"Mantel" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... fair to live to a good old age, if not prematurely cut off. One of them, more feeble than the others, needed and received especial attention. Him I tended through dreary days of east wind and rain in a box on the mantel-piece, nursing him through a severe attack of asthma, feeding and amusing him through his protracted convalescence, holding him in my hand one whole Sunday afternoon to relieve him of home-sickness and hen-sickness, and being rewarded at last by seeing animation and activity come back ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... singular, in a fair comparison with other men—if, in short, you would convey an indignity; and—but you are my father's brother, sir!" and the blood mounted to his forehead, and his heart swelling, the youth turned proudly away, and rested his head upon the mantel. ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... beat furiously. The minister rose and put another stick on the fire. He did not return to his seat but stood with his elbow on the mantel gazing at his wife. Though thin, John Middleton looked strong and well, in part, perhaps, because of his florid complexion, partly because of his serenity. But in moments of stress he had a way of seeming to grow worn and older under one's ...
— Elsie Marley, Honey • Joslyn Gray
... I'd a got up and obeyed her if I'd a been dead. As we was passing through the setting-room the old man he took up his hat, and the shingle-nail fell out on the floor, and he just merely picked it up and laid it on the mantel-shelf, and never said nothing, and went out. Tom see him do it, and remembered about the spoon, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... was one that she never tried to analyze. When he was not with her she thought of him tenderly, romantically. This was perhaps due to the photograph of him on her mantel. There was a dash about the picture rather lacking in the original, for it was a profile, and in it the young man's longish hair, worn pompadour, the slight thrust forward of the head, the arch of the ...
— The Amazing Interlude • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... told me that—that you loved another girl,' she said, her elbow leaning on the mantel, her ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... in the room until I was weary, I thought of trying to divert my mind from the sad thoughts that oppressed it by reading. The one candle which I had lighted failed to sufficiently illuminate the room. Advancing to the mantel-piece to light the second candle which stood there, I noticed the unfinished letter to my mother lying where I had placed it, when Miss Dunross's servant first presented herself before me. Having lighted the second candle, I took up the letter to ...
— The Two Destinies • Wilkie Collins
... was a square walnut piano, which Elinor hated because she had to sit there three hours each day, slipping on the top of the horsehair-covered stool, to practice. In cold weather her German governess sat in the frigid room, with a shawl and mittens, waiting until the onyx clock on the mantel-piece showed that the three ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... my life watching people die, not of their disease, but of another bad and incurable complaint—the want of money," said the doctor. "How often it happens that so far from taking a fee, I am obliged to leave a five-franc piece on the mantel-shelf when I go—" ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... of the middle-classes—readin' solely for marks. Not a scholar in the whole school,'" McTurk quoted, pensively boring holes in the mantel-piece with a ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... he said, "but the only thing I could see or think about was our old family clock which they had stuck on top of the pile, half tipped over. It looked odd and I wanted to set it up straight. It was the clock we bought when we were married, and we'd had it about twenty years on the mantel in the livin'-room. It was a good clock," ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... Judge took down his fiddle, And put his feet on the stove, And heaved a sigh from his middle That might have been fat, or love; He leaned his head on the mantel, And bent his ear to the strings, And the tender chords awakened The echoes ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... that somehow wasn't quite fair. "Come and sit down. We'll leave the lights for a bit, and then we needn't draw the curtains: it's such a perfect evening." She spoke quite naturally now, standing by the side of the wide fireplace with one hand resting on the mantel. The soft evening air strayed in at the open windows, and the little pile of aromatic embers on the hearth ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... belt with gold in it. In later years he had what he calls a keyster, a metal box with lock and key where he keeps paper money. He is not a miser; he pays bills promptly and gives generously. The keyster was never hidden. It might be left on the table or mantel or, because of its weight, it might be used as a door prop. So far as I know, no one ever cheated him, and surely no one had the nerve to try to take it ...
— David Lannarck, Midget - An Adventure Story • George S. Harney
... volume has for its subject the fireplace rather than the mantel, little need be said regarding the latter outward form, though there is no doubt that a whole book on the subject might profitably be written. To touch upon the subject as lightly as space will permit, we can probably do no better than to suggest the obvious type of mantel ...
— Making a Fireplace • Henry H. Saylor
... belonging to Mrs. Shirril and their servant rested together on the deer's prongs over the mantel, and, to reach them, one must expose himself to another ...
— The Great Cattle Trail • Edward S. Ellis
... the fire got lower and lower; and still Melchior sat, with his eyes fixed on a dirty old print, that had hung above the mantel-piece for years, sipping his 'brew,' which was fast getting cold. The print represented an old man in a light costume, with a scythe in one hand, and an hour-glass in the other; and underneath the picture in flourishing capitals ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book II - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... contrasted with their present unhappy associations, affords a sad subject for reflection and "this little boy can stop till morning in our room up-stairs," said she, looking up at an old Connecticut clock that adorned the mantel-piece. ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... furniture was of the spidery fashion which ruled when the "first gentleman" held the reins; thin hard sofas and scanty draperies were supplemented by Persian rugs and showy cushions, while various specimens of doubtful china crowded the mantel-piece and consoles. Mrs. Ormonde was quite innocent of original taste, but was a quick, industrious imitator, while of comfortable chairs she was a most ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... the sunshine of late afternoon that sent his shadow a full rod before him, and he stepped upon the narrow platform before the kitchen door, and stood there a minute listening. He heard the mantel clock in the living-room ticking with the resonance given by a room empty of all other sound. Because his ears were keen, he heard also the little alarm clock in the kitchen tick-tick-tick on the shelf behind the stove where ...
— Jean of the Lazy A • B. M. Bower
... seems most impressive. It is the bedroom of Charles XIV. (Marshal Bernadotte), which has remained unchanged and unused since the time of his death, his old campaign cloak of Swedish blue still lying upon the bed. The clock upon the mantel-piece significantly points to the hour and minute of his death. The life and remarkable career of the dead king flashes across the memory as we stand for a moment beside these suggestive tokens of personal wear. We recall how he began life ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... arrangement; they had discussed locations for chairs and had argued over pictures. Both tired out with a day of effort, they had come near tears in a verbal battle over the best place for the sole article remaining unplaced. Gloria wanted it in the hallway; Mrs. Gaynor pleaded for it over the mantel in the living-room. Finally it was Gloria who cried ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... "swimming sound" floated through the room. It was the clock upon the mantel sending out tones of time-hours. I looked up. It was eleven of the clock. "I must have fallen asleep," I thought, and threw off the folds of a shawl which I surely left on the sofa over there when I seated ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 60, October 1862 • Various
... a broad-shouldered, bull-necked young man, who leaned against the marble mantel-piece, turning over the pages of an almanac, and taking from time to time a stealthy peep over the top of it at the toilers around him. Command was imprinted in every line of his strong, square-set face and erect, powerful frame. Above the medium ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... and listened. Not a sound. The silence was unbearable. She sprang to her feet in a moment's fierce rebellion against the crime of such an infamous attack. A roused lioness, she leaped to the mantel to ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon
... The onyx marble mantel-piece contained but a single ornament—an orchestra. A coral vase contained a large and perfect tiger lily, made of gold. Each stamen supported a tiny figure carved out of ivory, holding a musical ...
— Mizora: A Prophecy - A MSS. Found Among the Private Papers of the Princess Vera Zarovitch • Mary E. Bradley
... small earthenware jar from a side shelf, dusted it carefully and placed it upon the mantel. From a knotted cloth about her neck she took a ruble and dropped the coin into the jar. Big Ivan looked ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... gilded French clock on the mantel-piece at the far end of the room announced the hour as being a quarter to twelve. Emile stooped down to pick up his sombrero which had tumbled off a chair on to the floor, when he remained with outstretched hand, arrested by the sound of a woman's voice which came through ...
— The Hippodrome • Rachel Hayward
... his hand toward the wine: she set it within his reach, and resumed her place, one arm resting on the mantel-shelf, looking down at him. There was only that sorrowful pity in her face with which any large-hearted, healthy woman would look at ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... his private library, consisting chiefly of the statutes at large, Hansard, the Annual Register, Parliamentary Reports, and legal treatises on the powers and duties of justices of the peace. A portrait of his mother is over the mantel-piece: opposite it a huge map of the county. His correspondence on public business with the secretary of state, and the various authorities of the shire, is admirably arranged: for the duke was what is called an excellent ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... nicer and cleaner, uncle, and answer the same purpose. There's one on the mantel-shelf. ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 9. - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 26, 1850 • Various
... irresistible Amaury had not chanced to cross her path. Amaury was a drawing-room poet, one of those fanatics in dress coat and grey kid gloves, who between ten o'clock and midnight, go and recite to the world their ecstasies of love, their raptures, their despair, leaning mournfully against the mantel-piece, in the blaze of the lights, while seated around him women, in full evening dress, listen entranced ...
— Artists' Wives • Alphonse Daudet
... smoking-jacket had banished them all from the room long ago; had banished himself, for that matter. In his place was a tall, debonair, and rather dangerously handsome man to whom six o'clock spelled evening clothes. The kind of a man who can lean up against a mantel, or propose a toast, or give an order to a man-servant, or whisper a gallant speech in a lady's ear with equal ease. The shabby old house on Calumet Avenue was transformed into a brocaded and chandeliered rendezvous for the brilliance of the city. Beauty was there, and wit. But ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... bronze and plaster poet of France. Cheek by jowl with Rosseau, (their squabbles are forgotten in the roll of fame), you see him perched on mantel, bracket, ecritoire, and bookcase: in short, their effigies are as common as the plaster figures of Shakspeare and Milton are in England. How far the rising generation of France may profit by their household memorials—or the sardonic and satanic smile of their great poet—we will not pretend ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 384, Saturday, August 8, 1829. • Various
... came to the room by the open windows, and your mamma was standing up, with her back to me, and leaning on the mantel-piece, with her face in her handkerchief; and the Doctor was standing up too, only his back was to the fireplace; and when he saw me, he made me a sign to go away, ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... mantel-piece, a place where keys (claves) are kept, a shelf for keys. Holmen-clavel, an inn on Blagdon hill, so called from having a large holm-beam supporting ...
— A Glossary of Provincial Words & Phrases in use in Somersetshire • Wadham Pigott Williams
... generous frame of mind, and walked from room to room praising the excellence of everything, including a little gingerbread mantel in the dining-room, in which the fireplace had been set crooked,—from being done in the dark, perhaps,—the concrete backyard, with its clothesline pole, the decorated ceilings, the precipitous park opposite that was presently ...
— The Van Dwellers - A Strenuous Quest for a Home • Albert Bigelow Paine
... by a latticed window; she seated herself and took up her sewing, watching him where he stood before the fireplace fussing over a little mantel clock—a gilt and ebony affair of the consulate, shaped like a lyre, the pendulum being also the clock itself and containing the ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers
... the other side of the fireplace, and it seemed to me that father's crayon enlargement over the mantel shook its head ...
— Where There's A Will • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... one of her earliest characteristics, and the young spring flowers of New England, in their airy delicacy and fragility, were much like herself; and so strong seemed the affinity between them, that not only Mrs. Pennel's best India china vases on the keeping-room mantel were filled, but here stood a tumbler of scarlet rock columbine, and there a bowl of blue and white violets, and in another place a saucer of shell-tinted crowfoot, blue liverwort, and white anemone, so that Zephaniah Pennel was wont to say there ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... nothing of this rug, which Neptune thought was purchased for him, nor of the bright red carpet, nor of the nice china candlesticks on the mantel-piece, (which could not be reached without a step-ladder,) nor of the silver urn, which was Mrs. Moore's great-grandmother's, nor of the lard-lamp which lit up every thing astonishingly, because ...
— Aunt Phillis's Cabin - Or, Southern Life As It Is • Mary H. Eastman
... satisfaction about the long, low room, wainscoted in vari-colored books, its great old-fashioned fireplace filled with fragrant pine-boughs, and overhung by a portrait in an oval frame of a dim gentleman in a stock; the mantel crowded with pipes, a punching-bag and dumb-bells in one end of the room, in the other an old square piano, open and inviting, showing evidence of constant use; shabby, comfortable chairs; a large desk with many ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... thrust into greased laced boots, and a black cotton shirt open on a chest and throat like pink marble. And David supported his lanky length, in a careless and dust-colored garb, with a capacious hand on the oak beam of the mantel. ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... home! It was for this that she had exchanged the virginal integrity of her life at Mrs. McKee's—for this wind-swept little house, tidily ugly, infinitely lonely. There were two crayon enlargements over the mantel. One was Schwitter, evidently. The other was the paper-doll wife. K. wondered what curious instinct of self-abnegation had caused Tillie to leave the wife there undisturbed. Back of its position of honor ...
— K • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... great fire of birch-logs was blazing in the living-room, and Darragh stood there, his elbow on the rough stone mantel-shelf. ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert Chambers
... which was lighted only by high windows in front. The mighty hearth, inclosed by settles, was like a roseate side-chamber to the hall. Outside of this the stone-paved floor spread away unevenly. She turned her eyes from the arms of La Tour over the mantel to trace seamed and footworn flags, and noticed in the distant corner, at the bottom of the stairs, that they gave way to a trapdoor of timbers. This was fastened down with iron bars, and had a huge ring for its handle. Her eyes rested on it in ...
— The Lady of Fort St. John • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... Dexter drew a cigar out from a vest pocket, as he stood leaning against a decaying mantel, and lighted it. This imitation of a man smoked in silence for a few moments, during which Prescott did not offer ...
— The Grammar School Boys of Gridley - or, Dick & Co. Start Things Moving • H. Irving Hancock
... ticks of the clock on the mantel-piece seemed like a hammer beating on her ears. Dolores thought of the morning's flat denial of all intercourse with Flinders! Then the word give occurred to her as a loophole, and her mind did not embrace all the consequences of the denial, she only saw one thing at a time, 'I didn't give it,' ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the character of the man had had upon the customary furniture of the Hospital, and how much of individuality he had given to that general type. There was a shelf of books, and a row of them on the mantel-piece; works of political economy, they appeared to be, statistics and things of that sort; very dry reading, with which, however, Middleton's experience as a politician had made him acquainted. Besides there were a few works on local antiquities, a county-history borrowed ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... indorse my dictum that theirs is the only true happiness. If a home is happy it cannot fit too close—let the dresser collapse and become a billiard table; let the mantel turn to a rowing machine, the escritoire to a spare bedchamber, the washstand to an upright piano; let the four walls come together, if they will, so you and your Delia are between. But if home be the ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... jeder prismatische Krper, der zwei kongruente und parallele Kreise zu Grundflchen hat und dessen Seitenflche (Mantel) eine einzige solche krumme Flche ist, deren smmtliche mit der Grundflche parallele Durchschnitte ...
— German Science Reader - An Introduction to Scientific German, for Students of - Physics, Chemistry and Engineering • Charles F. Kroeh
... a cabinet fortygraph of him for the cabin mantel-piece, Jack," continued the wily father. "He gave it to me o' purpose. She'll see that when she won't see the clerk, an' by-and-bye she'll fall into our way of thinking. Anyway, she's going to stay here till ...
— Many Cargoes • W.W. Jacobs
... of the world—appeared to startle my aunt. She said, "I will do what I can, Drusilla, to please you," with a look of surprise, which was at once instructive and terrible to see. Not a moment was to be lost. The clock on the mantel-piece informed me that I had just time to hurry home; to provide myself with a first series of selected readings (say a dozen only); and to return in time to meet the lawyer, and witness Lady Verinder's Will. Promising faithfully to be back by ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... hall. Time was when this was a fine house harboring wealth and refinement. It has neither now. In the old parlor downstairs a knot of hard-faced men and women sit on benches about a deal table, playing cards. They have a jug between them, from which they drink by turns. On the stump of a mantel-shelf a lamp burns before a rude print of the Mother of God. No one pays any heed to the hand-organ man and his wife as they climb to their attic. There is a colony of them up ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... fought in the Revolution, and another of his mother—this last by Rembrandt Peale—a dear old lady with the face of a saint framed in a head of gray hair, the whole surmounted by a cluster of silvery curls. There were quaint brass candelabra with square marble bases on each end of the mantel, holding candles showing burnt wicks in the day time and cheery lights at night; and a red carpet covering both rooms and red table covers and red damask curtains, and a lounge with a red afghan thrown over ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... matters to look after," he said. "I thought I might get down before he went." A deep leathern arm-chair stood before the hearth where the young rector had been sitting, with the ladies at either corner of the mantel; Northwick let himself sink into it, and with a glance at the face of the faintly ticking clock on the black marble shelf before him, he added casually, "I must get an early train for Ponkwasset in the morning, and I still have some things to put ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... was charming, mainly because of the quantity of flowering plants. Every window was filled with them, until the room seemed like a conservatory. Ivy, too, climbed over the pictures, and the mantel-shelf was a cascade of wandering Jew, ...
— The Yates Pride • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... enthroned still upon that funeral couch, as upon a velvet armchair; he had not abdicated one title of his majesty. God, who had not punished him, cannot, will not punish me, who have done nothing." A strange sound attracted the young man's attention. He looked round him, and saw on the mantel-shelf, just below an enormous crucifix, coarsely painted in fresco on the wall, a rat of enormous size engaged in nibbling a piece of dry bread, but fixing all the time, an intelligent and inquiring look upon the new occupant of the cell. The king could not ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... apartment, with low ceiling, a small hearthstone and an immense bedstead with tester and outer coverings of flowered chintz. The light from the two small candles upon the high mantel-shelf were dimmed by the greater light ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... pointed to the paternal turnip, which hung over the mantel, and showed her that old Time was ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 22, August 27, 1870 • Various
... nondescript French style, a mixture of periods, with heavy olive-green curtains at the windows shutting out most of the light, and pale cotton brocade on the modern Louis Seize chairs. A plaster bust of Voltaire on the mantel-piece was flanked by Louis Philippe candlesticks, the whole reflected in a gilt-framed mirror extending to the ceiling. Across the middle of the room stretched a reproduction Louis Quinze table with ormolu mounts, and on it were stacked regular piles of magazines, French and English. Everything was ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... to damp his ardour for work. He unpacked his few precious books and laid them on the shelf; he hung up the likenesses of his father and mother over the chimney-piece; he produced the cheese which the latter had insisted on his bringing with him, and, as a crowning-effect, set me up on the mantel-shelf with as much pride as if I had been ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... flax, helping old Anita with the dinner for the men, seeing about the number of new palings for the garden. She had swept every inch of the deep adobe house, had fixed over the arrangement of Indian baskets on the mantel, had filled all the lamps with coal-oil. She was very careful with the lamps, trimming the wicks to smokeless perfection, for oil was scarce and precious in Lost Valley, as were all outside products, since they must come in at long intervals ...
— Tharon of Lost Valley • Vingie E. Roe
... from her posture of anxiety and terror, grasps a powder horn from over the mantel piece, jerks out the stopple with her teeth, and holding it over the fire, ...
— Shadows of Shasta • Joaquin Miller
... pictures on the walls, but they were all hung crookedly; the curtain at the window was unlooped, and you could write your name anywhere in the dust that covered mantel, ...
— Gypsy Breynton • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... lady. And please warn her that she must stay at most only half an hour by that clock over there on the mantel." ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips
... had turned himself to gold; the usurer, whom his victims (his clients, as he styled them) were wont to call Daddy Gobseck, perhaps ironically, perhaps by way of antiphrasis. He was sitting in his armchair, motionless as a statue, staring fixedly at the mantel-shelf, where he seemed to read the figures of his statements. A lamp, with a pedestal that had once been green, was burning in the room; but so far from taking color from its smoky light, his face seemed to stand out positively paler against the background. He pointed to a chair ...
— Gobseck • Honore de Balzac
... and his reasoning process seemed at length fully to satisfy him, for his countenance gradually cleared, and a triumphant smile passed across it. "A lie,—certainly a palpable and gross lie; lie it must and shall be. Never will I accept it as truth. Father" (looking full at the portrait over the mantel-shelf), "Father, fear not—never—never!" ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... he was left alone in his room was to don his uniform, his next to take out of his pocket the certified copy of the marriage contract of his parents which had been made for him by the Notary d'Aguilhe. He conned it a minute, standing by the Louis XIV. mantel, which may still be seen in that house, and sought but his mother's name. "Dame Catherine Lanier," it read. He drew out his little inkstand and quill, and, seizing a scrap of paper, tried some marks ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... opens, and you see a farmhouse kitchen, just as Mother Goose promised. At the back, opposite to you, is a fire-place, with a mantel shelf over it. A bright fire is burning. On the mantel is a lamp, lighted, and an unlighted candle; also some other things that you'll hear about later. There is a cupboard against the back wall. At one side of the room is the door leading out of doors; beside it is a large wood box, where the ...
— The Christmas Dinner • Shepherd Knapp
... the door of the Cottage in a state of hurry and excitement; but the empty kitchen seemed to act on it like a sort of emotional cold douche. The varnished walls, the neatly set chairs, the clock ticking so loudly above the mantel-shelf, all seemed somehow unnatural, with the unnaturalness of empty houses where steps go echoing—echoing—though ...
— The Privet Hedge • J. E. Buckrose
... called Fulham House. It stands back on the east side of the road behind a wall. Some of the carving on the fireplaces and doors is very elaborate. In a large room upstairs a sumptuously carved wooden mantel encloses a coloured marble block with a white marble centre. The door of this room is also very fine. The cellars are extraordinarily large and massively built. This used to be called Stourton House. Faulkner mentions that in ...
— Hammersmith, Fulham and Putney - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... self-sacrifices furnished it. Elizabeth's lay hallowed to her. It was her Place Beautiful. There was a pale, striped paper on the sacred walls, and on the floor an ingrain carpet, dully blue. At the windows were ruffled white curtains—the ruffles and sheer lengths of lawn had lain long in her dreams. The mantel-piece held a row of shells, their delicate pink linings showing, and on either end china vases filled with sprays of plumy grass. Above was the marriage certificate, neatly framed. On the centre-table were sundry piteous ornaments, deeply rooted ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various
... mean?" he asked, rising suddenly from his seat as pale as ashes, and clinging to the mantel-shelf for support ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... we steel ourselves to deny there are any on the premises," said Miss Broadwood, seating herself on a low stool by Hamilton's chair and leaning back against the mantel. "Have you seen Helen, and has she told you the ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... them. The elegant little clock on the mantel-piece had struck "eleven with its silver sounds," and the watchman was beginning to be heard at a distance telling the same tale, before Mr Elliot or any of them seemed to feel that he ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... outen de shanty at night, he keep he eyes wide open, you may be shore. By day he eyes 'bout de size ob butter-pats, an' come sundown he eyes 'bout de size ob saucers; but whin he go outer de shanty at night, he eyes am de size ob de white chiny plate whut set on de mantel; an' it powerful hard to keep eyes whut am de size ob dat ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various
... know," said the man then, dully, as he turned, rested his arm on the mantel behind him, and half shielded his face with ...
— Miss Billy's Decision • Eleanor H. Porter
... their calm domestic bower, They sat together. He in manhood's prime And she a matron in her fullest flower. The mantel clock gave forth a warning chime. She put her work aside; his bright cigar Grew pale, and crumbled in an ashen heap. The lights went out, save one remaining star That watched beside the children ...
— Poems of Cheer • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... up-to-dateness here stops abruptly; the salle a manger is bare and uninviting, and the rooms above equally so, and the electric light has not penetrated beyond the ground floor. Instead one finds ranged on the mantel, above the cook-stove in the kitchen, a regiment of candlesticks, in strange contrast to the rest of the furnishings. Electric bells, too, are wanting, and there is still found the row of jangling grelots, their numbers half-obliterated, hanging ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
... Foresters had set about it with great seriousness. Their surroundings may have had something to do with this, for their papers were spread out on the leather-covered table in the directors' room at the bank, immediately under the eye of a former president, whose portrait hung over the mantel-piece, while the large-faced clock on the wall gave forth ...
— Mr. Pat's Little Girl - A Story of the Arden Foresters • Mary F. Leonard
... the carpet, the mantel-piece were encumbered, almost buried under a heterogeneous mass of things. Muslin petticoats, tossed down haphazard, pieces of lace, a cardboard helmet covered with gilt paper, open jewel-cases, bows of ribbon; curling-tongs, half hidden in the ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz
... remember what we were telling about last night when that little tongue told us to stop? The little tongue in the Clock-with-the-Wise-Face on the mantel? ...
— Seven O'Clock Stories • Robert Gordon Anderson
... stowed. On the other was a built-in bunk. The walls had been papered with old charts, and he saw that most of them were of the New York-New Jersey area. A ship's lantern, wired for electricity, hung so low that it almost brushed Scotty's head. Ship models lined the mantel. ...
— Smugglers' Reef • John Blaine
... chairs. Evidently he had not expected to have so bright a light turned upon him, and he frowned and looked anxious as he met the General's keen eyes; but his face softened and wore a gracious expression as he thanked his protector. When the latter placed the bottle and glass on the mantel-shelf, the stranger's eyes flashed out on him again; and when he spoke, it was in musical tones with no sign of the previous guttural convulsion, though his voice was still unsteady ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... archives of the American stage. If Hahn & Lohman prided themselves on one thing more than on another, it was the lavish generosity with which they invested a play, from costumes to carpets. A period play was a period play when they presented it. You never saw a French clock on a Dutch mantel in a Hahn & Lohman production. No hybrid hangings marred their back drop. No matter what the play, the firm provided its furnishings from the star's slippers to the chandeliers. Did a play last a year or a week, at the end of its run furniture, ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... furniture consisted of a mahogany sideboard, table, and chairs,—ponderous in pattern; and a series of family portraits, in a sprawling style of art, smirked and postured on the wall. The floor was bare, but shone by reason of repeated scrubbing, and the black mantel-piece was a fine specimen of colonial carving ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... love him so. He is so precious, and his sorrow is so sacred, that I am hardly willing to let strangers pity him, ever so tenderly. When he was a baby he sprang out of mamma's lap, one day, as she was reaching up to take something from the mantel piece. He fell on the andiron-head and injured his spine so that he could never walk. He is twenty years old now; his head and chest and arms are about as large as those of a boy of sixteen, but all the rest of his poor body is shrunken and withered; he ...
— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson
... gold, and the shelves for books which lined the walls were likewise of oak, richly carved. In the centre of the wall facing the windows was a massive and elaborately designed oak chimney-piece, reaching up to the ceiling, and having in the middle panel over the mantel a fine three-quarter length portrait of George Washington. The room was furnished sumptuously yet quietly, and fully in keeping with the rich collection of classic and modern authors that filled the bookcases, and in corners here and there stood pedestals with marble busts ...
— The Lion and The Mouse - A Story Of American Life • Charles Klein
... this case a room redeemed by an upright piano with a green-silk-and-gold-lace-shaded floor lamp glowing by. Two gilt-framed photographs and a cluster of ivory knickknacks on the white mantel. A heap of handmade cushions. Art editions of the gift poets and some circulating-library novels. A fireside chair, privately owned and drawn up, ironically enough, beside the gilded radiator, its headrest worn from kindly service ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... Kirby strode across to the fireplace, muttering to himself, and stood there, an arm on the mantel, nervously stirring up the dead ashes with one foot. Plainly enough the events of the night had overcome all his boasted self-control, his gambler's coolness, and the real underlying brutality of his nature demanded expression. ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... waves thin hearty Jack Larsen iv th' Amalgamated Copper Yacht Club. 'What ho?' says he. 'If we're goin' to have a race,' he says, 'shiver me timbers if I don't look up th' law,' he says. So he become a yachtsman. 'But,' says th' Noo York la-ads, thim that has th' Cup on their mantel-piece, 'Ye can race on'y on two conditions.' 'What ar-re they?' says Larsen. 'Th' first is that ye become a mimber iv our club.' 'With pleasure,' says he. 'Ye can't,' says they. 'An' havin' complied with this ...
— Mr. Dooley's Philosophy • Finley Peter Dunne
... Tom went on, waxing bolder and more confidential, "If I were to take to moping by myself, I shouldn't read as you or any sensible fellow would do; I know that well enough. I should just begin, sitting with my legs upon the mantel-piece, and looking into my own inside. I see you are laughing, but you know what ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... reputation very dear to him—depended on it. And if cook would do it for sixpence, he must find sixpence. By fair means or foul it must be done. He'd tried fair means, and there only remained foul. He went softly downstairs to the dining-room, where, upon the mantel-piece, reposed the missionary-box. He'd tell someone next day, or put it back, or something. Anyway, people did worse things than that in the pictures. With a knife from the table he extracted the contents—three-halfpence! He ...
— More William • Richmal Crompton
... chairs were placed, the darkened parlor, the faded flowers on the mantel-piece, and the brooding silence said it—said ...
— Daisy's Necklace - And What Came of It • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... the test upon the "Connoisseurs" and cut away everything on the right beyond a line through the farther support of the mantel. This will place the statue in the exact centre. In this shape the picture composes well. In re-adding this space however the centre is shifted leaving the statue and two figures hanging to one side but close to the pivot and demanding more balance in this added ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore
... some common wood and painted brown, the sofa was covered with chintz to match the window-curtains, and there was a pale blue paper on the walls. For ornaments, there were two or three pictures on the walls, and on the mantel-piece a great many curious shells and a quaint old vase or two. There was a bookcase of some dark wood in the corner, which was well filled with books, whose bindings were plain and dark, not to say dingy. There were few of Christie's favourites among them; so that the charm of the room did ...
— Christie Redfern's Troubles • Margaret Robertson
... table filled the centre of the room. One end formed the press censorship bureau, for it was part of the province of the station to censor and stamp letters going out. The other end was the dining table. Over the fireplace on the mantel was a baby's shoe, a little brown shoe picked up on the street of a ...
— Kings, Queens And Pawns - An American Woman at the Front • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... the contemplation of the picture. From this, however, my attention was quickly diverted by a paper that lay on the mantel. A single glance was sufficient to put my blood into motion. I started and laid my hand upon the well-known packet. It was that which enclosed ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... drawing-room. In the moments before she appeared, I sat ill at ease, my eyes taking in every detail of the well-ordered room, the cool gray walls, the family portraits, the old-fashioned ornaments upon table and mantel, aware, in spite of myself, that I was warm at the collar, impatient for the interview to begin, yet ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... quart glass fruit jar, and bought a cork to fit it for a few cents. He could not get a solid bar of zinc, but had a piece of zinc folded which answered the purpose. Then following the rest of the directions, he placed the jar on the mantel-piece. The next day; the formations began, ...
— Harper's Young People, September 28, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... went first was such as one would have expected to find in the abode of a young bachelor. Into the frame of the mirror over the fireplace a score of ancient invitations were stuck. Some heavy silver photo frames stood on the mantel-piece, while in the corner a bag of golf clubs and two or three pairs of boxing gloves gave an indication of their owner's tastes. The room was spotlessly clean, and with the sun shining cheerfully in at the window it seemed impossible to believe that it had been empty for ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile |
