"Mantelpiece" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... for the fact that, while designed on current European models, they are proportioned in size to the Imperial dignity, so that a Dutch "grandfather" becomes a wardrobe, and the box-clock of the European mantelpiece a cupboard that has to be set on the floor. At the end of this avenue of time-pieces a European double-bed with a bright silk quilt covered with Nottingham lace stood majestically on ...
— In Morocco • Edith Wharton
... back to the window. Her supper of bread and milk was half finished, her hat lay upon the table. A book was upon her lap as though she had started to read only to find it slip through her fingers. He stood with his elbow upon the mantelpiece, looking down at her. Her eyelashes, long and silky, were more beautiful than ever now that her eyes were closed. Her complexion, pale though she was, seemed more the creamy pallor of some southern race than the whiteness of ill-health. The bodice of her dress ...
— Havoc • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... forty-eight hours two events—seemingly nowise related or bearing one upon the other—occurred. An ornately framed photograph lately bestowed as a gift and treasured as a trophy of sentimental value mysteriously vanished from the mantelpiece of the front room of Ophelia Stubblefield's pa's house; and Jefferson Poindexter, carrying a new and very shiny suitcase, unostentatiously left town late at night on ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... that time I was—as I am still—fond of lying at full length on a thick hearthrug before a good fire. One evening as I was lying in this way and we were alone, A. crossed the room to reach a bangle from the mantelpiece. Instead of reaching over me, she playfully stepped upon my body, saying that she would show me how the hay and straw felt. Naturally I fell in with the joke and laughed. After standing upon me a few moments she raised her skirt slightly and, holding on to ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... panelled and furnished with the plainest wood. His bed was in the alcove at the back; the only ornament was the portrait of his wife, a dark, Italian-looking woman, which hung surrounded by guns, pistols, and swords, over the low stone mantelpiece. It was just midnight, but Monsieur Joseph was not in bed. He looked a quaint figure, in a dressing-gown and a tasselled night-cap, and he sat at the table writing a long letter. He started when Riette touched the door, and Angelot saw that his hand moved mechanically ...
— Angelot - A Story of the First Empire • Eleanor Price
... "this will be a small room, and over the mantelpiece is a little round picture of ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett
... cup and saucer which had been bought for herself at Beacon Hill Fair half a century ago. She wiped the glass dome that covered the basket of artificial fruit, she screwed up the "banner-screen" that projected from the mantelpiece, she straightened out the bead mat on which the stereoscope stood, and at last surveyed the room with an expression of complete ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... and with his thin sensitive lips twitching humorously, watched in the glass over the mantelpiece Mr Verloc backing out of the room heavily, hat and stick in hand. The ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... Methought perchance a rival had been here," and, picking it up, Charlie amused himself with putting it on the head of a little Psyche which ornamented the mantelpiece, softly singing as he did so, another verse ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... springs on each side and one in the middle, into a sort of wheel-spoke candelabrum. He found the spring, pressed it, and laughed weakly. He rose from his chair and inspected a picture on the wall, then moved on to another picture, the mess watching him without a word. When he came to the mantelpiece he shook his head and seemed distressed. A piece of plate representing a mounted hussar in full uniform caught his eye. He pointed to it, and then to the mantelpiece with inquiry in ...
— This is "Part II" of Soldiers Three, we don't have "Part I" • Rudyard Kipling
... hither and thither, removing trays, pulling chairs into place, fussing and pattering about, until a maid came in noiselessly, bearing a lamp. She pulled down the shades, drew the sad-coloured curtains, went to the mantelpiece and peered at the clock, then brought a wineglass and a spoon to Siward, and measured the dose in silence. He swallowed it, shrugged, permitted her to change the position of his chair and footstool, and nodded thanks ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... down to the library. As she kept the lock well oiled she entered noiselessly, and then locking the door behind her lighted a candle and commenced her search. On the fifth night she was rewarded by finding that the center of what looked like a solidly carved flower in the ornamentation of the mantelpiece gave way under the pressure of her finger, and at the same moment she heard a slight click. Beyond this nothing was apparent; and after trying everything within reach she came to the conclusion that it needed a second spring to be touched to ...
— One of the 28th • G. A. Henty
... at the climax of his fame, when he had won a sure immortality; simple and childlike, and with a child's unshamed acceptance of any money one might leave behind on the mantelpiece. He seems to have made very little by his verses. He spoke English quite well, having probably acquired it when teaching French; and he was perhaps more proud of it than of his poems. Mr. Moore says he wished to translate Tennyson. He read aloud a poem he had just written in celebration ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... what, such being the case, she should do with it: should she put it quite away—where it wouldn't be there to offend? On this Miss Overmore again cast about; after which she said unexpectedly: "Put it on the schoolroom mantelpiece." ...
— What Maisie Knew • Henry James
... and the old gentleman determined to get the start of us by sounding his greeting to the family before we were out of our rooms. Then came a race for the chimney corner; all the stockings came down quicker than they had gone up. What could not be contained in them was disposed upon the mantelpiece, or elsewhere. I remember that I once received an autograph letter from Santa Claus, full of good counsels; and our colored cook told me that she awoke in the night and, peeping into the kitchen, actually saw the veritable old visitor ...
— Christmas - Its Origin, Celebration and Significance as Related in Prose and Verse • Various
... silly,' said the Cat, taking a walk along the high wooden mantelpiece, 'any one would think you didn't like me ...
— The Magic World • Edith Nesbit
... his arms she steadied herself with a hand on the mantelpiece, the room blurred, no breath left her for speech. For a moment the place was noiseless save for the small, friendly sounds of the fire. Then she asked the woman's ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... rising and going to the mantelpiece, "you may be interested to have a look at the so-called 'waeful dagger.' Young Jarnock was kind enough to present it to me, as a little memento ...
— Carnacki, The Ghost Finder • William Hope Hodgson
... chin and lips (which were also of rather a curious hue), bald-headed, bold yet shifty-eyed, also clad in black, with a band of crape like to that of a Victorian mute, about his shining tall hat, he leaned against the florid, marble mantelpiece, a huge obese blot upon its whiteness. They were a queer contrast, as dissimilar perhaps as two human ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... swallow was brought in, all huddled and shivering; and although she was a little afraid at first, she soon got warmed up and sat on the edge of the mantelpiece ...
— The Story of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting
... him, then quietly slips away by the door under the staircase. BILL turns to speak to her, and sees that she has gone. He walks up to the fireplace, and grips the mantelpiece. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... they had a poison like sugar to the taste and to the smell, impossible to discover in food—a poison that would kill slowly or quickly as the poisoner willed and would leave no trace behind; he knew the secret of the poisoned key that lay always on the pope's mantelpiece, so that when His Holiness wished to destroy some one of his intimates, he bade him open a certain cupboard: on the handle of the key there was a little spike, and as the lock of the cupboard turned stiffly the hand would naturally press, the lock would yield, and nothing would have come of it ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... lively, impatient tune, then strode towards the fireplace and rang the bell; then stared again at the parson; and that gentleman having courteously laid down the newspaper, the traveller seized it, threw himself into a chair, flung one of his legs over the table, tossed the other up on the mantelpiece, and began reading the paper, while he tilted the chair on its hind-legs with so daring a disregard to the ordinary position of chairs and their occupants, that the shuddering parson expected every moment to see him come down on the back ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of it!" he added, his face brightening. "There's a shell in Mr. Scraper's parlour, on the mantelpiece, and sometimes when he goes to sleep I can get it for a minute, and hold it to my ear, and then I hear the sound, the sound ...
— Nautilus • Laura E. Richards
... mostly of materials which can be produced in Scotland. And in this direction, we can see a set of beautiful mantelpieces and fenders, from Sheffield, all decorated in the most elegant manner. The first mantelpiece we must look at is made of cast-iron; the mouldings of the cornice are richly ornamented, and supported by little pillars covered with graceful wreaths of oak-leaves, while the freize is adorned with a cluster of rich fruit. The next mantelpiece is painted white and ...
— The World's Fair • Anonymous
... century previous, the first person of the opposite sex seen in the morning was the observer's valentine. We find Madam Pepys lying in bed for a long time one St. Valentine's morning with eyes tightly closed, lest she see one of the painters who was gilding her new mantelpiece, and be forced to have him for her valentine. Anna means, doubtless, that the first person she chanced to see that morning was "an ...
— Diary of Anna Green Winslow - A Boston School Girl of 1771 • Anna Green Winslow
... blonde on the mantelpiece?" she asked, in the conversational tone of one who but passed ...
— At Home with the Jardines • Lilian Bell
... quiet, for the doctor's assistant who had brought him back to life, and who lay upon a couch at the further end of the room, slept the sleep of youth and complete exhaustion. Only an eight-day clock on the mantelpiece ticked in that solemn and aggressive way which clocks affect in the stillness. Geoffrey strained his eyes to make out the time, and finally discovered that it wanted a few minutes to six o'clock. Then he fell ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... said Patty, "but I think the falcon would be a regular nuisance while I was housekeeping, so I'd put him in the basket, and set it up on the mantelpiece, and keep my ...
— Patty at Home • Carolyn Wells
... was hidden in the carving of the mantelpiece, but she found it at last and gave it a ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... act of lifting a chop from the fire, and, resting the point of his fork against the woodwork of the mantelpiece, ...
— Miss Mehetabel's Son • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... of the premises showed that all the tableware of value had disappeared, along with two rings which Laura had left on the mantelpiece in the living-room. From the kitchen nearly everything used in cooking was gone, and likewise almost everything from the pantry and ...
