"Mandarin" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... - Malay (official), English, Chinese dialects, Tamil; Sabah - English, Malay, numerous tribal dialects, Chinese (Mandarin and Hakka dialects predominate); Sarawak - English, Malay, Mandarin, ...
— The 1997 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... out the tea?" enquired Miss Priscilla, "from the china pot with the blue flowers and the Chinese Mandarin fanning himself,—and very awkward, of course, with his one hand,—I don't mean the Mandarin, Mr. Bellew,—and ...
— The Money Moon - A Romance • Jeffery Farnol
... a young and courtly Mandarin, handing tea to a lady from a salver—two miles off. See how distance seems to set off respect! And here the same lady, or another—for likeness is identity on tea-cups—is stepping into a little fairy boat, moored on the hither side of ...
— The Little Tea Book • Arthur Gray
... Mandarin (Putonghua, based on the Beijing dialect), Yue (Cantonese), Wu (Shanghaiese), Minbei (Fuzhou), Minnan (Hokkien-Taiwanese), Xiang, Gan, Hakka dialects, minority ...
— The 2000 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... to-morrow and they will be freely admitted within our midst. Upon receiving a bound assurance safeguarding the limits of our temples, the persons and possessions of our chiefs, and the undepreciated condition of the first wives and virgin daughters of such as be of mandarin rank or literary degree, the inadequate keys of our broken-down defences will be laid at ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... world brotherhood tramp steadily through the paling sunset; saffron-vestured Mandarin marching by flax-faced Norseman and languid South Sea Islander—the diverse peoples toward ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... doom whose law decrees That they should live on the alert toe A life of ups-and-downs, like keys Of Broadwood's in a long concerto:—) While thus the fiddle's spell, within, Calls up its realm of restless sprites. Without, as if some Mandarin Were holding there his Feast of Lights, Lamps of all hues, from walks and bowers, Broke on the eye, like kindling flowers, Till, budding into light, each tree Bore its full ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... unintelligible to a Cantonese, and so on. All officials are obliged, and all of the better educated merchants and others endeavour, if only for business purposes, to learn something of the dialect spoken at the court of Peking; and this is what is popularly known as "Mandarin." The written language remains the same for the whole empire; which merely means that ideas set down on paper after a uniform system are spoken with different sounds, just as the Arabic numerals are written uniformly in England, France and Germany, but ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles
... necessary to pass under some heavy shelling, and I found myself open to the reproach visited previously on my men. Whether from fatigue, loss of sleep, or what, there I was, nervous as a lady, ducking like a mandarin. It was disgusting, and, hoping that no one saw me, I resolved to take it out of myself the first opportunity. There is a story of Turenne, the greatest soldier of the Bourbons, which, if not true, is ben trovato. Of a nervous temperament, his legs on the ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor
... characters I have generally followed the spelling of Morrison rather than the Pekinese, which is now in vogue. We cannot tell exactly what the pronunciation of them was, about fifteen hundred years ago, in the time of Fa-hien; but the southern mandarin must be a shade nearer to it than that of Peking at the present day. In transliterating the Indian names I have for the most part followed Dr. Eitel, with such modification as seemed good and ...
— Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms • Fa-Hien
... English government that the post might be temporarily offered to major Gordon. After some hesitation, leave was granted, and permission was given to a certain number of officers to serve under him. The emperor was overjoyed—much more so than Gordon, who was promptly created a mandarin. He foresaw many difficulties in store before he could get his 'rabble' of four thousand men into order, and at the outset he had much trouble with Burgevine, Ward's successor in command of the Ever-Victorious Army, but a very different ...
— The Red Book of Heroes • Leonora Blanche Lang
... for the Chinese, they cannot but contrast the throngs of rickshas, dog-carts, broughams, and motor cars that pour endlessly through the spotless asphalt streets with the narrow, crooked, filthy, noisome streets of their native city, to be traversed only on foot or in a sedan chair. Even the young mandarin, buried alive in some dingy walled town of the far interior, without news, events, or society, recalled with longing the lights, the gorgeous tea houses, and the alluring 'sing-song' girls of Foochow Road, and cursed the stupid ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... it denoted some unpleasant personal characteristics when a stupid mandarin put obstacles in my way. I never gave any warning, but rushed in and bit him, not actually, of course, but in his illicit commissions, which annoyed him ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... with the foibles which they so severely censure in others. "You shall have a specimen of this infirmity," said Horace, "in the person of Peter Paul Pallet; a reverend gentleman whom you will observe yonder in the dress of a Chinese mandarin. Some few years since this pious personage took upon himself the task of lashing the prevailing follies of society in a satire entitled Bath Characters, and it must be admitted, the work proves him to have been a fellow of no ordinary talent; but an unfortunate amour with the wife ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... Goddess, protect me! They must be beginning the calling of names, and the interrogatory. Each Academician has to state to the President that his vote is not promised. It's a mere formality, as you may suppose, and they all reply by a smile of denial or a little shake of the head like a Chinese mandarin. ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... herself in it. Or let her follow the old path that has led thousands of women to peace of mind—let her seek the comforts of religion.' Then smiling, he added: 'You might become a missionary, Pen, in China or Armenia. I'll bet you'd be flirting with some mandarin or pasha ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett
... same with the Syringa arabica, flore pleno albo, of Parkinson. Martini also says that the kieu-yeu, or tallow-tree, bears a white flower, like that of the cherry-tree: But all that I have seen here bear spikes of small yellow flowers, like the julus of the Salix. The bean-broth, or mandarin-broth, so frequently mentioned in the Dutch embassy, and by other authors, is only an emulsion made of the seeds ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... p. 56) that a male King Lory was killed; and the female "fretted and moped, refused her food, and died of a broken heart.") Mr. Bennett relates (11. 'Wanderings in New South Wales,' vol. ii. 1834, p. 62.) that in China after a drake of the beautiful mandarin Teal had been stolen, the duck remained disconsolate, though sedulously courted by another mandarin drake, who displayed before her all his charms. After an interval of three weeks the stolen drake was recovered, and instantly the pair recognised ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... represents the procession of a Chinese Mandarin of the first order. First appear two men who strike each upon a copper instrument called a gongh, resembling a hollow dish without a border, which has pretty much the effect of ...
— A Treatise on the Art of Dancing • Giovanni-Andrea Gallini
... challenging glance at the Brazilian and Valerie, the rest of the company felt the sort of alarm mingled with curiosity that is caused by evident violence ready to break out at any moment. The sham cousin stared at Hulot as he might have looked at some big China mandarin. ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... Before luncheon we visited two large silk houses, where we examined a remarkable display of all kinds of silks and embroideries. After luncheon we proceeded to take what is called the "Bubbling Well Drive," first exploring two interesting tea-houses, one called the "Mandarin Teahouse" being very elegant in all of its appointments. It had a garden arranged in conventional Chinese style, with a rockery, miniature lake, and dwarf trees. On the ride to Bubbling Well Road, we saw many ...
— Travels in the Far East • Ellen Mary Hayes Peck
... artistic standpoint the most admirable of all the citrus-trees is the pomelo, which, however, lacks merit from the commercial side. The tree grows more sedately than the orange or the mandarin, but on a grander scale. The leaves are bigger, tougher, and the appendages on either side of the stalk (which botanists call the stipules) more developed. The blooms are greater, and endowed with a much richer ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... Sumatra and Borneo it has to be distilled from the wood and roots. The camphor-laurel, which is about the size of an English oak, is the most important of these trees. It grows abundantly in the Chinese island of Formosa, and 'camphor mandarin' is the title of a rich Chinaman who pays the government for the privilege of extracting all the camphor, which he sends to other countries at a large profit. Every part of this tree is full of camphor, and the tree gives out, ...
— Among the Trees at Elmridge • Ella Rodman Church
... defeated at Taitsan, February 22, 1863. Li Hung Chang, governor-general of the Kiang provinces, then applied to the British commander-in-chief for the services of an English officer, and Gordon was authorized to accept the command. He arrived at Sung Kiong and entered on his new duties as a mandarin and lieutenant-colonel in the Chinese service on March 24, 1863. His force was composed of some three to four thousand Chinese, officered by 150 Europeans of almost every nationality and often of doubtful character. By the indomitable will of its commander this heterogeneous ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... Tang dynasty, early in the seventh century of the Christian era, lived a learned and virtuous, but poor mandarin who had three sons, Fu-su, Tu-sin, and Wang-li. Fu-su and Tu-sin were young men of active minds, always labouring to find out something new and useful. Wang-li was clever too, but only in games of skill, in which ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... attendants in their journeys. I particularly observed in our travelling with his baggage, that though we received sufficient provisions both for ourselves and our horses from the country, as belonging to the mandarin, yet we were obliged to pay for everything we had, after the market price of the country, and the mandarin's steward collected it duly from us. Thus our travelling in the retinue of the mandarin, though it was a great act of kindness, was not such ...
— The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... surprised by a visit from a mandarin of a very different description. We were astonished to hear a person in the habit of a Chinese, and bearing the title of a mandarin, address us in French: he informed us that he was originally a French Jesuit, ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... and—notice!—honor upon honor—there was a "cupelo," as Charlie called it, on top of the barn. Through the slats of the "cupelo," one could look upon the river shining gloriously at sunset, as if the sun were a Chinese mandarin that at this hour spread his yellow silk robe upon the river in a vain attempt to warm up the cold waters just from the sea. Besides this there were various attractions, such as oars in the corner, nets hanging from ...
— The Knights of the White Shield - Up-the-Ladder Club Series, Round One Play • Edward A. Rand
... gave ground before the attacks of a stout, gray-templed Briton, a General of the Army of Occupation. She fought gallantly, but he stood doggedly before her handfuls of confetti, shaking the paper chips out of his eyes and mustache like some invincible old St. Bernard, and her slender Mandarin-coated figure retreated slowly before his ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... the self-constituted beak, and Mr. Stevens was directed to make the Orientals think that he was the lawful magistrate of the mine. Mr. Stevens, entering into the fun, persuaded the Orientals, who were now gig umbrellas again, that Robinson was the mandarin who settled property, and possessed, among other trifles, the power of life and death. On this they took off their slippers before him, and were awestruck, and secretly wished they had not kicked up a row, still ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... careful not to excite suspicion. Perhaps a disguise might have been better, but I think this will do. There—they add at least a decade to your age. If you could see yourself you wouldn't speak to your reflection. You look as scholarly as a Chinese mandarin. Remember, let me do the talking and do just ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... time "Oldtown Folks" was fairly off her hands, and she was free once more. She evidently found Mandarin very much to her mind, and wrote contentedly therefrom, save for a vision of having to go to Canada in the early spring to obtain the copyright of ...
— Authors and Friends • Annie Fields
... Higby, "excuse me, sir; the rooms upstairs"—nodding like a mandarin in the direction named, "any of 'em—all of 'em; they've got 'em all; ...
— Five Little Peppers Grown Up • Margaret Sidney
... great necklet of red coral; or some fancy in humming-birds' feathers from the Brazils; lace from Porto Rico, that the colored women make with their slim brown fingers; things of hammered brass from India; and were he to China in the tea-trade, a coat such as a mandarin's lady would wear.... And with each gift there would be gasp of incredulous surprise, and "O Shaneen, you shouldn't have!" ... And then the evening would come, and they would stand on the threshold, and he would listen to the sounds the seamen never hear: the swish ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... a certain brilliancy characterised the work at one period, but this cannot be regarded as the best type to imitate. The most harmonious were carried out in two schemes. One had all the leaves worked in Mandarin blues, shading from darkest indigo to softest blue-grey. These were placed in juxtaposition, with tender mignonette and silvery greens, a strong accent being occasionally introduced by a flower ...
— Jacobean Embroidery - Its Forms and Fillings Including Late Tudor • Ada Wentworth Fitzwilliam and A. F. Morris Hands
... Van Buren's wish, little Sky-High was sent for. The Chinese boy asked Charlie, who went down for him, that he might have time to change his dress so that he might suitably appear before "the mandarin in the parlor." (A "mandarin" in China is a kind of mayor or magistrate of rank ...
— Little Sky-High - The Surprising Doings of Washee-Washee-Wang • Hezekiah Butterworth
... being a masquerade, from Mr. Piper a courteously grey-haired mandarin in jade-green robes beside Mrs. Piper—lovely Mary Embree that was—in the silks of a Chinese empress, heavy and shining and crusted as the wings of a jeweler's butterfly, her reticent eyes watching the bright broken patterns of the dancing as impassively as if she ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet
... classical writings of the brahmins. Mr. Daines Barrington supposed the Chinese to be the inventers, and in this he is supported by a paper published in the Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy, for 1794, vol. 5, by Mr. Eyles Irwin. It states, that when Mr. Irwin was at Canton, a young mandarin, on seeing the English chess-board, recognised its similarity with that used for a game of their own; and brought his board and equipage for Mr. Irwin's inspection, and soon after gave him a manuscript extract from a book, relating the invention of the Chinese ...
— The Mirror, 1828.07.05, Issue No. 321 - The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction • Various
... he labored as a missionary among the natives of Luzon. Appointed provincial of his order there in 1575, he died at Manila in May, 1576. See Retana's Zuniga, ii, p. 563*, and Perez's Catalogo, p. 11; the latter states that Alvarado was the first Spaniard in the Philippines to learn the mandarin dialect of the Chinese language, and that he ministered to ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume VI, 1583-1588 • Emma Helen Blair
... Christians and against our Society which has been going on in China during the past years is now mild. Hence people are being converted to Christianity as formerly; and our fathers are safe, for a great mandarin presented to the king a memorial in our favor, in which he refuted the calumnies that a powerful enemy of ours had launched against us, and that had been the cause of this persecution. And, although the king made no answer, by his silence he consents to our fathers' ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 • Emma Helen Blair
... little faces of children pleased you. I embrace you very much, you are so kind, I was sure of it. Although you are a mandarin, I do not think that you are like a Chinaman at all, and I love you with ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... righted their canoes again, and threatened revenge on us with the most violent gestures. Several of them clung like cats to the sides of the ship, with nails which might have rivalled those of a Chinese Mandarin; and we had recourse to long poles as the only means of freeing ourselves ...
— A New Voyage Round the World in the Years 1823, 24, 25, and 26. Vol. 1 • Otto von Kotzebue
... sent by the mandarins of Pekin to the ruler of China, detailing the defeats and misfortunes suffered by the Chinese. They complain of his neglect of public affairs, and his harsh treatment of a certain mandarin, and ask him to take measures to drive back the Tartars, in Cochinchina the recently-begun missions of the Jesuits are prospering. For the Japanese mission are coming a large reenforcement of Jesuit missionaries; but affairs there ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVIII, 1617-1620 • Various
... entertained by officers and merchants, and exchanged their wares in the marketplace. They were as much at home, no doubt, as when buying piculs of pepper from a rajah of Qualah Battoo, or dining with an elderly mandarin of Cochin China. It was not too much to say that "the profuse stores of knowledge brought by every ship's crew, together with unheard of curiosities from every savage shore, gave the community of Salem a rare alertness ...
— The Old Merchant Marine - A Chronicle of American Ships and Sailors, Volume 36 in - the Chronicles Of America Series • Ralph D. Paine
... soon, but I would have you varnish and glaze it at your leisure, and polish the sticks as much as you can. You may then cause it to be borne in the hands of both sexes, no less in Britain than it is in China, where it is ordinary for a mandarin to fan himself cool after a debate, and a statesman to hide his face with it when he tells a grave lie."[3] Again, on October 23rd, Pope wrote: "I shall go into the country about a month hence, and shall then desire to take along with me your poem of 'The Fan.'" The most ...
— Life And Letters Of John Gay (1685-1732) • Lewis Melville
... objectionable all round. Distrust of authority should be the first civic duty, even as the first military duty is said to be the reverse of it. We catch ourselves talking of the "lesson of history." Why not take that lesson to heart? Reverence of the mandarin destroyed the fair life of old China, which was overturned by the Tartars not because Chinamen were too weak or depraved, but because they were the opposite: too moral, too law-abiding, too strong in their sense of right. They paid for their virtue with the extinction of their wonderful ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... that Chapman is,' said Griff, coming in from a conference with the gaunt old man who acted as keeper to our not very extensive preserves. 'I told him to get some gins for the rats in my rooms, and he shook his absurd head like any mandarin, and said, "There baint no trap as will rid you of ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... where they come from. I don't believe a word of this outcast yarn. Guess Miss Lucy is all right, and she knows enough to stay away when all this tomfoolery's goin' on. She doesn't want to come back to a child's nussery." To all of which her mother nodded her head, keeping it going like a toy mandarin long after the subject of discussion had ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith
... soon as a hint was thrown out about traffic. The old sinner nodded like a mandarin who knew what he was about, and, rising as soon as the adroit whisperer had finished, took me by the hand, and in a loud voice, presented me to the people as his "beloved son!" Besides this, the best house within the royal inclosure was fitted with fresh comforts ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... marvellously to the requirements of the Twentieth Century. A reformer of 1898—that is one of the small devoted band of men who under Kang Yu Wei almost succeeded in winning over the ill-fated Emperor Kwang Hsu to carrying out a policy of modernizing the country in the teeth of fierce mandarin opposition, he possessed in his armoury every possible argument against the usurpation Yuan Shih-kai proposed to practise. He knew precisely where to strike—and with what strength; and he delivered himself over to ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale
... Fuh-Kien), but if so, it cannot be much. The surnames in this province are the same as those in Central and North China.... The language also is pure Chinese; actually much nearer the ancient form of Chinese than the modern Mandarin dialect. There are indeed many words in the vernacular for which no corresponding character has been found in the literary style: but careful investigation is gradually diminishing the number." (Note by Rev. ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... wrote a book on visiting-cards. There is a great variety of that article; an English ambassador once papered his entire suit of rooms with that with which a Chinese mandarin honored him. MICHAEL ANGELO left a straight line as a card, and was recognized by it. Our friend H—— once distributed blank pasteboards in Philadelphia, and everybody said, 'Why, H—— has been here!' Not long since, a lady ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... MANDARIN. A Portuguese word derived from mandare, "to command." It is unknown to the Chinese and Tonquinese, who style ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... River. The barrier forts, after a heavy bombardment, were taken by storm. Stanton was released. The British fleet made demonstrations at Amay, Ningpo, and in the Gulf of Pechili. Emperor Taouk-Wang sent for troops from the interior. Mandarin Lin, who had entered into negotiations with the British, was degraded and was succeeded by Viceroy Keshen of Peiho. Keshen received Lord Palmerston's formal demands upon China and forwarded them to Pekin. By dilatory tactics he succeeded in gaining ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... long tail, brandishing his pitchfork and goading them onward. The Pope was generally furnished with a movable head, which could be turned round, thrown back, or made to bow, like that of a china- ware mandarin. An aged inhabitant of the neighborhood has furnished us with some fragments of the songs sung on such occasions, probably the same which our British ancestors trolled forth around their bonfires two ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... fairly public place, and he judged he was as safe there as anywhere. Some of the men grinned and winked at him as they went about their work; several found a chance to whisper words of encouragement. And all morning he sat, like a protestant at the palace-gates of a mandarin in China, It was tedious work, but he believed that he would be able to stand ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair
... the prospects of orange farming. Two crops are gathered annually, the principle one in December and the other at Eastertide, the fruit produced by the later and smaller crop being far finer in size and flavour than those of the Christmas harvest. Mandarin oranges are gathered on both occasions, but the large luscious loose-skinned fruit of March and April—Portogalli as they are commonly termed—are far superior to the small hard specimens that appear in December, and seem to consist of little else than ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... her glance to follow that of her companion. Jacques was indeed, as we have said, gazing after the lady who had just departed, and for this purpose had opened his eyes to their greatest possible width. He resembled a china mandarin in the ...
— The Youth of Jefferson - A Chronicle of College Scrapes at Williamsburg, in Virginia, A.D. 1764 • Anonymous
... beyond the house gave us Valencia and Mandarin oranges, lemons, feis, Guinea cherries, pineapples, Barbadoes cherries, sugar-cane, sweet-potatoes, watermelons, cantaloups, Chile peppers, and pumpkins. Watercress came fresh ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... on the 17th of December, and on the 19th in the morning a mandarin of the first rank, who was Governor of the city of Janson, together with two mandarins of an inferior class, and a great retinue of officers and servants, having with them eighteen half-galleys decorated with a great number of streamers, ...
— Anson's Voyage Round the World - The Text Reduced • Richard Walter
... which they arrived at the Chinese frontier, which De Quincey has quoted at p. 417. Annexed to the Memoir there is also a letter from P. Amiot, one of the French Jesuit missionaries, dated 'Pe-king, 15th October, 1773,' containing a comment on the memoir of a certain Chinese scholar and mandarin, Yu-min-tchoung, who had been charged by the Emperor with the task of seeing the narrative properly preserved in four languages in a monumental form. It is from this Chinese comment on the Imperial Memoir ...
— De Quincey's Revolt of the Tartars • Thomas De Quincey
... road which wound in serpentine twinings high above the sea, now breasting ridges bare of all save rock and spurge, and now dipping into valleys shaded by flowering trees and cloyed with the scent of blooms. It meandered past farms, in haphazard fashion, past vineyards and gardens and groves of mandarin, lime, and lemon, finally toiling up over a bold chestnut-studded shoulder of the range, where Blake drew in to enjoy the scene. A faint haze, impalpable as the memory of dreams, lay over the land, the ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... Lee"—in his seaman's pidgin. At least, his gestures were those of a ragtime comedian, and the tune bore some faint resemblance. Or is it that the ragtime kings have gone to the antiquities of the Orient for their melodies? But he had not gone far before Ho Ling, with the dignity of a mandarin, removed him. And the smell being a little too strong for us, we followed, and strolled ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... shoulder, and thinking to himself how droll it was to make a soldier of the empire tremble, "this young girl may be all in all to you, but to society at large what is she? nothing. At this moment the greatest mandarin in China may be yielding up the ghost and putting half the universe in mourning, and what is that to you? The English are killing thousands of people in India more worthy than we are; why, at this very moment while I am ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... a sea-cuny . . . and dispatched north over the Mandarin Road with five hundred soldiers and a retinue at my back! I was a governor of seven provinces, where fifty thousand troops awaited me. Life, death, and torture, I carried at my disposal. I had a treasury and a treasurer, to say nothing of a regiment ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... little knots guarding the approaches, all very bureaucratic. The head of the first knot referred me to the second knot; the head of the second referred me to a third. The head of this knot, which guarded the approach to the particular military mandarin whom I needed or thought I needed, smiled more than any of them, and, having heard my story, said that that was certainly the place to obtain leave. But it was unwise and even impossible to go by any other way than road, as the railway was needed for soldiers and munitions of war, and therefore ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 16, 1914 • Various
... preparatory grade, under the direction of the indolent M. Tavernier, always busy polishing his nails, like a Chinese mandarin, the child had for a professor in the eighth grade Pere Montandeuil, a poor fellow stupefied by thirty years of teaching, who secretly employed all his spare hours in composing five-act tragedies, and ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... pins in her hair On a funny old Japanese fan. He was a proud bit of Chinese ware In the shape of a Mandarin man. ...
— Golden Moments - Bright Stories for Young Folks • Anonymous
... on a chaise longue before an open fire, in the boudoir in which his sister Barbara had spent so many hours of the past year, playing the invalid to sleep. She wore a superb Mandarin coat, of soft and ravishing tints, and her love for rich colors was reflected in the autumnal tones of her room and even in the vari-colored flames of her driftwood fire. To Louise these colors were as definite as mellow trumpet-tones. She had responded to them all her life. She was responding to ...
— The Girl in the Mirror • Elizabeth Garver Jordan
... Best enters in hairdresser's attire, shinily laundered, his locks in curlpapers. He leads John Eglinton who wears a mandarin's kimono of Nankeen yellow, lizardlettered, and a ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... feeling for self-preservation, untrammelled by any notions of romantic honour or tender conscience. His yellow hands, lightly clasped, hung idly between his knees. The graves of Wang's ancestors were far away, his parents were dead, his elder brother was a soldier in the yamen of some Mandarin away in Formosa. No one near by had a claim on his veneration or his obedience. He had been for years a labouring restless vagabond. His only tie in the world was the Alfuro woman, in exchange for whom he had given away some ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... for a few seconds. Looking idly out at the passing crowd, I saw a Chinaman in European clothes. He was waiting to cross the road, so I was able to scrutinize him carefully, and, owing to a scar on the left side of his face, recognized him. His name is Wong Li Fu, a Manchu of the Manchus, a mandarin of almost imperial lineage. Some years ago he was a young attach at the Chinese Embassy here. Suddenly, while on the way to my house, I recollected that certain members of the Revolutionary Committee had spoken ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... City. Now I would dress in Chinese clothes and beg my way through the very heart of the Chinese Empire ... and write a book, subsequently, about my experiences and adventures ... and perhaps win a medal of some famous society for it ... and I had a dream of marrying some quaintly beautiful mandarin's daughter, of becoming a famous, revered Chinese scholar, bringing together with my influence ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... in London?" inquired Margery, with surprise; for Margery was more astonished and interested to hear of a nobleman from London dining with her parents than a modern young lady would be if told that a Chinese mandarin was expected. ...
— Mistress Margery • Emily Sarah Holt
... close-fitting, high-buttoned blue jacket; there was a little cap on his head, and a pigtail dependent from behind it—I was not sufficiently acquainted with Chinese costumes to gather any idea of his rank or position from these things—for aught I knew to the contrary, he might be a mandarin who, for some extraordinary reason, had found his way to this out-of-the-world spot. And my answer to his courteous invitation doubtless sounded confused ...
— Ravensdene Court • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... smallpox, small, dark eyes, and a full forehead. As he spoke he twirled his watch-key incessantly with his right hand, while his left was flung about in the most unmeaning and awkward gestures. He twisted his body right and left, forward and backward, as if he were a Chinese mandarin going through a stated number of evolutions before his emperor; in fact, he had "all the contortions of the sybil, without her inspiration." To this display Mr. Clay seemed entirely oblivious, but ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... attempt he is liable to be taken up as a spy or deserter, and sent back under guard. This town is the emporium of Chinese and Russian trade. Chinese caravans are continually arriving and returning, bringing and carrying away articles of merchandise. There are likewise a Chinese and a Tartar Mandarin, also a school where Chinese and Tartar are taught, and where Chinese and Tartar children along with Russian are ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... market for fine bits of embroidery, mandarin coats, and all the better products of needle, silk and floss, of which the Chinese have been masters for centuries, than the city of the court. The population consists largely of great officials and their families, whose cast-off clothing, toned down by the use of years, often ...
— Court Life in China • Isaac Taylor Headland
... to the sense of sight than to the feel, So moistly satin are their breasts. A pang, Almost of pain, runs through him when he sees Hanging, a homeless marvel, next to these, The silken breastplate of a mandarin, Centuries dead, which he had given her. Exquisite miracle, when men could spin Jay's wing and belly ...
— The Defeat of Youth and Other Poems • Aldous Huxley
... pink and royal of the finest selection, sucking pigs, banana poi, breadfruit, and crabs caught the very day from Pearl Harbour. Mary Mendana, wife of the Portuguese Consul, remembered her with a five-dollar box of candy and a mandarin coat that would have fetched three-quarters of a hundred dollars at a fire sale. And Elvira Miyahara Makaena Yin Wap, the wife of Yin Wap the wealthy Chinese importer, brought personally to Alice two entire bolts ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London
... the thigh of a heavy and beautiful woman, sometimes it is silvered with mica like a cheek in the sunlight, sometimes it is brown like the complexion of those in whom the dead blondness of tobacco is blended with the gold of the mandarin orange. ...
— Romance of the Rabbit • Francis Jammes
... in the season, one afternoon, the loungers in the tent looked out and remarked, "The Mandarin has come," and gave place to a richly dressed, corpulent Mongol, who entered the tent, followed by one of his servants. Salutations over, he soon showed his colours and unmasked his batteries. He had come to fight, and we both went at it tooth and nail. He had read a good deal, and had come ...
— James Gilmour of Mongolia - His diaries, letters, and reports • James Gilmour
... of personal integrity [he says], the capacity to handle public funds with common honesty, has been conspicuously lacking in Young China. The leopard has not changed his spots; the sons and brothers of the classical Mandarin remain, in spite of Western learning, Mandarins by ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... home in China and Cochin China the orange and its smaller brother, the mandarin, have spread over India and far around. Amongst the many other fruits which abound in India are grapes, melons, apples and pears, walnuts and figs. Figs are green before they ripen, and then they turn yellow. The fig-tree is distributed ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... sense forlorn, his head turning like a mandarin, alternately from the speaker to his master, as if to ask the latter whether this was all reality. The instant that Touchwood stopped, ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... very narrow that we had to press our bodies close against the wall to keep from being crushed as the procession passed us. We heard the tooting of a horn. Our guide said, "Here comes the Mandarin." We began to press ourselves into a niche in the wall to watch him pass. First came the buglers, then the soldiers and last the gayly-bedecked Mandarin carried in a sedan chair on the shoulders of six coolies. He looked the very picture of the severe authority ...
— An Ohio Woman in the Philippines • Emily Bronson Conger
... not more than seven or eight feet wide. There are no horses in Canton, and you have to git about on "shanks's horses," as Josiah calls it, your own limbs you know, or else sedan chairs, and the streets are so narrer, some on 'em, that once when we met some big Chinese man, a Mandarin I believe they called him, we had to hurry into one of the shops till he got by, and sometimes in turnin' a corner the poles of our chairs had to be run way inside of the shops, ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... curious import among this curious people. A Chinese gentleman rarely wears one in the streets, his mode of travel being in a sedan, and his fan or umbrella answering all purposes of protection from the sun. A mandarin, on the contrary, wears in the ball of his cap his badge of office, and the time even when he changes his winter for his summer hat is regulated by the Board of Rites. The poor coolie is troubled by no such formality, and wears a great umbrella-like head covering, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... literary language, and when that was not understood, he would repeat it in the local dialect. The priest, not understanding the significance of either in that form, wrote down the two together as a single word. Knowledge of the literary Chinese, or Mandarin, as it is generally called, marked the educated man, and, as we have already pointed out, education in China meant social position. To such minute deductions is it necessary to resort when records are scarce, and to be of value the explanation must be in harmony with the conditions of ...
— Lineage, Life, and Labors of Jose Rizal, Philippine Patriot • Austin Craig
... of my identity upon his conviction. Then his delight was as great as his previous terror. His companion was a stranger to him—a man of exceedingly gentlemanly and prepossessing appearance, and clearly a person of condition, being, in fact, as I afterwards found, a mandarin. His own residence had been sacked and his family murdered. He and a brother had escaped into the street, were pursued, and his relative shot in running away. Though with his left arm broken by a bullet, he had run into the inn. When the soldiers entered it he and ...
— Under the Dragon Flag - My Experiences in the Chino-Japanese War • James Allan
... he was, remained nevertheless the servant of another or others. He was not the head of that organization which dealt in wholesale murder, which aimed at upsetting the balance of the world. I even knew the name of one, a certain mandarin, and member of the Sublime Order of the White Peacock, who was his immediate superior. I had never dared to guess at the identity of what I may term ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... pieces sometimes forty feet in length. The Chinese record, called "Sou kien tchi pou," states that a kind of paper was made from hemp, and another authority (Du Halde) observes, "that old pieces of woven hemp were first made into paper in that country about A. D. 95, by a great mandarin of the palace." Linen rags were ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho
... the tiger's dead body lay beside the woman's. The Chinaman sold the tiger's skin to a mandarin, and its body to a physician to make fear-cure powders, and with the proceeds he was able ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... says Wood, "than the male Chinese Mandarin Duck, can hardly be found, when in health and full nuptial plumage. They are natives of China and Japan, and are held in such high esteem by the Chinese that they can hardly be obtained at any price, the natives having a singular ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photograph [January, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... largest were an occasional magpie or wood-pigeon; here were herons and bustards, kites, toucans, tiger-bitterns, brush turkeys, ibises, golden pheasants, a whole portrait gallery of undreamed-of creatures. And as he was admiring the colouring of the mandarin duck and assigning a life-history to it, the voice of his aunt in shrill vociferation of his name came from the gooseberry garden without. She had grown suspicious at his long disappearance, and had leapt to the conclusion that he had climbed over the wall behind the sheltering screen of ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki
... allied American Polyodon. Among insectivorous mammals the Chinese and Japanese shrew-moles, respectively forming the genera Uropsilus and Urotrichus, are represented in America by Neurotrichus. The giant salamander of the rivers of China and Japan and the Chinese mandarin duck are by some included in the same genera as their American representatives, while by others they are referred to genera apart. Whichever view we take does not alter their close relationship. One wapiti occurs on the Tibetan frontier, and ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... There's the jungle cock from India whose neck feathers are extensively used on salmon flies and a very large percentage of all fancy flies. The golden pheasant from China, the bustard from Africa, the Mandarin wood duck from China, the capercailzie from Ireland, the game cocks from Spain and the Orient, the teal, mallard, grouse, ibis, swan, turkey, and hundreds of others. The polar bear, Impala, North and South American deer, seal, black bear, skunk, rabbit, squirrel, are a few of ...
— How to Tie Flies • E. C. Gregg
... and foreign clothing. The strange street noises, too, will linger in one's memory ever after: the clattering hoofs of fleet Mongolian ponies, the jingling bells of the thousands of sturdy little saddle donkeys, the rattling of the big cowbells on the dusty camels, the clanging gong of a mandarin's carriage, outriders scurrying before and behind to bear testimony to his rank, and the sharp cries of peddlers of many kinds, their wares balanced in baskets borne ...
— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe
... princess, infanta, duchess, margravine[obs3]; czarevna[obs3], czarita[obs3]; maharani, rani, rectrix[obs3]. regent, viceroy, exarch[obs3], palatine, khedive, hospodar[obs3], beglerbeg[obs3], three-tailed bashaw[obs3], pasha, bashaw[obs3], bey, beg, dey[obs3], scherif[obs3], tetrarch, satrap, mandarin, subahdar[obs3], nabob, maharajah; burgrave[obs3]; laird &c. (proprietor) 779; collector, commissioner, deputy commissioner, woon[obs3]. the authorities, the powers that be, the government; staff, etat major[Fr], ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... concentrated view of life are the results of the hansom's peculiar construction. The cock-of-the-roost sits aloft like Jupiter on an unsharable seat, holding your fate between two thongs of inconstant leather. Helpless, ridiculous, confined, bobbing like a toy mandarin, you sit like a rat in a trap—you, before whom butlers cringe on solid land—and must squeak upward through a slit in your peripatetic sarcophagus to ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... regular a correspondence as could be carried on in that country, where there are not quite so many mail-coaches and post-offices as with us, she saw with tearful eyes the whale-boat "shove off," containing in its stern-sheets Morton, a Chinese custom-house mandarin, two Chinese pigs, a hind-quarter of Chinese beef, a Chinese river pilot, and sundry baskets of ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... like a Chinese princess. A tango cap of gold crowned her swirls of hair, and from it depended a string of tremendous beads, looped beneath her chin. She presented a futurist combination of colors, mainly Mandarin yellow and royal blue, both of which in some peculiar way seemed to extend upward, tingeing her cheeks. But Wharton's impression was vague; he saw little more than the tragic widening of the girl's eyes as ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... everywhere,—in the school-room, in the library, in the cabinets of princes and ministers, in the huts of savages, in the tropics, in the frozen North, in India, in China, in Japan, in Africa, in America; now as a Christian priest, now as a soldier, a mathematician, an astrologer, a Brahmin, a mandarin, under countless disguises, by a thousand arts, luring, persuading, or compelling souls into the fold ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... Whether all the cool and shiny little chairs and tables were continually sliding about and bruising each other, and if not why not? Whether anybody on the voyage ever read those two books printed in characters like bird-cages and fly-traps? Whether the Mandarin passenger, He Sing, who had never been ten miles from home in his life before, lying sick on a bamboo couch in a private china closet of his own (where he is now perpetually writing autographs for inquisitive barbarians), ever began to doubt the potency of the Goddess of the Sea, whose counterfeit ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... on the unsuccessful 1542 expedition of Villalobos, and returned to the Philippines in 1571. Perez, p. 11, records that he became familiar with the Tagalog language, was the first prior of Tondo, ministered to the Chinese there, and was the first Spaniard to learn the Mandarin dialect. He was elected provincial in 1575, and died at Manila the following year. Jeronimo Marin came to the islands with Alvarado, acquired skill in the Visayan, Tagalog and Chinese languages, accompanied Rada on his first expedition to China, was in Tondo ...
— Doctrina Christiana • Anonymous
... with perfect distinctness: cheerful Elijah Kellogg, a lively missionary from the region of the Quoddy Indians, with much hopeful talk about Sock Bason and his tribe; also poor old Poor-house-Parson Isaac Smith, his head going like a China mandarin, as he discussed the possibilities of the escape of that distinguished captive whom he spoke of under the name, if I can reproduce phonetically its vibrating nasalities of "General Mmbongaparty,"—a ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... says Mr. Lee. "Mr. Tang is son of a formerly very wealthy and high-born mandarin family. But his family has lost everything and Mr. Tang is here seeking an education in modern business. He has left of his family's wealth only these two things here. They are necklaces such as only mandarins could wear when ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... was knocked off; and now, what do you think I found in it?—a chest of "tea;" none of your sham doses, but tea that a Chinese Mandarin wouldn't have turned up his celestial nose at, and a lovely little Chinese work-box, and a pretty scarlet, Canton-crape scarf, all from ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern
... just as there will never be another Raphael, nor Titian, nor Rembrandt, nor Van Eyck, nor Cranach.... Well, now! there are the Chinese; they are very ingenious, very clever; they make modern copies of their 'grand mandarin' porcelain, as it is called. But a pair of vases of genuine 'grand mandarin' vases of the largest size, are worth, six, eight, and ten thousand francs, while you can buy the modern replicas for ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... Cap-sing-moon, and went alongside a large opium-receiving ship, into which we were to discharge our cargo. From this ship it would, I learned, be conveyed up to Canton in Chinese smuggling boats. These boats are well manned and armed; and if they cannot get away from the mandarin boats, the crews will often ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... motions jerky and exasperating in the extreme, but during my whole acquaintance with her I never saw her for a moment absolutely still. On the rare occasions when her body was at rest, her head turned from side to side as though moved by machinery, like the mandarin dolls of the toy-shops, and I had doubts whether she ever slept. I was really concerned about her. Nervous prostration seemed the only thing she could look forward to; and later I found that Bradford Torrey had suffered similar anxiety about one of her kind, as related in his ...
— Upon The Tree-Tops • Olive Thorne Miller
... in dealing with the Chinese, that of negotiating, when prompt and sustained action to compel them to seek negotiation was the only sound policy. Sir Michael carried on a correspondence with the chief mandarin concerning the surrender of the Bogue forts, and their restoration, unimpaired, under certain contingencies. The mandarin regarded the correspondence useful so as to gain time, but he would make no concessions. On the 12th of November ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... good sir! He warned you to abandon your visit? And you reject his advice? Listen to me." Smith was intensely excited now, his eyes bright, his lean figure curiously strung up, alert. "The Mandarin Yen-Sun-Yat is one of ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... description of the banyan-tree, and a great variety of other particulars, sufficiently prove that the Macedonians were actuated by a thirst after knowledge, as well as a spirit of conquest; and illustrate as well as justify the observation made to Alexander by the Bramin mandarin, "You are the only man whom I ever found curious in the investigation of philosophy at ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... Nell to convey his compliments to her father, and promised to write to her from Mombasa. Both officers now engaged mainly in a conversation with Nell, so that Stas remained a little on the side. At all stations they had a plentiful supply of mandarin oranges, dates, and exquisite sherbet, and, besides by Stas and Nell, these dainties were shared by Dinah, who with all her good qualities was known for her ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... canopy; and with my mouth puckered up, till it was like anything on earth but a mouth, I set the glass down on the table; and for the next five minutes could do nothing but shake my head to and fro like a Chinese mandarin, amidst the loud and prolonged roars of laughter that burst like thunder claps from the huge jaws of Thomas Draw, and the subdued and half respectful cachinnations of ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... me some lemonade; send the pagoda to the bricklayer, the mandarin to the surgeon, and the idol to the Papist over the way! There's a guinea to pay for their carriage. ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... carrying-chairs, through this congeries of narrow, unsavoury alleys, now jostled by coolies carrying bales of merchandise suspended from long bamboos resting on their shoulders (exactly as they did in the pictures of a book, called Far Off, which I had as a child), now pushed on one side by the palanquin of a mandarin, we hungered for fresh air and open spaces, less crowded by yellow oblique-eyed Mongolians; still, though we all felt as though we were in a nightmare, we had none of us ever seen anything like it, and in ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... there been objection, the curiosity she had in common with her kind would have swept difficulties aside. She gave orders that when Mrs. Stonehouse arrived with her daughter they were to be shown at once into the Mandarin drawing-room. That they would probably stay for lunch. She would ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker
... put on Patty's coat, which was a really gorgeous affair. It was what is known as a Mandarin coat, of white silk, heavily embroidered with gold, and very quaint she looked ...
— Patty's Suitors • Carolyn Wells
... teaches us that man resembles frugiverous animals in every thing, and carnivorous in nothing; he has neither claws wherewith to seize his prey, nor distinct and pointed teeth to tear the living fibre. A mandarin of the first class, with nails two inches long, would probably find them, alone, inefficient to hold even a hare. It is only by softening and disguising dead flesh by culinary preparations that it is rendered susceptible of mastication and digestion, ...
— Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages • William Andrus Alcott
... said Kai Lung very earnestly, "this is evidently an unfortunate mistake. Doubtless you were expecting some exalted Mandarin to come and render you homage, and were preparing to overwhelm him with gratified confusion by escorting him yourself to your well-appointed abode. Indeed, I passed such a one on the road, very richly apparelled, who inquired of me the way to the mansion ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah
... soup could not properly be called supper, but would merge into breakfast. This question still remained unsettled in his mind when grey dawn lit up the peaks of the eastern hills, and he was still debating it, and nodding like a Chinese mandarin, and staring at intervals like a confused owl, when the sun shot over the tree-tops, and, alighting softly on ...
— The Golden Dream - Adventures in the Far West • R.M. Ballantyne
... soft gray gowns and shawls with fine fringes, or in summer just a plain white kerchief crossed over the bosom. Then there was a great blue-and-white Chinese pagoda, ornamented with numerous bells, every story growing smaller. It stood on a solid clawfoot table, and beside it, also in china, a mandarin with flowing sleeves and a long pigtail ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... round, got up on her knees, took him by the shoulders, and shook him fearfully. "Now, then," she said, while the papa let his head wag, after the shaking, like a Chinese mandarin's, and it was a good thing he did not let his tongue stick out. "Now, will you go on? What did the people eat ...
— Christmas Every Day and Other Stories • W. D. Howells
... up to the under-secretaries of state and members of the cabinet even, be examined and tested and docketed in due order of merit—in the same way as the Chinese conduct their mandarin school—and distribute variously coloured buttons to graduates of different degrees, letting "the best man win," in accordance with the old motto of the now ...
— She and I, Volume 2 - A Love Story. A Life History. • John Conroy Hutcheson
... as before on the counter, shook his head from side to side, with a waggish air, which confused Ephie still more. She made her escape, and left him there, still wagging, like a china Mandarin. ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson |
