in his paws in reserve, while he eats something else which ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... couple of minutes. And then, all of a sudden, a live fish come a-whirling out of that hole, which he had ketched it with his hands. It was a big bullhead, and its whiskers around its mouth was stiffened into spikes, and it lands kerplump into Mis' Rogers's lap, a-wiggling, and it kind o' horns her on the hands, and she is that surprised she faints. Mis' Primrose, she gets up and pushes that fish back into the cistern with her foot from the floor where it had fell, ...
— Danny's Own Story • Don Marquis
... the mark, going sometimes on one side of the needle, sometimes on the other, sometimes doubling up against the shaft; but he was patient, having been through these experiences before, when he was soldiering. He succeeded at last, and took up the garment that had lain waiting, meantime, across his lap, and began ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... and is even deepened (subsequent verses), and yet is different. A light of hope is in it. The very sense of sin brings us to Him, to hide our faces on His heart like a child in its mother's lap. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... name Jenny. It was taken sick, and the little girl nursed it with care, but it at last died in her lap. ...
— The Pearl Box - Containing One Hundred Beautiful Stories for Young People • "A Pastor"
... the squaw arose, dashed the long hair not only from her eyes but from her head, tore away her shawl and blanket, and revealed the square shoulders of Lance Harriott! Flip remained leaning against the door; but the young man in rising dropped the bandaged papoose, which rolled from his lap into the fire. Flip, with a cry, sprang toward it; but Lance caught her by the waist with one arm, as with the other he dragged the ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... have. That is the best and finest thing about me. * * * When a dear little thing stands up in one's lap, a darling little creature like a doll, and looks at one with its little peepers, that, I tell you, is something that opens up one's heart. ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... strewn with scraps of gauze and cotton and bits of paper, and had so many queer odds and ends stuck all about it, that it looked like a bird's-nest. She was radiant with imaginary jewels; wore a rich pair of undoubted gold spectacles; and gracefully dropped upon her lap, as we approached, a very old greasy newspaper, in which I dare say she had been reading an account of her own presentation ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... "Dandled in the lap of luxury, he does not hesitate to descend from it to espouse the immortal cause ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... the gift of the Almighty Father was poured out from the cornucopia of heaven, into the lap of paradise. But it was a paradise of fools, because they stained it with disobedience and polluted it with sin. It was the paradise of fools because, in the exercise of their own God-given free agency, they tasted the forbidden fruit and fell from their glorious estate. Oh, what a fall was ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor
... of a sudden he noticed at the end of the table Celeste's child on a woman's lap, and his eye remained fixed on the little boy. He went on eating, with his glance riveted on the youngster, into whose mouth the woman who minded him every now and then put a little stuffing which he nibbled ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... a little chap As like him as he's now like me, Shall climb into his mother's lap, For comfort and for sympathy, And he shall know what now I know, And see through eyes a trifle dim, The mother of the long ago Who daily ...
— All That Matters • Edgar A. Guest
... worlds the Macedonian cried, He wist not Thetis in her lap did hide Another yet; a world reserved for you, To make more great than that ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... lap of this ring of mountains and watched over by the mighty Xaca, clad in its robe of snow, its cap of smoke, and its crown of fire, lies, or rather lay the City of Pines, for now it is a ruin, or so I left it. As to the city itself, ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... I remember how I was sent for to talk with Queen Victoria in her age, and how much I dreaded being led up to her by a majestic lord-in-waiting; she sate there, a little quiet lady, so plainly dressed, so simple, with her hands crossed on her lap, her sanguine complexion, her silvery hair, yet so crowned with dim history and tradition, so great as to be beyond all pomp or ceremony, yet wearing the awe and majesty of race and fame as she wore her plain dress. She gave me a little nod ...
— Joyous Gard • Arthur Christopher Benson
... enjoy a walk by herself without losing her reputation, who can ride down the street on her "bike" without being hooted at, who can play a mixed double at tennis without being compelled by public opinion to marry her partner, who can, in short, lead a human creature's life, and not that of a lap-dog led about at the end of a string, might pause to think what she owes to the "unsexed creatures" who fought her battle for ...
— The Angel and the Author - and Others • Jerome K. Jerome
... under the staircase, and, as the murderers with their ghastly burden passed by, the hand of the murdered lady hung in the baluster of the stairs, which, on Baker chopping it off with an oath, fell into the lap of one of the concealed ladies. They quickly made their escape with the dead hand, on one of the fingers of which was a ring. Reaching home, they told the story, and in proof of it displayed the ring. Families in the neighbourhood who had lost friends or relatives mysteriously were told ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer
... pillow pressed in at her back for a support, sat a pale, emaciated woman, whose large, bright eyes looked up eagerly, and in a kind of hopeful surprise, at so unexpected a visitor as the lady who came in with the doctor. On her lap a baby was sleeping, as sweet, and pure, and beautiful a baby as ever Mrs. Carleton had looked upon. The first impulse of her true woman's heart, had she yielded to it, would have prompted her to take it in her arms ...
— After a Shadow, and Other Stories • T. S. Arthur
... dignified character than the similar warning given by the parrot, at p. 68. Each of these worthies, Baker and Fox, is seen bringing into his house the corpse of a murdered lady, whose hand falls into the lap of the concealed visitor; but in Fox's story the ornament on the hand is a rich bracelet, in Baker's a ring. The assassins are, in both stories, invited to the visitor's house, and upon Fox ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 43, Saturday, August 24, 1850 • Various
... frost, her eyes vibrant with the lure which is the greatest of all lures and which may be seen nowhere save in woman's eyes. Her sled-dogs clustered about her in hirsute masses, and the leader, Wolf Fang, laid his long snout softly in her lap. ...
— The God of His Fathers • Jack London
... rode over to where Fannie sat, leaned over from his saddle and drew her up into his lap. There she sat in royal contentment, and was thus grandly escorted home. When Mrs. Letcher inquired of Jennie why she had given General Lee so much trouble, ...
— Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee • Captain Robert E. Lee, His Son
... room. A shadow blurred the sunlight in Nancy's face —there was uneasiness in it, and disappointment. A procession of disturbing thoughts began to troop through her mind. Saying nothing aloud, she sat with her hands in her lap; now and then she clasped them, then unclasped them, then tapped the ends of the fingers together; sighed, nodded, smiled—occasionally paused, shook her head. This pantomime was the elocutionary expression of an unspoken soliloquy which ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... mother, or, at least, with the person whom he called by that name. He did not understand what they were talking about, but he was none the less very uneasy. The result of the interview must have justified his instinctive fear, for his mother took him on her lap, and embraced him with convulsive tenderness. She sobbed violently, and repeated again and again in a faltering voice: "Poor child! my beloved Wilkie! I shall never kiss you again—never, never! 'Alas! It must be so! Give ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... that day roaming over the house. He nearly drowned himself in the bath-tubs, put his nose into the ink on a writing table, and burned it on the end of the big man's cigar, for he climbed up in the big man's lap to see how writing was done. At nightfall he ran into Teddy's nursery to watch how kerosene lamps were lighted, and when Teddy went to bed Rikki-tikki climbed up too. But he was a restless companion, because he had to get up and attend to ...
— The Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling
... Cogez, a good man, but somewhat stern, came on a pretty group in the long meadow behind the mill, where the aftermath had that day been cut. It was his little daughter sitting amidst the hay, with the great tawny head of Patrasche on her lap, and many wreaths of poppies and blue corn-flowers round them both: on a clean smooth slab of pine wood the boy Nello drew their likeness ...
— A Dog of Flanders • Louisa de la Rame)
... inhabitant of earth might be transported to the surface of Mars, and be no more surprised at what he observed there than if he went to some point of the earth to him unknown. Day and night would be nearly of the same length; winter would linger longer in the lap of spring; summer would be one hundred and eighty-one days long; but as the seas are more intermingled with the land, and the divisions of land have less of continental magnitude, it may be conjectured that Mars might be a comfortable place of residence to beings like men. Perhaps the greatest ...
— Recreations in Astronomy - With Directions for Practical Experiments and Telescopic Work • Henry Warren
... up the River of Life on the opposite side from Man, but they are only one lap behind him. Let us not deceive ourselves about that. Remember that truth is inexorable in ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... state,—this civilised being,—with most of his civilisation around him, in the seat of an elevated railway train, with a crowded newspaper before his eyes, and another crowded newspaper in his lap, and crowds of people reading crowded newspapers standing round him in the aisles; but he can never be said to be seen at his best, in a spectacle like this, until the spectacle moves, until it is felt ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee
... with her lap full of flowers. Like an unhappy child," thought he remorsefully. "I must tell her the truth; ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... at home was something new to Scotty. A gloomy silence pervaded the place, and there was a look in Granny's eyes that made the boy want to put his head into her lap and cry. There were no prayers before they retired, either; there always came a stage in Big Malcolm's repentence which consisted almost entirely of religious exercises, ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith
... had arrived: the battle-field was reached at last. Sir Robert Perry sat and smiled; Puttock played with the hair chain that wandered across his broad waistcoat; Coxon restlessly bit his nails; Norburn's face was pale with excitement, and he twisted his hands in his lap; the determined partisans cheered or groaned; the waverers looked important and felt unhappy; all eyes were steadily fixed on the Premier, and all ears intent on ...
— Half a Hero - A Novel • Anthony Hope
... grip of friendly hands, so you also exchange salutations with Nature, as if she, too, were an old Heligoland friend. You know the view from this point and from that; but, like the converse of a friend, it is always changing, for there is no monotony in the sea. The waves lap the shore gently, or roar tumultuously in the red caverns, and it is all familiar, but none the less welcome and soothing because of that familiarity. It is not a land of lotus-eating delights, ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume V (of X) • Various
... and her companion came to the hut where the old woman lived. They went in, and the hag bade Blanche gather some sticks of wood and build a fire. Meanwhile she sat down beside the hearth and took off her head. She put it in her lap and began to comb her hair and ...
— Tales of Folk and Fairies • Katharine Pyle
... were soon ready, and Tommie took his favorite position on the broad window-sill with the bowl in his lap. ...
— Cinderella; or, The Little Glass Slipper and Other Stories • Anonymous
... hangs it; Already March bath vanish'd, And new-born flow'rs are shooting. I draw nigh to the tree then, And there I say: Oh Orange, Thou ripe and juicy Orange, Thou sweet and luscious Orange, I shake the tree, I shake it, Oh fall into my lap! ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... Ealing West. The place was full of them. Would a sane woman have made an assertion to the contrary? He thought not, and he was glad that he had the revolver with him. She had done nothing as yet actively violent, but it was nice to feel prepared. He took it out and laid it nonchalantly in his lap. ...
— Three Men and a Maid • P. G. Wodehouse
... their different roles at the ——- Hotel with such precision and success put off their masks and dared to be themselves. The ocean wrought the change, for it took old and young into its arms, and for a little while they played like children in their mother's lap. No falsehood could withstand its rough sincerity; for the waves washed paint and powder from worn faces, and left a fresh bloom there. No ailment could entirely resist its vigorous cure; for every wind brought healing on its wings, endowing many a meagre life with another ...
— A Modern Cinderella - or The Little Old Show and Other Stories • Louisa May Alcott
... affected—even Laura—but hers was an affection of the stomach. The country-bred girl had not suspected that the little whining ten-ounce black and tan reptile, clad in a red embroidered pigmy blanket and reposing in Mrs. Oreille's lap all through the visit was the individual whose sufferings had been stirring the dormant generosities of her nature. ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... laid upon their oars, and as the boat went surging along with the "way" that she had on her, we all distinctly heard, above the quiet lap and gurgle of the water against her planking, the sounds of which I have spoken, with an occasional swelling of the sound which conveyed the idea of many human voices raised in a monotonous ...
— A Middy in Command - A Tale of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... she demanded a right. As she spoke, her thumb and forefinger meeting on a spray, they closed and went through it like a pair of shears; and a bunch of the white pearls of the forest dropped on the ridge of her shoulder and were broken apart and rolled across her breast into her lap. ...
— Bride of the Mistletoe • James Lane Allen
... months since life had been so sweet to her! As she felt this she was not thinking of those short days of excited, feverish bliss in which she had believed that all the good things of the world were to be showered into her lap; but of previous years in which everything had been with her as it was now,—with the one exception that she had not then been deceived. She had been full of smiles, and humour, and mirth, absolutely happy among her friends, though conscious of the necessity of earning her bread by the exercise ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... "She sits so, with her hands in her lap, looking over the valley. And she has grown, oh, so much thinner and sadder-looking. I thought you would ...
— Peter's Mother • Mrs. Henry De La Pasture
... slightly. She had been sitting with hands folded quietly in her lap, thinking, possibly, of the absent ones of her family, gone to be with Ouiot in the everlasting home. Turning to her granddaughter, she answered, ...
— Old Mission Stories of California • Charles Franklin Carter
... laid the foundation of manufactures, which provided the luxurious Roman with those refinements of conveniency, of elegance, and of splendour which his tastes demanded. Commerce flourished, and the products of Egypt and the East were poured out in the lap of Rome. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... when she came from school she found her father and mother in the living-room. There was a note of tenseness in the atmosphere. Polly felt it vaguely as she threw off hat and coat. She went over to her mother with a caress, and Mrs. Dudley drew her down into her lap. ...
— Polly of Lady Gay Cottage • Emma C. Dowd
... left Benoite Vaux the soldiers knew they had started on the first lap of their "homeward bound" trip. Weeks of hard work were yet before the battery, but the thought of getting home in June, or possibly earlier, as rumor had it that the A. E. F. sailing schedules were operating several weeks ahead of time, kept up ...
— The Delta of the Triple Elevens - The History of Battery D, 311th Field Artillery US Army, - American Expeditionary Forces • William Elmer Bachman
... women who wail the dirges. "Pharaoh, great Pharaoh is dead! Ere a man may count a hundred thy days are numbered. Strange! but to-morrow, Meneptah, shalt thou sit where Hataska sat, dead on the knees of Death, an Osirian in the lap of the Osiris. Die, Pharaoh, die! But while thy diest, hearken. There is one I love, the Wanderer who leads thy hosts. His love I stole by arts known to me, and because I stole it he would have shamed me, and I accused him ...
— The World's Desire • H. Rider Haggard and Andrew Lang
... day in July, and she fell asleep on a seat under a tree with her glass ball in her lap; she had been staring at it, I suppose. Any way she slept on, till the sun went round and shone full on the ball; and just as he, Mr. Jephson, that is, came into the gate, the glass ball began to act like a burning glass ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... get the lines across," went on Amos, not heeding what his sister had said, "we'll lay these pine boughs across the lines. See? We can have the branches come well over each side and lap one row over another and make a fine roof," and Amos jumped about, greatly pleased with his ...
— A Little Maid of Province Town • Alice Turner Curtis
... can talk properly, which I can't, and you can write well, and read hard books, but I used to nurse you on my lap for all that. And I remember you crying for something I couldn't ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... rose up in the air and came flying down upon her; she gave a little scream, half of fright and half of anger, and tried to beat them off, and found herself lying on the bank, with her head in the lap of her sister, who was gently brushing away some dead leaves that had fluttered down from the trees ...
— Alice in Wonderland • Lewis Carroll
... on the bed, and, turning the leaves rapidly till she reached a certain page, rested the paper in her lap. Her eyes were fixed on a photograph in the left-hand corner-one of those effigies of writers that appear occasionally in the public press. Under it were printed the words: "Mr. Hilary Dallison." And ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... a considerable ways, we hired two jinrikishas, and I took Tommy in my lap, and I must say that I felt considerable like a baby in a baby carriage carryin' a doll; but I got over it and felt like a grandma before I had gone fur. How Josiah felt I don't know, though I hearn him disputin' with ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... knew quite how much he meant of what he said; his manner was exactly the same, whether he was in fun or in earnest. But if she thought of asking him now she was prevented, for at that moment Mr. Gillat's watch slipped out of her belt into her lap, ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... tired of following his lady like a lap-dog, and attending to all her whims and whimsies. Scenting sport more nearly to his liking, he obeyed, nothing loath. He fell upon Miles and beat him lustily and stoutly, expecting every moment that he would resist or beg ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... and with a heavy heart, Lizzie bent her head, and laid it in Leah's lap; and her silent prayer, though unheard by mortal ear, ascended to the throne of the Eternal Father, and was ...
— Leah Mordecai • Mrs. Belle Kendrick Abbott
... that time was THE LAND OF WATERS; for the dry channels, of which you have crossed so many, were then overflowing with live torrents; and the valley, where now the Bags and the Lovers have their fruit-trees, was a lake that received a great part of them. But the wicked princess gathered up in her lap what she could of the water over the whole country, closed it in an egg, and carried it away. Her lap, however, would not hold more than half of it; and the instant she was gone, what she had not yet taken fled away underground, leaving the country as dry and dusty as her own heart. ...
— Lilith • George MacDonald
... Gave to him, for he loved him past belief) Could now, Ulysses, clad in arms as then, Mix with these suitors, short his date of life To each, and bitter should his nuptials prove. But these events, whether he shall return To take just vengeance under his own roof, Or whether not, lie all in the Gods lap. Meantime I counsel thee, thyself to think By what means likeliest thou shalt expel These from thy doors. Now mark me: close attend. 340 To-morrow, summoning the Grecian Chiefs To council, speak to them, and call the Gods To witness ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... 1: "From the lap of the mountains Vipas and Sutudri rush forth with their water like two lusty mares neighing, freed from their tethers, like two bright ...
— India: What can it teach us? - A Course of Lectures Delivered before the University Of Cambridge • F. Max Mueller
... was hemming some black material. She sat close to the west window for the waning light. At last she laid her work on her lap. ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... all his ancient prejudices and manners, receives new ones from the new mode of life he has embraced, the new government he obeys, the new rank he holds. He becomes an American by being received in the broad lap ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... boy under very sad circumstances. She was at the time thirty-six years old. She was deformed, having in her infancy slipped off her nurse's lap into the fireplace, and getting her face so shockingly burned that it ever afterwards presented a frightful appearance. This deformity had made her resolve not to marry, for she did not want any man to marry ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... of the Reformation, all the precious metals were poured into the lap of a fanatical Catholic government; now they are in Protestant hands, and all, at last, find their resting-place, even those of Mexico, in the London market; while out of English Protestantism has our republic arisen, ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... Denyer never looked at her without secret pangs. In appearance, however, they were very friendly, and Cecily had met their overtures from the first with the simple goodwill natural to her. She went and seated herself by Madeline, who had on her lap a little portfolio. ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... he's encompassed round with such delight; To the ear, the nose, the touch, the taste and sight? When Venus would her dear Ascanius keep A prisoner in the downy bands of sleep, She odorous herbs and flowers beneath him spread, As the most soft and sweetest bed; Not her own lap would more have charmed his head. Who that has reason and his smell Would not among roses and jasmine dwell, Rather than all his spirits choke, With exhalations of dirt and smoke, And all the uncleanness which does drown ...
— Cowley's Essays • Abraham Cowley
... summerhouse, reading; now and then lifting her eyes from the big book on her lap to watch the baby at play. With a pail of sand, a broken lead-pencil and several bits of twig, the baby had concocted an engrossing game. Melissa smiled indulgently at his absurd absorption; while the baby, looking up, smiled back as one who would ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... ..." An ungloved hand stirred from her lap and for the merest instant rested lightly above his own, or hovered rather, barely touching it with a touch tenuous and elusive, no sooner realised than gone. "I mean," she murmured, "I am a bit too ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... out of the general social life. The typical example is that recorded by Herodotus, in the fifth century before Christ, at the Temple of Mylitta, the Babylonian Venus, where every woman, once in her life, had to come and give herself to the first stranger, who threw a coin in her lap, to worship the goddess. Very similar customs existed in other parts of Western Asia, in North Africa, in Cyprus, and other islands of the Eastern Mediterranean, and also in Greece, where the temple of Aphrodite on the fort at ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman
... forgotten by his wife; who, seated upon the sofa with a young infant of three years old in her lap, was calmly watching its sleeping face with inexpressible delight. She now left off her maternal studies; and looked up at her husband, ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... more dolls, and so many dolls!" as she ecstatically expressed it. Then in the midst of her bliss, she suddenly remembered her benefactor, dropped all her treasures, jumped into his lap, threw her arms around ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... stage will bring you to Elizabethtown; that Tuesday morning you will breakfast with those who pass the tedious hours regretting your absence, and counting time till you return. Even little Theo. gives up her place on mamma's lap to tell dear papa—"come home." Tell Augustine he does not know how much he owes me. 'Tis a sacrifice I would not make to any human being but himself, nor even to him again. It is the last time of my life I submit to your absence, except from necessity to the calls of your profession. All is ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... sobbed, as he stumbled towards her chair and fell to his knees before her, burying his face in her lap. ...
— Friendly Fairies • Johnny Gruelle
... an old elm-tree before it, a frame of lattice-work around the door, with a broad stone for a step—this is where old Grannie Burt lives. And there she is sitting in the doorway with her Bible in her lap. She can't read it, for she is blind; but she likes to have it by her; she likes the "feeling of it," she says. "When my Bible is away," Grannie Burt says, "I am sometimes troubled and worried; but if I can only touch it, my troubles are all gone; for what harm can any trouble do us when we are ...
— Nanny Merry - or, What Made the Difference • Anonymous
... Their thoughts do not run in the natural order of sequence. They say bright things on all possible subjects, but their zigzags rack you to death. After a jolting half-hour with one of these jerky companions, talking with a dull friend affords great relief. It is like taking the cat in your lap ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... in the barge,' said the King. And when Sir Bedivere had laid him there, King Arthur rested his head on the lap of the fairest Queen. ...
— Stories of King Arthur's Knights - Told to the Children by Mary MacGregor • Mary MacGregor
... thy streams; return, Sicilian Muse, And call the vales, and bid them hither cast Their bells and flowerets of a thousand hues. Ye valleys low, where the mild whispers use Of shades, and wanton winds, and gushing brooks On whose fresh lap the swart star sparely looks; Throw hither all your quaint enamell'd eyes That on the green turf suck the honey'd showers And purple all the ground with vernal flowers. Bring the rathe primrose that forsaken ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... in the small green arm-chair and rested his head against a coarse netted antimacassar. His eyes caught Regina's, but she was looking down thoughtfully at her hands, which lay in her lap together but not clasped. Peasant women often do that; their hands are resting then, after hard work, and they are ...
— Whosoever Shall Offend • F. Marion Crawford
... diet. At most times the big bear is a grubber in the ground, an eater of insects, roots, nuts, and berries. Its dangerous fore-claws are normally used to overturn stones and knock rotten logs to pieces, that it may lap up the small tribes of darkness which swarm under the one and in the other. It digs up the camas roots, wild onions, and an occasional luckless woodchuck or gopher. If food is very plenty bears are lazy, but commonly they are obliged to be very industrious, it being ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt
... them and caused them to shake with passion. And in the midst of this orgy of hate which encircled him I have seen him in his home with his twelve-year-old blue-eyed daughter Megan curled up in his lap, his face brimming with merriment as, with her arm around his neck, she asserted her will in regard to school and holidays over a happy and indulgent father. That is the kind of man who now rules England, rules her with an absoluteness granted to no man, king or statesman, ...
— Lloyd George - The Man and His Story • Frank Dilnot
... to recollection by some one thundering at a huge, unwieldy gate. Attempting to ask where I was, my voice died away, and I tried to raise it in vain, as I have done in a dream. I looked for my babe with affright; feared that it had fallen out of my lap, while I had so strangely forgotten her; and, such was the vague intoxication, I can give it no other name, in which I was plunged, I could not recollect when or where I last saw you; but I sighed, as if my heart wanted ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... as they were departing from the City of Damascus, by a friend, a blameless chiropodist, whose name was Omar Khayyam. He it was who eked out a pious groat by tending the feet of all outward and inward bound pilgrims. Seated at the entrance of his humble booth, with the foot of some holy man in his lap, he would speak words of kindness and wisdom as he reduced the inflammation. One of his quaintest sayings was, "If the Pope has bid thee wear hair next thy bare skin, my son, why, clap a wig over thy shaven scalp." So the monks in proper pity and kindness, when they ...
— The Dragon of Wantley - His Tale • Owen Wister
... zoological garden, switches its tail after being fed. Priscilla sat in the background under a lamp. She had chosen a straight-backed chair which stood opposite a writing table. She sat bolt upright in it with her hands folded on her lap and her left foot crossed over her right Her face wore a look of slightly puzzled, but on the whole intelligent interest; such as a humble dependent might feel while submitting to instruction kindly imparted by some very eminent person. She wore a white frock, trimmed with embroidery, ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... lighted, and the curtains drawn. The air is full of the undefined scent of chrysanthemums, and the stronger sweetness of hyacinths comes from a stand in the window. Curled up in a roomy arm-chair by the fire sits a girl with a kitten asleep on her lap. She ...
— Lotus Buds • Amy Carmichael
... For God's sake, don't say it!" her husband cried, throwing himself at her feet, and burying his face upon her lap. He felt her whole body recoil from his touch, and shrank back, hiding his face ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various
... about him wistfully, and his face brightened as he looked. Here an old grandmother was crooning over a sick child, and rocking it to and fro, in arms hardly more wasted than its own young limbs; here a poor woman with an infant in her lap, mended another little creature's clothes, and quieted another who was creeping up about her from their scanty bed upon the floor. Here were old men awkwardly engaged in little household offices, wherein they would have been ridiculous but for their good-will and ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... hard," he said. "I have been very ambitious. A few of my ambitions have been gratified, but the glory of them has passed with attainment. Now I enter upon the last lap and I possess none of the things I started out in ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... between the women in every direction, 208 through which the strangers pass by and make their choice. Here when a woman takes her seat she does not depart again to her house until one of the strangers has thrown a silver coin into her lap and has had commerce with her outside the temple, and after throwing it he must say these words only: "I demand thee in the name of the goddess Mylitta": 209 now Mylitta is the name given by the Assyrians to Aphrodite: and ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 1(of 2) • Herodotus
... Madravati. Possessed of a complexion as darkish as that of the blue lotus, she who sits there on the earth, and whose eyes are as expansive as lotus-petals, is the wife of the eldest son of Madravati, This lady whose complexion is as fair as that of heated gold and who sits with her child on her lap, is the daughter of king Virata. She is the wife of that Abhimanyu who, while divested of his car, was slain by Drona and others fighting from their cars.[41] These ladies, the hair on whose heads shows not the parted line, and who are clad in white, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... Rest at the fated goal. For from the birth Of mortal man, the Sovereign Maker said, That not in humble nor in brief delight, Not in the fading echoes of renown, Power's purple robes, nor pleasure's flowery lap, The soul should find enjoyment: but from these Turning disdainful to an equal good, Through all the ascent of things enlarge her view, Till every bound at length should disappear, 220 And infinite perfection ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... her contemporaries, whereas we have only tradition and the modern accent to guide us as to the exact pronunciation. "My Holly, it cannot be. Were I to show mercy to those wolves, your lives would not be safe among this people for a day. Thou knowest them not. They are tigers to lap blood, and even now they hunger for your lives. How thinkest thou that I rule this people? I have but a regiment of guards to do my bidding, therefore it is not by force. It is by terror. My empire is of the imagination. Once in a generation mayhap I do as I have done but now, ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... in the lap of childhood didst thou sleep, Think how thy youth like chaff did disappear; Shall life's sweet Spring forever last? Look up, Old age approaches ominously near. Oh shake thou off the world, even as the bird Shakes off the midnight dew that clogged his ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus
... is racked with birth-pangs; every hour Brings forth some gasping truth, and truth new-born Looks a misshapen and untimely growth, The terror of the household and its shame, A monster coiling in its nurse's lap That some would strangle, some would starve; But still it breathes, and passed from hand to hand, And suckled at a hundred half-clad breasts Comes slowly to its stature and its form, Calms the rough ridges of its dragon scales, ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... not only first, second, and third mortgage bonds, but income bonds, dividend bonds, convertible bonds, consolidated bonds, redemption bonds, renewal bonds, sinking-fund bonds, collateral trust bonds, equipment bonds, etc., until they lap and ...
— Up To Date Business - Home Study Circle Library Series (Volume II.) • Various
... waste, where never blossom came, Save the white wind-flower to the billow's cap, Or those pale disks of momentary flame, Loose petals dropped from Dian's careless lap, What far fetched influence all my fancy fills, With singing birds and ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... straight in the face. His eyes were fixed on the ground all the time, and he spoke in an unpleasantly affected manner. I did not like the man from the very first, and, friend or no friend, I kept my loaded rifle on my lap. ...
— An Explorer's Adventures in Tibet • A. Henry Savage Landor
... to have him on my side. Perhaps I will take a share in your luck, to make it—? to make it?"—She played prettily as a mistress teasing her lap-dog to jump for a morsel; adding: "Oh! Algy, you are not a Frenchman. To make it divine, sir! you have ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... like a dazed creature, looking down into the casket which lay open in her lap, with ten thousand rainbow fires leaping out of it, as the blaze in the chimney quivered and danced and blazed over the diamonds. That morning the old woman had crept out of prison in her moth-eaten garments, and a little charity money in her bosom. Now a fortune blazed ...
— The Old Countess; or, The Two Proposals • Ann S. Stephens
... Dale laughed abruptly, self-mockingly. He was only trying to deceive himself, to argue himself into believing what, with heart and soul, he wanted to believe. It was not like her—and neither was it so! His eyes had fixed on the seat beside the wheel. He had not used the lap rug all that day, he couldn't use a rug and drive, he had left it folded and hanging on the rack in the tonneau—it was now neatly folded and reposing on the ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... sitting stout and helpless with the brushes on her lap, "what is to become of you if you're so naughty? I'll tell your aunt Glegg and your aunt Pullet when they come next week, and they'll never love you any more. Oh dear, oh dear! look at your clean pinafore, wet from top to bottom. Folks 'ull think it's a judgment on me as ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... was entirely beyond her powers of calculation. However, then stept forward the fiadora Dona Tomaso, a sensible-looking village dame, grave and important as became her situation, and gave an account of the nurse and the baby, which being satisfactory, the copper was swept into the nurse's lap, and she and her baby went away contented. It was pleasant to see the kindness of the ladies to these poor women; how they praised the care that had been taken of the babies; admired the strong and healthy ones, which indeed nearly all were; took an interest ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... a baby's afghan, and Polly was almost obscured by a rumpled, yellow dress which lay in her lap. ...
— Polly Oliver's Problem • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... She could not deny the impeachment, and she sat there with her work in her lap, thinking about how late it was; how hungry the doctor would be, and how cross it would make him, for he always grew irritable when kept ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn
... of these was Diedrick. Along in August of that year came a week of low water. Judson's ditch failed and he went out with his rifle to learn why. There on the headgate sat Diedrick's frau with a long-handled shovel across her lap and all the water turned into Diedrick's ditch; there she sat knitting through the long sun, and the children brought out her dinner. It was all up with Amos; he was too much of a gentleman to fight a lady—that was ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin
... there was a high, high hill, all of glass, as smooth and slippery as ice, close by the king's palace. Upon the tip top of the hill the king's daughter was to sit, with three golden apples in her lap, and the man who could ride up and carry off the three golden apples was to have half the kingdom, and the Princess to wife. This offer the king had posted on all the church doors in his realm; and had given it out in many ...
— East O' the Sun and West O' the Moon • Gudrun Thorne-Thomsen
... Snyder went as far as Fort St. John up near the sources of the Peace River and returned to report that Inspector Moodie and his men had gone on to Fort Graham, whence their way would be clear in the spring for the last lap of the ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth
... It was Emmy who spoke, motioning him to a chair opposite to Pa. He took it, his shoulder to Jenny, while Emmy sat by the table, looking at him, her hands in her lap. ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... resting, with his head on Basilissa's lap, when he was informed that the enemy was advancing upon the intrenchments which had been raised in the midst of the ruins of Janina. Already the outposts had been forced, and the fury of the assailants ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Wilkes's 1143! This, he said, was flying in the face of all law and freedom: a robbery of the liberty of freeholders; and making the birthrights of Englishmen a mere farce. He then represented Colonel Luttrell as sitting in the lap of John Wilkes, and the majority of the house as being turned into a state engine. He added, in conclusion, "I am afraid this measure originated too near the throne. I am sorry for it; but I hope his majesty will soon open his eyes, and see it in all its deformity." Lord Mansfield opposed ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... visiting me on the day of my arrival, when they knew I was fatigued by the long ride. I would willingly have excused their visit today also, for neither the rich nor poor Arabs have much idea of cleanliness. They, moreover, would put the little dirty children into my arms or on my lap, and I did not know how to relieve myself of this pleasure. Many of them had Aleppo boils, and others sore eyes and skin diseases. After the women and children had left, my host came. He was, at least, clean in his dress, and conducted ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... her home in Boston,—in the room where she had promised her father to be George Gering's wife,—sat watching the sea. Its slow swinging music came up to her through the October air. Not far from her sat an old man, his hands clasping a chair-arm, a book in his lap, his chin sunk on his breast. The figure, drooping helplessly, had still a distinguished look, an air of honourable pride. Presently he raised his head, his drowsy eyes lighted as they rested on her, and he said: ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... other circumstances his pride would have revolted at the menaces of the foolish father, he would have been stung in his self-esteem, and he would have disputed with him for his treasure. But where was his pride? Where was his dignity? He had left all that on the lap of a cook. ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France
... This the king's attendant heard. He was accustomed to attend the king when hunting, and he thought that such a child was worth possessing. The queen, however, watched the child night and day. One day she was in a summer-house and had fallen asleep, with the child in her lap; when she woke the child was gone. When the king returned, he had a tower built in a wood, and he walled the queen up in it, as a punishment for losing the child. The attendant brought the child up as his own, and there was no suspicion. ...
— A Danish Parsonage • John Fulford Vicary
... black, but this time the lace ruffles had given place to soft white muslin cuffs and collar. Her dark hair was covered by a broad-brimmed black hat. She was leaning back in her chair as she read, the book lying on her lap. Suddenly the gravity of her face relaxed. A smile rippled across it like a little breeze across the surface of some lake. The smile broke into silent laughter. Antony found himself smiling ...
— Antony Gray,—Gardener • Leslie Moore |