— Dave Porter At Bear Camp - The Wild Man of Mirror Lake • Edward Stratemeyer
... on, I charged my pipe in the usual way and I looked for the match-box with glances distraught indeed, but exhibiting, I am ready to swear, no signs of a fine frenzy. I was composed enough to perceive after some considerable time the match-box lying there on the mantelpiece right under my nose. And all this was beautifully and safely usual. Before I had thrown down the match my landlady's daughter appeared with her calm, pale face and an inquisitive look, in the doorway. Of late it was the ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... leaned against the mantelpiece in his quarters talking to his wife. They had just returned from some entertainment and Millicent, in beautiful evening dress, lay in a lounge chair watching ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... that never fades has been the dream of poets from Milton's day; but seeing one, who loves it? Our amaranth has the aspect of an artificial flower—stiff, dry, soulless, quite in keeping with the decorations on the average farmhouse mantelpiece. Here it forms the most uncheering of winter bouquets, or a wreath about flowers made from the lifeless hair of ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... vesture, of her glittering earrings, and her massive brooch, as it was the secret of the transformation of the Belcovitch workshop (and living room) into a hall of dazzling light. Four separate gaunt bare arms of iron gas-pipe lifted hymeneal torches. The labels from reels of cotton, pasted above the mantelpiece as indexes of work done, alone betrayed the past and future of the room. At a long narrow table, covered with a white table-cloth spread with rum, gin, biscuits and fruit, and decorated with two wax candles in ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... Beautiful. And the Useful. I found you had no soul. But you were honest, and I liked you. I went so far as to take my meals with your family. I made myself at home in your back parlor. But the vase has been shattered (I do not refer to that on the mantelpiece), and though the scent of the roses may cling to it still, it can be pieced together—nevermore." He shook his hair sadly and shambled out of the shop. Crowl would have gone after him, but Mrs. Crowl was still calling, and ladies ...
— The Big Bow Mystery • I. Zangwill
... dressing-table and ample washing conveniences on each side. A large grate filled with turf, and all ready for lighting, with a peat basket lined with tin, and also filled with the same fuel, reminded us strongly that we were in Ireland. Large wax candles were on the mantelpiece, and every convenience necessary to ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... Kimpsey noticed by the numbers labelled on their backs, were mostly from the circulating library—"David Grieve," "Cometh up as a Flower," "The Earthly Paradise," Ruskin's "Stones of Venice," Marie Corelli's "Romance of Two Worlds." The mantelpiece was arranged in geometrical disorder, but it had a gilt clock under a glass shade precisely in the middle. When the gilt clock indicated, in a mincing way, that Miss Kimpsey had been kept waiting fifteen minutes, Mrs. Bell came in. She had ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)
... cigarettes must be here," said Tussie, going over to the mantelpiece and throwing a look of eager interest ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... courts of the building towards his room, which in truth I found neat and comfortable, with a brisk fire on the hearth, a little tea-table laid out, and over the mantelpiece a drawing of ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... bed she wrote to Owen explaining the whole matter. It was too late in the evening for the postman's visit, and she placed the letter on the mantelpiece to send it ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... grave-yard; and behind for many miles nothing but sombre moors climbing and stretching away. I have heard the winds moaning and wuthering night and morning, among the gravestones, and around the angles of the house; and crossing the threshold, I know by instinct that this mirror will stand over the mantelpiece in the bare room to the left. I know also to whom those four suppressed voices will belong that greet me while yet my hand is on the latch. Four children are within—three girls and a boy—and they are disputing over a box of wooden soldiers. The eldest girl, a plain child with reddish-brown ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... fell off the mantelpiece, the canisters fell off the shelf; the kettle fell off the hob. Tommy Brock put his foot in a ...
— A Collection of Beatrix Potter Stories • Beatrix Potter
... but without luxury. Disordered bed stands L. A screen stands L. I. E., almost hiding Musotte, who lies stretched at length upon a steamer-chair. Beside the bed is a cradle, the head of which is turned up stage. On the mantelpiece and on small tables at R. and L. are vials of medicine, cups, chafing-dish, etc. A table stands, R. I. E. Musotte is sleeping. La Babin and Mme. Flache stand C. ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... really civilised, we are impatient of irrelevance even in dress. Du Maurier was never for a moment conscious that there was in all the rigmarole of Victorian costume and decoration anything redundant. He seemed to take, in decoration for instance, the draped mantelpiece with its bows of ribbons, and pinned fans quite as seriously as Velasquez took the hooped skirt in costume. Artifice is fascinating in those with whom it is natural to be artificial. When du Maurier thought ...
— George Du Maurier, the Satirist of the Victorians • T. Martin Wood
... in an armchair, and Adams stood before her with his back to the mantelpiece and his ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... the roar of the beasts of prey was quite different now, and above all, you lost the certainty that you would win. You were quite glad that the night-lights were in. You even liked Nana to say that this was just the mantelpiece over here, and that the ...
— Peter and Wendy • James Matthew Barrie
... undecorated, but the idea of austerity was banished by a temperature so nearly tropical. There were rows of books on white shelves, a pale Donatello cast on the wall, and two fine bronze vases filled with roses on the mantelpiece. Over the roses hung a portrait in oils, very sleek and very accurate, of a commanding old gentleman in uniform, painted by a well-known German painter, and all about the room were photographs of young women, most of them young mothers, with smooth heads and ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... chair, several rush-bottomed chairs, a very small brass fender, a self-coloured wall-paper of warm green, two or three old engravings in maple-wood or tarnished gilt frames, several small portraits in maple-wood frames, brass candlesticks on the mantelpiece and no clock, self-coloured brown curtains across the windows (two windows opposite each other at either end of the long room), sundry rugs on the dark-stained floor, and so on! Not too much furniture, and not too much symmetry either. An agreeable and original higgledy-piggledyness! ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... berries over the pictures, and the mantelpiece, too, was covered with it. Between the masses of green and the red berries stood the solid, old-fashioned, gilt frames of long ago, the photographs in them becoming yellow with age. Hildeguard turned to them from the portraits on the walls. ...
— Elsie Inglis - The Woman with the Torch • Eva Shaw McLaren
... is to be made out of it as possible. Like the elephants, which can crush a tree or pick up a needle, they conquer a province and they pick a pocket. As soon as a German is quartered in a room he sends for a box and some straw; carefully and methodically packs up the clock on the mantelpiece, and all the stray ornaments which he can lay his hands on; and then, with a tear glistening in his eye for his absent family, directs them either to his mother, his wife, or his lady-love. In vain the proprietor protests; the philosophical ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... of regimentals, worn threadbare by the brush, was carefully hung up in the state bedchamber, and regularly aired the first fair day of every month, and his cocked hat and trusty sword were suspended in grim repose over the parlor mantelpiece, forming supporters to a full-length portrait of the renowned admiral Van Tromp. In his domestic empire he maintained strict discipline, and a well organized despotic government; but though his own will ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... and Henry VIII. After that I gave the man 2s. for his trouble, and went back again. In our going, my landlord carried us through a very old hospital or almshouse, where forty poor people was maintained; a very old foundation; and over the chimney in the mantelpiece was an inscription in brass: "Orate pre anima Thomae Bird," &c.; and the poor box also was on the same chimney-piece, with an iron door and locks to it, into which I put 6d. They brought me a draft of their drink in a brown bowl, tipt with silver, which I drank off, and at the bottom was ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... screams from Val and Fergus, a buffeting of paws, a couple of wild bounds, first on a chair-back, then on the mantelpiece, where, between the bronze candlestick and the vase, the Persian philosopher stood hissing and swearing, while Kunz ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... completed the tale of furniture. The general impression was one of fulness; the low ceiling, and the immense harvest of overblown blue roses which climbed luxuriantly up the walls, intensified this effect. The mantelpiece was crammed with brass ornaments, and there were two complete sets of brass fire-irons in the brass fender. Above the mantelpiece a looking-glass, in a wan frame of bird's-eye maple, with ...
— Helen with the High Hand (2nd ed.) • Arnold Bennett
... and leaned his forehead against the high mantelpiece. I looked out of the window. Anne remained hidden in the corner of the settle. We all, no doubt, had the same feeling that this love-affair was showing itself as something too splendid to be interfered with. Whether or not it ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford
... decently but not richly furnished room, belonging to MARGARET. Table, small writing-desk, chairs, a cupboard, two windows up stage, doors right and left. At rise of curtain, CLEMENT is discovered leaning against mantelpiece, in a very elegant dark gray morning suit, smoking a cigarette and reading a newspaper. MARGARET stands by window, then walks up and down, finally comes behind CLEMENT and runs her hands through his hair. She seems rather restless. CLEMENT goes ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... uglier every minute, and the elder daily became more stupid. Either she answered nothing at all when spoken to, or replied with some idiotic remark. At the same time she was so awkward that she could not set four china vases on the mantelpiece without breaking one of them, nor drink a glass of water without spilling half ...
— Old-Time Stories • Charles Perrault
... thy grave tick tock I heard in my childhood days, In the solemn night, when the fire burned bright, And the lamp cast feeble rays; When grandmother close by the mantelpiece, Sat dozing or knitting, or carding fleece, Or watching the dying blaze; When mother was young and her beautiful hair Had never a silver thread; When her life was fair as her love was rare, In the years that ...
— The Loom of Life • Cotton Noe
... the figure with a sound that was like the falling of an executioner's axe. And, as if to emphasise the arrival of the remorseless moment, the clock just then struck loudly on the mantelpiece—seven times. ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... wines, and served by a French chef. The surprise and delight of it in that wilderness—but the crowning delight was the guestroom. As we entered, it was a wealth of colour in Japanese effect, soft glowing lanterns, polished floors, fur rugs, silk-furnished beds and a crystal mantelpiece (brought from Japan) which reflected the fire-light in a hundred tints. Beyond, through an open door, could be seen the tiled bath-room. It was a room that would be charming anywhere, but in that region a veritable fairy's chamber. Truly ...
— A Woman Tenderfoot • Grace Gallatin Seton-Thompson
... library they had not penetrated. The old bookshelves remained untouched; the old books, in their musty brown calf bindings, were undesecrated by profaning hands. All sorts of quaint chairs and bureaus, gathered together out of every other room in the house, had congregated here. The space over the mantelpiece was adorned by a splendid portrait by Vandyke, flanked irreverently on either side by a series of old sporting prints, representing the whole beginning, continuation, and end of a steeple-chase course, ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... of Good Friday. Within the modest parlour of No. 13 Primrose Terrace a little man, wearing a gray felt hat and a red neck-tie, stood admiring himself in the looking-glass over the mantelpiece. Such a state of things anywhere else would have had no significance whatever; but circumstances proverbially alter cases. At 13 Primrose Terrace it approached the ...
— Stories by English Authors: England • Various
... mysteries by which she finds herself surrounded! No sooner had I entered this battlemented mansion than a cold chill struck through me, as with a sense of some brooding terror. All, indeed, was elegance, all splendour! The arches were hung with Tyrian-dyed curtains. The ornaments on the pale Parian mantelpiece were of red Bohemian glass. Everywhere were crimson couches and sofas. The housekeeper, Mrs. Fairfax, pointed out to my notice some vases of fine purple spar, and on all sides were Turkey carpets and large mirrors. Elegance of taste and fastidious research of ornament could do no more; ...
— Old Friends - Essays in Epistolary Parody • Andrew Lang
... corner; her mother's apron on the floor in the middle of the room; the breakfast dishes not yet washed; the stove all spattered with grease from the pork gravy; the hearth thickly covered with ashes; the paper window-curtain hanging by one tack; and on the mantelpiece, behind the stove, such an array of half-eaten apples, matches, forks, sticky spoons, broken teacups, and dirty candlesticks, as would have frightened any one less used to it than was Kitty. As she looked around her, a ...
— Tip Lewis and His Lamp • Pansy (aka Isabella Alden)
... Fontainebleau, that his Majesty had eaten nothing since morning. The Emperor was exceedingly fatigued; I had opportunity to mark this each time his door was opened. He was seated on a chair in front of the fire, with his feet on the mantelpiece. ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... practice to speak of, and a considerable quantity of unpaid bills. A man of such features and in such circumstances invites temptation. At the present moment, though his waistcoat was unbuttoned and his feet rested on the mantelpiece, his mind seemed not quite at ease. He looked back upon a number of fortunate events that had not occurred, and forward to various unpleasant things that might occur, and then he took a letter from his pocket and read ...
— The Lunatic at Large • J. Storer Clouston
... grandfather and great great aunts, Supported on the mantelpiece An Invitation to the Dance. . . . . . . I shall not want Honour in Heaven For I shall meet Sir Philip Sidney And have talk with Coriolanus And other ...
— Poems • T. S. [Thomas Stearns] Eliot
... a round table and two low chairs. There were yellow flags in a jar on the mantelpiece; a photograph of his mother; cards from societies with little raised crescents, coats of arms, and initials; notes and pipes; on the table lay paper ruled with a red margin—an essay, no doubt—"Does History consist of the Biographies of Great Men?" There were books enough; very few French books; ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... looking he slipped it into his pocket, as though, having taken the trouble to pick it up, this was the very least he could do with it. Heaven alone knows why, but he then took it upstairs with him, setting it on the marble mantelpiece among his field glasses, tobacco tins, ink-bottles, pipes and candlestick. At any rate, he kept it—the moist, shiny, lob-sided, juicy little oblong olive. The hotel lounge wearied him; he came to his room after dinner to smoke at his ease, his coat ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... was the general's room—a bare and shabby room, with a large desk in front of the two windows that overlooked the street, a shaded lamp, more papers and a telephone. The room had a fireplace, and in front of it was a fine old chair. And on the mantelpiece, as out of place as the chair, was a marvellous Louis-Quinze clock, under glass. There were great maps on the walls, with the opposing battle lines shown to the smallest detail. General Foch drew my attention at once to ...
— Kings, Queens And Pawns - An American Woman at the Front • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... daughter, her eyes glancing, as she spoke, at the clock on the mantelpiece. "I am afraid we shall not get this work done in time for me to take ...
— Friends and Neighbors - or Two Ways of Living in the World • Anonymous
... meanwhile the gentleman had gone up to the mantelpiece, right in front of the fire, and had laid his forehead against the mantelpiece (which it is a low one, and brought him into the attitude of leap-frog), and had heaved a tremenjous sigh. His hair was long and lightish; and when he laid his forehead against the mantelpiece, his hair all fell in ...
— Somebody's Luggage • Charles Dickens
... left-hand brass, seven inches; carved-wood—Italian—five and three quarter inches each; old glass on mantelpiece—seven inches. And below this, dated the third: Last night, between midnight and daylight, the candle in the glass holder on the right side of the mantel was burned ...
— The Confession • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... 274 (the ends of the fireplace) the two wing walls of it are built up inside the cabin to support a plank for a mantelpiece. Another plank C, D is nailed under the mantelpiece against the log before the stone work is built up. This is only for the purpose of giving a finish to your mantelpiece. The hearth in Fig. 274 is made of odd bits of flat stones laid in cement, ...
— Shelters, Shacks and Shanties • D.C. Beard
... precious watch stood on the mantelpiece in the blue bedroom, on the watch-stand which was another of Esther's treasures. Lydia had given it to her on one of her birthdays; it was made of white wood, and had a little view on it of Blackpool, ...
— The Carroll Girls • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... connection with his family, and more especially with Pixie, but after one brief reference the subject had been buried, though Pixie herself was frequently mentioned. There was a portrait of her on Pat's mantelpiece to which Stephen's eyes often strayed during his visits to the flat. Truth to tell it was not a flattering portrait. Pixie was unfortunate so far as photography was concerned, since all her bad points were reproduced and her charm disappeared. ...
— The Love Affairs of Pixie • Mrs George de Horne Vaizey
... many pictures, some of them of funny little stiff boys in blue coats with brass buttons, and some of them of little girls with mob-caps and mittens, and these little boys and girls were all either dead now, or elderly men and women, for they were the great-aunts and uncles; and over the mantelpiece hung a picture of a lovely old lady, with bright, soft brown hair and smiling eyes and lips, that looked as if they were just going to speak to the two strange little children who had come for their ...
— Milly and Olly • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... widow came out, followed by Don. Mrs. Duveen's eyes were red, but she had recovered her composure, and now held in her hand the silver cigarette case from the mantelpiece. ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... there, and kept out of sight in an old coffin when they are not wanted. Others vote for getting up sixpenny sweepstakes, and raffling for them with dice—the winner of each to stand a pot out of his gains, and add to the goodly array of empty pewters which already grace the mantelpiece in bright order, with the exception of two irregulars, one of which Mr. Rapp has squeezed flat to show the power of his hand; and in the bottom of the other Mr. Manhug has bored a foramen with a red-hot ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... agitated by an ever-increasing impatience. At every instant she looked at the clock on the mantelpiece of her room; an Empire clock of gilded bronze, representing Love leaning against ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... and went to the mantelpiece and took one book from the heap of books there. She opened it and glanced abstractedly through the leaves as they flittered ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... Graham gravely, "be silent!" There was a moment of absolute stillness, broken only by the ticking of the little crystal clock on the mantelpiece, and then Mrs. Graham continued: "I must ask you not to speak again, my daughter, until I have finished what I have to say; and even then, I trust you will keep silence until you are able to command yourself. You are to stay with my old nurse, Mrs. Hartley, at her farm near Glenfield. ...
— Queen Hildegarde • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... that, though his rooms might be small, there was about them a delicate touch which made up for much, that everything breathed of refinement from the photographs and silver toddy-spoon upon the mantelpiece to Rossetti's poems and "Marius the Epicurean," which covered negligently a stain on the green tablecloth? And these kindly ladies came in riant mood, well knowing all his little anxieties and preparations, yet showing they knew none ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... mantelpiece showed that it was a quarter-past ten, although I had thought it considerably later. As Patch followed me into the room, leaving damp footmarks on the clean linoleum, a short thin-faced woman, with fair hair drawn very tightly back, entered from ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... the room. It was a tiny sitting room, one of the inexpensive rooms in the hotel. There was a bit of fire in the grate, and standing by the mantelpiece was, a big old man with close-cropped hair and a pale, unhealthy face. It was the type of face that one associates with tribal races in Southeastern Europe. He was dressed in a uniform that fitted closely to his figure. It was a uniform ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post
... too, which had seen more than one tragic happening, as its almost unparalleled isolation proclaimed. So much Mr. Van Broecklyn had told her; but she was warned to be careful in traversing it and not upon any pretext to swerve aside from the right-hand wall till she came to a huge mantelpiece. This passed, and a sharp corner turned, she ought to see somewhere in the dim spaces before her a streak of vivid light shining through the crack at the bottom of the blocked-up door. The paper should be ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... junction of East Street with South Street there still exists at the back of the second shop, in the former street (a repository for fancy needlework), a room lined with good oak wainscoting, with finely carved mantelpiece, over which is an inscription, richly carved in relief, with the letters "Ao Di" to the left, and to the right the date "1573;" while above, in the centre, are the initials "J H" and "M H;" separated by a floriated ...
— A History of Horncastle - from the earliest period to the present time • James Conway Walter
... and stood beneath the great carved mantelpiece. Over his head, hewn out of the solid oak, black with age and coloured with that deep richness which is to-day as a lost art, were blazoned the arms of one of Europe's noblest families. He, Nicholas of Reist, its sole male representative, stood deep in thought, his dark young face furrowed ...
— The Traitors • E. Phillips (Edward Phillips) Oppenheim
... be dropping him. That's not the way to put it. He drops himself—automatically." The clock on the mantelpiece ticked a few times before he added, "I can't go ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... head, gave back the pleasant flicker of the fire that burned between the polished sheets of Flemish tiles on either side of the hearth. A great globe stood in the corner furthest from the door, with a map of England hanging above it. A piece of tapestry hung over the mantelpiece, representing Diana bending over Endymion, and two tall candles in brass stands burned beneath. The floor ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... said anything that required an answer. Presently he released her hand, after patting it, and moved restlessly in his chair; then he looked at his watch, and compared it curiously with the clock on the mantelpiece. ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... room to the glowing fire and the black marble mantelpiece, which had supplanted the delicate Adam one of a less resplendent period, he wore an air that was at once gentle and haughty—the expression of a man who hopes that he is a Christian and knows that ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... truth is, I've made Warden bring me here, Sterling, for a bit of business. I had an emotional moment yesterday and went off my head a bit. I stand by what I said as to keeping quiet, but—well, I'm like any other old maid who hates dust on her mantelpiece—I'm fidgety not to make some sort of a bluff at putting this ...
— The Climbers - A Play in Four Acts • Clyde Fitch
... appearance of washed-out brick and well-ripened wood, there was comfort and cleanliness and quiet. The front room, with its stiff cane rocker and chairs, its round table and well-adorned mantelpiece, its cretonne-covered lounge and tapestry carpet, was not a bad sample at all, of a drawing-room ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... of the six sausages had been recovered; but the sixth was not retrieved until the next morning when, in dusting, Mrs. Tims discovered it on the mantelpiece. ...
— Malcolm Sage, Detective • Herbert George Jenkins
... small but very select circle), descended from the very ancient and chivalric house of that name, whose celebrated estate was in Warwickshire, England; and, in proof of this, my Lady Choicewest invariably points to a sad daub, illustrative of some incomprehensible object, suspended over the antique mantelpiece. With methodical grace, and dignity which frowns with superlative contempt upon every thing very vulgar—for she says "she sublimely detests them very low creatures what are never brought up to manners at the north, ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... she was obliged to prepare the umbrella so that the disaster might be complete, and the reason of it quite evident. She took a match from the mantelpiece, and between the ribs she burnt a hole as big as the palm of her hand; then she delicately rolled it up, fastened it with the elastic band, put on her bonnet and shawl, and went quickly towards the Rue de Rivoli, where the ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... head very high, adjusted in silence, the two China mandarins on the mantelpiece—first, one very carefully, then the other. And there was a pause, during which one of the lap-dogs screamed; and the monkey, who had boxed his ears, jumped, with a ringing of his chain, chattering, on the back of the arm-chair in which the grim suitor sat. Mr. Dangerfield would have given the ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... into the private office. At ten minutes past, Mr. Murphy's respectful tap was heard. "Don't, Eddie," said Mrs. MacMahon in a queer, flurried voice. "Come in," said her husband. Nora was examining some judicial cartoons pinned over the mantelpiece. Mr. Murphy opened the door a few inches, slid through the aperture, and was at once caught and held by his employer's eye, which, like a hand, guided him to the table with his notebook. Under the almost physical pressure of that authoritative glare he did not dare to look who was in the room, but ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... her and couldn't say a word. He noticed that the room 'ad been altered, and that there was a big photygraph of her stuck up on the mantelpiece. He sat there fidgeting with 'is feet—until the 'ousekeeper looked at them—and then 'e got ...
— Short Cruises • W.W. Jacobs
... aprons and snowy Dutch caps, like the children of the Foundling Hospital. The building is on the site of Marylebone Park House, an old house, parts of which the architect has incorporated into its successor; a handsome oak floor and marble mantelpiece of the Queen Anne period are to be seen in the board-room. At its southern end High Street bifurcates, becoming Thayer Street ...
— Hampstead and Marylebone - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... had seen little of him the last week; save when he was construing he had taken refuge in his own room. When he came in now, Gayford wagged his head significantly at me; apparently, it was my task to bell the cat. I rose, and went to the mantelpiece. Smugg had sat down at the table, and my back was to him. I took a match from the box, struck it, and applied it to my pipe, and, punctuating my words with interspersed ...
— Frivolous Cupid • Anthony Hope
... it to Mrs. Burrell in the afternoon, for the morning was his time for study and writing. But he found it impossible to think of his sermon. That sovereign on the mantelpiece was in all his thoughts. His back was to it, and yet he saw the dull shining disc. In spite of his reason and his faith, in spite of a very strong will and of a practiced command over himself, he felt the presence of ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... and a rosewood piano against the wall opposite. A fender of shining brass with brazen furniture, a bright, copper kettle for boiling water in, and an iron pot for cooking potatoes and meat; there was to be a life-sized picture of Mary over the mantelpiece and a picture of her mother near the window in a golden frame, also a picture of a Newfoundland dog lying in a barrel and a little wee terrier crawling up to make friends with him, and a picture of a battle between ...
— Mary, Mary • James Stephens
... the broad hearth, and that, with the tallow candles on the mantelpiece, made quite an illumination in the room, and enabled the boys, who were mostly on one side of the room, to see the girls, who were on the other, quite plainly. How sweet and demure the girls looked, to be sure! Every boy was thinking ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... boy. They took their places at the table, and dinner was eaten by the light of the lamp. But after dinner, when Julia had tucked Anna into bed, she came back and put out the lamp. She lighted two candles on the mantelpiece that sent a brave flicker over the dull walls and up ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... he knocked the ashes from his pipe, and placing it on the mantelpiece, went to bed and soon fell asleep, but Mag, an insane decision taking shape in her brain, lay and brooded and tossed till well on in the morning, when she rose, kindled the fire, "redd up" the house, prepared the breakfast and awoke her husband to partake of the ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh
... time-honoured tradition of the family, it was served at the early hour of seven o'clock in the big dining-room, an ancient chamber panelled with oak to the ceiling, with a carved buffet, an open fireplace, Jacobean mantelpiece, and old family portraits on the walls. There were sconces on the walls, and a crystal chandelier for wax candles was suspended from the centre of the ceiling above the table. The chandelier was never lit, as the moat-house was illuminated by electric light, but ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... prickling with a premonition of danger, Dundee crossed the room to the shelf, but his hand did not reach out for the red book, which might have been expected to solve one problem, at least. "Why the shelf?" he asked himself again. Why not the desk top, or the mantelpiece, or the smoking table beside ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin
... heavily leaded, stained-glass window. The floor was likewise black, polished with age and the labour of generations. A deeply sunken nail-studded door led into a low-ceiled library, containing a finely carved frieze and cornice, and an oak mantelpiece, which John Crewys earnestly desired to examine more closely; the shield-of-arms above it bore the figures of 1603, but the hall itself ...
— Peter's Mother • Mrs. Henry De La Pasture
... of attendance on my clients are from eleven to one." The clock on the mantelpiece struck the quarter-past one as he spoke. "I hope you don't bring me bad news?" he said, very earnestly. "When I called on Mrs. Zant this morning, I heard that she had gone out for a walk. Is it indiscreet to ask how ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... largest in Rome, although the quality of the marble is much injured by its lighter colour, and by a white streak which runs up each shaft nearly from top to bottom. In the sixth room of the Casino of the Villa Borghese the jambs of the mantelpiece are composed of rosso antico in the form of caryatides supporting a broad frieze of the ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... him into the tent and watched him unload. First there was the old powder-horn that always hangs over the hall mantelpiece. Then there was a big, wide-necked bottle, a large, clean handkerchief, and a spool of thread. "You see this, Dago?" he said to me. "Now you watch ...
— The Story of Dago • Annie Fellows-Johnston
... flesh until her mental exaltation reached the rushing of delirium. Then his evening manners fascinated her, and, as he leaned back smoking in the dining-room arm-chair, his patent-leather shoes propped up against the mantelpiece, he showed her glimpses of a wider world than she knew of—and the girl's eyes softened as she listened to his accounts of the great life he had led, the county-houses he had visited, and the legendary runs he had held his own in. She sympathized with ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... moment's silence. Furley glanced at the little clock upon the mantelpiece. It was five and ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the mantelpiece, and brought one to her brother. "Is this it?" He nodded. She ran for the light, and ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... conducted me contained no furniture except a large deal table and some chairs; also a cupboard, a long mantelpiece, and some shelves against the walls. On every available place were pipes, pouches, revolvers, cartridge-boxes, and empty bottles. On the table were tumblers, cups, a sugar-basin, a monstrous tin teapot, and a demijohn, which I soon ascertained was ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... fourteen years. The cottage floor was hard, dried mud. There was a wide, open fireplace. Several holes made in the wall by displacing of bricks here and there contained my father's old pipes. A few ornaments, yellow with the smoke of years, adorned the mantelpiece. At the front window sat my father, and around him his shoemaking tools. Beside the window hung a large cage, made by his own hands, and in which singing thrushes had succeeded one another for twenty years. The walls ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine
... to the last departing guest, the old man and his son were left alone together in the deserted drawing-room. Philip was seated by a table, his face buried in his hand, whilst his father was standing by the dying fire, tapping his eye-glass nervously on the mantelpiece. It was he who broke the somewhat ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... leaped and crackled in the wide chimney, and leaning forward to rest her turbaned head against the mantelpiece, while she spread her hands toward the blaze, stood ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... to an envelope on the mantelpiece. She crossed the hall without eagerness, and picked ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... GAUDENS, - This is to tell you that the medallion has been at last triumphantly transported up the hill and placed over my smoking-room mantelpiece. It is considered by everybody a first-rate but flattering portrait. We have it in a very good light, which brings out the artistic merits of the god-like sculptor to great advantage. As for my own opinion, I believe it to be a speaking likeness, and not flattered at all; possibly a little ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... The younger visibly grew uglier and uglier, and the elder became every day more and more stupid: she either made no answer at all to what was asked her, or said something very silly. She was with all this so unhandy that she could not place four pieces of china upon the mantelpiece without breaking one of them, nor drink a glass of water without spilling half of ...
— The Tales of Mother Goose - As First Collected by Charles Perrault in 1696 • Charles Perrault
... Cathedral of the Virgin of the Pillar, immediately behind his house, had struck the half hour. It was more than thirty minutes since the ferry-boat had sidled across the river, and Mon glanced at the clock on his mantelpiece. He expected, it would seem, a sequel to the arrival which had been ...
— The Velvet Glove • Henry Seton Merriman
... to the mantelpiece, and stood there in the attitude which for generations has been sacred to the elderly Briton, feet well apart, hands clasped beneath his coat-tails. His stare raked Lord Dreever ...
— The Intrusion of Jimmy • P. G. Wodehouse
... Nothing to equal it has been met with in Munich. It might almost be an Aladdin's palace! The walls of her bed-chamber are hung with guipure and costly satin. The furniture is of Louis XV era, and the mantelpiece is of valuable Sevres porcelain. The garden is filled with rare flowers, and the carriages and horses in the stables are the wonder and ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... jump, and bumped his head on the mantelpiece, and this so startled him that he dropped Mrs. Longtail, and she scampered off down in a deep, dark hole and hid safely away. Then the cat saw Mrs. No-Tail pouring water from the can, and he knew ...
— Bully and Bawly No-Tail • Howard R. Garis
... close upon three o'clock a.m., my uncle forgetting all about bed in his anxiety to hear full particulars of my doings since I had last parted from him. At length, however, he glanced at the clock upon the mantelpiece, and at once pulled me ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... which the sisters now found themselves was the most spacious in the house, and was indeed of considerable dimensions. It contained in front one large window, jutting from the wall. Opposite was an antique and high mantelpiece of black oak. The rest of the room was walled from the floor to the roof with books; volumes of all languages, and it might even be said, without much exaggeration, upon all sciences, were strewed around, on the chairs, the tables, or the floor. By the ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton |
